Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an estimate of the potential loss of revenue for teacher authors from Oak National Academy spending on full curriculum resources.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government has set aside up to £43 million over the next three years to support Oak National Academy, a significant proportion of which is expected to be provided directly to schools, publishers, and other organisations for the creation of resources on behalf of Oak.
Where Oak needs to use existing third party content, such as texts, Oak will seek to have an overarching licence with relevant licensing bodies wherever feasible, or direct relationships with rights holders where necessary, so the rights holder gets full payment for their work.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to direct the Oak National Academy on children's learning about (a) society and (b) history.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Oak’s resources will be created independently, free to access, non-compulsory for schools to use, and evidence based. In creating curriculum packages and educational resources, Oak will ensure alignment with the National Curriculum, and have due regard to the Department’s non-statutory curriculum guidance.
The Department does not prescribe how subjects, including society and history, should be taught but we expect schools to develop a curriculum that meets the need of their pupils.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what impact the Oak National Academy’s proposed creative commons licensing would have on teacher authors’ moral rights of (a) attribution and (b) integrity.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Oak National Academy has conducted the recent procurement on the basis of a non-commercial licence, but will be exploring the case for alternatives, including Open Government Licence and commercial licence. Some market testing indicated benefits to that approach.
In considering a range of potential licensing arrangements Oak will ensure third party intellectual property rights will be respected.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will set out the total spending on (a) adult education and (b) apprenticeships in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robert Halfon
Departmental spending on adult education is reported through publication of Annual Reports and Accounts. These are available for each of the last five financial years with the most recent report published for 2020/21. These can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dfe-annual-reports.
Spend on apprenticeships is reported in the Education & Skills Funding Agency Annual Report and Accounts. The latest report, for 2021/22, is published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-and-skills-funding-agency-esfa-annual-report-and-accounts-2021-to-2022.
The table below shows the department’s ring-fenced apprenticeships spend for the last five years.
Financial Year | Total Ring-fenced Apprenticeships Spend (£ million) |
2017/18 | 1,586 |
2018/19 | 1,738 |
2019/20 | 1,919 |
2020/21 | 1,863 |
2021/22 | 2,455 |
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of removing energy cost support after April 2023 on the finances of further education colleges.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department knows that alongside pay and inflationary pressures, one of the biggest challenges facing some colleges is the rising cost of energy. We are keeping under review the potential impacts of the rising cost of energy on providers across the department’s remit.
Colleges are autonomous institutions responsible for their own financial sustainability and are taking actions to respond to inflationary pressures, for example through reducing energy consumption.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has recently outlined the range of support on energy cost increases that will be available for businesses, the public sector and households. As part of that, the Energy Bill Relief Scheme will provide a price reduction to ensure that all businesses and other non-domestic customers, including colleges, are protected from excessively high energy bills over this winter. Discounts will be applied to energy usage initially between 1 October 2022 and 31 March 2023.
Schools and colleges in England will also be allocated a share of £500 million in capital funding in financial year 2022/23. This comprises £447 million for schools and sixth form colleges and £53 million for FE colleges, to spend on energy efficiency upgrades.
This will not only help schools and colleges save money, but it will also make them more energy efficient during the cold period and increase winter resilience for future years. A further education college group will receive £290,000 on average from that additional funding. Allocations were published on 6 December 2022 to help colleges plan, and payments are expected to be made in January 2023.
The department is investing £3.8 billion more in further education and skills over the Parliament as a whole to ensure people can access high-quality training and education that leads to good jobs, addresses skills gaps, boosts productivity and supports levelling up. This will support the sector to reform and deliver the technical, skilled education employers want and our economy needs.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the funding rate per pupil for (a) schools, (b) sixth-form colleges and (c) further education colleges was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The schools National Funding Formula (NFF) calculates an allocation for every school, based on their individual pupil and school characteristics. The table below shows the average funding per pupil allocated through the NFF for England over the past five years. Per pupil funding excludes growth funding and individual schools’ actual allocations are based on Local Authorities’ local funding formulae.
Financial Year | Average per pupil funding through the schools NFF |
2018/19 | £4,585 |
2019/20 | £4,640 |
2020/21 | £4,828 |
2021/22 | £5,212 |
2022/23 | £5,358 |
The national funding rate per student for 16 to 19-year-olds and young people aged up to 25 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is the same for all institution types.
The table below shows the national funding rate for the last five academic years for a full-time student aged 16 to 19 and young people aged up to 25 with SEND.
Academic Year | National funding rate |
2018/19 | £4,000 |
2019/20 | £4,000 |
2020/21 | £4,188 |
2021/22 | £4,188 |
2022/23 | £4,542 |
The increase to the national funding rate for the 2022/23 academic year includes funding to roll in the Teachers’ Pay Grant with an equivalent uplift for other institutions, funding for the additional hours policy, and an affordable increase for inflation. Details related to the 2022/23 funding rate are available in published guidance, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-funding-information-for-2022-to-2023. Rates for all funding bands are published annually at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/funding-rates-and-formula.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the research on the use of carbon dioxide monitors in schools referred to in his letter of 17 August 2022 to Geoff Barton, General Secretary, ASCL.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Department carried out a £25 million programme to improve ventilation in all education settings in the 2021/22 academic year. The Department provided over 386,000 CO2 monitors to state-funded early years, schools, and further education providers, to support them in being able to assess ventilation in their setting.
