Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of students sitting the design and technology GCSE received a grade C or above in 2016-17.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The table below provides information on the proportion of pupils entered for design and technology GCSEs[1] in 2016/17 who achieved grade C or above.
Subject | Percentage of pupils entered |
Design and Technology: | 68.6% |
Design and Technology: | 61% |
Design and Technology: | 58.8% |
Design and Technology: | 58.1% |
Design and Technology: | 68.3% |
Design and Technology: | 72.9% |
Other Design and Technology[2] | 58.5% |
[1] Based on GCSE examinations only - excludes equivalents
[2] Includes Graphics, Motor Vehicle, Studies, Design & Technology, D&T Engineering and D&T Product Design.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers will reopen for applications.
Answered by Anne Milton
The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) is currently reviewing the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers and intends to re-open it for applications this autumn. I want to ensure that the register provides assurance to employers that the training providers they choose have the capacity and capability to deliver good quality apprenticeship training. Further details on the updates that the ESFA is making to the apprenticeship register and the timing of its re-opening will be available in the coming weeks.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what funding programmes are in place to support (a) early intervention for children with additional needs and (b) other aspects of nurture care.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Children’s services, including for meeting additional needs, nurture and care, are delivered locally. Statutory guidance ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ is clear that local areas should have a comprehensive range of effective, evidence-based services in place to address assessed needs early. The 2015 Spending Review made available more than £200 billion until 2020 for councils to deliver local services, including children’s services. Through the local government finance settlement, local government has been given access to £45.1 billion in 2018-19 and £45.6 billion in 2019-20. This is an overall increase since 2017-18 of £1.3 billion.
In addition, the Department for Education’s National Funding Formula has an additional needs factor, directing more funding to local authorities with more need. Local authorities also receive high needs funding, which supports educational provision up-to age 25. High needs funding has risen by £1 billion since 2013 and will be over £6 billion next year.
Beyond these funding streams, across government, there are a wide range of programmes underway to address the root causes of children’s needs early. This includes:
- £8 million funding for supporting children affected by domestic abuse.
- £200 million youth endowment fund preventing young people being drawn into serious violence.
- £1.4 billion investment to transform children and young people’s mental health services from 2015/16 to 2019/20, with £300 million proposals outlined in the 'Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper (2017)' in addition to this.
- £920 million committed to the Troubled Families Programme, which aims to achieve significant and sustained improvement for up to 400,000 families with multiple, high-cost problems by 2020.
In meeting other additional needs such as special education needs and disabilities (SEND), there are a range of measures put in place to ensure that local areas can put the right support in place for children and their families to access early education. Our disability access fund is worth £615 per eligible child per year, and there is a requirement that local authorities establish a SEND Inclusion Fund for three and four year olds, to ensure children with SEND get the best from the free childcare entitlements. Since 2014, we have invested £391 million for local areas to implement SEND reforms.
Funding for children’s social care is an unringfenced part of the wider local government finance settlement, to give local authorities the flexibility to focus on locally determined priorities as well as meeting statutory responsibilities. Local authorities used this flexibility to increase spending on children and young people’s services to around £9.2 billion in 2016-17.
The department has also invested £200 million in our Innovation Programme, so councils and others have support to trial ways to reform services to be more effective. This includes strands focused on children at the edge of Children in Need services and on reducing children entering care. This is also an early priority for the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, which is funded to make a positive difference to practice and outcomes for children and families by improving the quality and use of evidence.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to improve outcomes for children with special educational needs.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms introduced by the Children and Families Act (2014) were the biggest in a generation. Since then, we have given £391 million to local areas to support implementation of the new duties under the act and a great deal of progress has been made with 98% of statements transferred to education, health and care (EHC) plans, where appropriate, by April 2018.
We want to ensure that families are able to participate meaningfully in developing local services and have a contract worth £20 million with the Council for Disabled Children (CDC) and Contact, to improve local information, advice and support and provide a national helpline; and a contract worth £3.8 million with Contact, in partnership with KIDS and the CDC, to promote and develop strategic participation by young people and parent carers.
We have in place a new contract with the Whole School SEND Consortium to embed SEND within approaches to school improvement in order to equip the workforce to deliver high quality teaching across all types of special educational needs. The programme of work includes building a community of practice with the involvement of 10,000 schools by 2020 and 15,000 schools by 2022, across the eight regional schools commissioners’ regions.
We are establishing a SEND Commissioning Board for children and young people with high needs to help support local authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups to improve planning and commissioning of SEND provision.
We have published a roadmap for reforming alternative provision that will see us focus on sharing best practice across the sector and launched a £4 million innovation fund. We have also announced an externally led review of school exclusions, carried out by former children’s minister Edward Timpson CBE, looking into why certain groups of pupils – including those with SEND – are more likely to be excluded than others, and launched a review into the outcomes of and support for children in need.
Finally, we have asked Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission to design a programme of further local area SEND inspections to follow the current round and to develop an approach for further inspection or monitoring of those areas required to produce a written statement of action. The inspections consider how effectively local areas identify, meet the needs of and improve the outcomes of children and young people with SEND. They have proved a catalyst for supporting local areas to improve their services and deliver better outcomes for children and young people.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to encourage young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to undertake apprenticeships.
Answered by Anne Milton
We want to ensure that high quality apprenticeships are a prestigious option, accessible to all people from all backgrounds. We are encouraging take up from under-represented groups so that even more people can benefit from the increased wage and employment prospects that apprenticeships offer.
The latest phase of our marketing campaign, Get In Go Far, ran until the end of September 2018 and coincided with August's exam results period when young people look at the options available to them after school or college. This aimed to help increase the number of vacancies created by employers and encourage young people to choose an apprenticeship as a high quality career route, signposting them to new vacancies on offer.
Our funding policy recognises where additional support is necessary, through extra funding where the costs of supporting an apprentice are higher, making sure these costs are met by the government, not by the employer. For example, we provide £1,000 to both employers and training providers when they take on 16 to 18 year olds and 19 to 24 year olds who were in care or who have an Education, Health and Care Plan. Earlier this year, we introduced a new bursary for care leavers starting apprenticeships. This £1,000 bursary is available to all care leavers aged 16 to 24 and is paid directly to the apprentice.
To further social mobility and to make sure that a higher quality outcome for individuals is achieved, we want our reforms to mean more apprentices from disadvantaged areas are undertaking apprenticeships at a higher level, or in sectors that offer increasing value to the learner. Over the next two years, the National Apprenticeship Service is focusing on raising the value of apprenticeships undertaken in disadvantaged areas. This includes a broad-based employer engagement campaign across the 20 per cent most deprived local authority areas (65 areas in total) and working with local partners.
We are also increasing the take up of degree apprenticeships through the Degree Apprenticeship Development Fund. In 2017-18, as part of the bidding process, we specifically encouraged bids that improve access to Degree Apprenticeships for disadvantaged and under-represented groups and bids that expand provision in science, technology, engineering and maths occupations (STEM) and gender diversity in STEM.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support his Department provides to adults without a level 2 qualification in (a) English and (b) maths to allow them to undertake further study.
Answered by Anne Milton
We recognise the importance of helping adults to secure a good level of English and maths. We provide full funding for adults in England to undertake a range of approved English and maths courses, from entry level up to level 2 (GCSE or equivalent). In addition, we provide full funding for unemployed adults who are looking for work to study English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses, and 50% of the course fee for other adults who need ESOL.
We are also improving the quality of curriculum that adults are taught by reforming maths and English Functional Skills qualifications. This is to improve their rigour and quality and make sure that these qualifications help adults gain the English and maths skills that employers need.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding from the Flexible Learning Fund has been allocated to projects in the East Midlands.
Answered by Anne Milton
The Flexible Learning Fund pilot is designed to address barriers relating to the ‘supply side’ of learning by supporting organisations to develop and test flexible and accessible ways of delivering learning for adults with low or intermediate level technical skills or who lack basic skills.
Projects led by organisations that are based and deliver in the East Midlands have a combined current allocation of £518,643.
Projects proposing nationwide delivery that constituents in the East Midlands will be able to access have a combined current allocation of £782,615. Projects that have identified the East Midlands as a potential delivery area or have proposed delivery partners in the East Midlands have a combined current allocation of £2,933,810.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will provide a list of the organisations in Nottinghamshire that have been allocated funding for breakfast or lunch clubs over school holiday periods in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Earlier this year, we announced a programme of research and pilots to explore ways of supporting children from disadvantaged families to access free enrichment activities and healthy food during school holidays.
This summer we awarded £2 million to seven organisations that supported programmes of free food and activities for disadvantaged children around the country. We have not published a list of the individual clubs and locations. However, a number of clubs were operating in Nottinghamshire as part of the 2018 pilot programme. They operated in the following locations: Bingham Children’s Centre and the Lifespring Church in New Ollerton.
We will use the data and the information gathered during the 2018 pilots to help shape our plans for 2019, which will be announced later this year.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information his Department holds on which GCSE subjects that were available in the 2017-18 school year will no longer be available by 2020-21.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The government has reformed GCSEs to be more rigorous and to match expectations in countries with high performing education systems. As part of this reform process, a number of GCSE subjects are being withdrawn.
Ofqual, the independent qualifications regulator, has published a list of legacy GCSEs, AS and A levels and the date of the last available opportunity to undertake examinations in each subject. This also sets out the reason for withdrawal where the legacy qualifications are not being replaced as part of the reforms.
The list can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/timings-for-the-withdrawal-of-legacy-gcses-as-and-a-levels.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to improve access to mental health services in primary schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government’s Green Paper on Children and Young People’s Mental Health sets out an ambitious set of proposals to fill the gap in support for children and young people’s mental health supported by £300 million of funding.
Under these proposals the Government will incentivise and support all schools, including primary schools, to identify and train a Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health – funding new training to help leads put in place a whole school approach to mental health.
The Government is also funding new Mental Health Support Teams working in or near schools to provide earlier access to a wider range of support and treatments and help reduce mental health problems worsening or developing in the first place, so that appropriate and timely referrals are made to NHS services where necessary. A process is underway to identify the first areas of the country to set up and test these new teams. A new four-week waiting time for NHS specialist children and young people’s mental health services will also be piloted so that specialist help is available sooner.
These proposals build on the experience of the pilot of school links to NHS mental health services, which has already helped around 1,000 schools build better links to specialist services and will be rolled out nationally.