The Department has also provided over 8,000 air cleaning units to state-funded schools with poorly ventilated teaching spaces that cannot be otherwise remedied. Applications were assessed against strict criteria that were set out in guidance.
Regarding the question on publishing the research on the use of CO2 monitors, the Department already published research on the use of CO2 monitors on 24 January 2022 this year, with further information added to this release on 30 June 2022.
The full publication is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/co2-monitor-survey-and-applications-for-air-cleaning-units.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the impact of levels of (a) covid-19 in the general population, (b) staff absences and (c) pupil absences on the current guidance on covid-19 to schools and parents.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Government has moved to managing COVID-19 like other respiratory infections given the high immunity in society, a greater understanding of the virus and improved access to treatments.
The Department does not hold information on the potential costs to schools of supply teaching and support staff absences in the autumn term due to COVID-19. Head teachers are best placed to determine the workforce required to meet the needs of pupils and in the case of staff absence, in the first instance schools should follow their usual process for covering absences.
The Department previously collected data on staff and pupil absences through the Educational Setting status form (EdSet), which helped to support our response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Department is always mindful of balancing the need for data collections with the burdens we place on those collating it, and since the start of the 2022/23 academic year the EdSet form has been closed and schools are no longer being asked to complete it. Data on attendance in education settings during the COVID-19 pandemic can be found here: Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Week 30 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes weekly reports on the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 in private residential households, which can be found here: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK Statistical bulletins - Office for National Statistics.
The Department have also been working to establish a better, more timely flow of pupil level attendance data across schools, trusts, local authorities, without placing any additional administrative burdens on schools. Most state-funded schools across the country have now signed up. This will allow data to be collected directly from all schools’ electronic registers and will help the department, schools, local authorities and trusts to identify pupils who need most support to attend.
Attendance reports will help schools and local authorities make better use of attendance data to identify those in need of support earlier, as outlined in the new attendance guidance. They will also help the Department respond to national and regional issues. A report on how the data is used can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/share-your-daily-school-attendance-data.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the ratio of (a) staff and (b) pupil absences compared to levels of covid-19 in the general population over the period of the covid-19 pandemic.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Government has moved to managing COVID-19 like other respiratory infections given the high immunity in society, a greater understanding of the virus and improved access to treatments.
The Department does not hold information on the potential costs to schools of supply teaching and support staff absences in the autumn term due to COVID-19. Head teachers are best placed to determine the workforce required to meet the needs of pupils and in the case of staff absence, in the first instance schools should follow their usual process for covering absences.
The Department previously collected data on staff and pupil absences through the Educational Setting status form (EdSet), which helped to support our response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Department is always mindful of balancing the need for data collections with the burdens we place on those collating it, and since the start of the 2022/23 academic year the EdSet form has been closed and schools are no longer being asked to complete it. Data on attendance in education settings during the COVID-19 pandemic can be found here: Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Week 30 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes weekly reports on the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 in private residential households, which can be found here: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK Statistical bulletins - Office for National Statistics.
The Department have also been working to establish a better, more timely flow of pupil level attendance data across schools, trusts, local authorities, without placing any additional administrative burdens on schools. Most state-funded schools across the country have now signed up. This will allow data to be collected directly from all schools’ electronic registers and will help the department, schools, local authorities and trusts to identify pupils who need most support to attend.
Attendance reports will help schools and local authorities make better use of attendance data to identify those in need of support earlier, as outlined in the new attendance guidance. They will also help the Department respond to national and regional issues. A report on how the data is used can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/share-your-daily-school-attendance-data.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the potential costs to schools of supply teaching and support staff absences in the autumn term due to Covid.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Government has moved to managing COVID-19 like other respiratory infections given the high immunity in society, a greater understanding of the virus and improved access to treatments.
The Department does not hold information on the potential costs to schools of supply teaching and support staff absences in the autumn term due to COVID-19. Head teachers are best placed to determine the workforce required to meet the needs of pupils and in the case of staff absence, in the first instance schools should follow their usual process for covering absences.
The Department previously collected data on staff and pupil absences through the Educational Setting status form (EdSet), which helped to support our response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Department is always mindful of balancing the need for data collections with the burdens we place on those collating it, and since the start of the 2022/23 academic year the EdSet form has been closed and schools are no longer being asked to complete it. Data on attendance in education settings during the COVID-19 pandemic can be found here: Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Week 30 2022 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes weekly reports on the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 in private residential households, which can be found here: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK Statistical bulletins - Office for National Statistics.
The Department have also been working to establish a better, more timely flow of pupil level attendance data across schools, trusts, local authorities, without placing any additional administrative burdens on schools. Most state-funded schools across the country have now signed up. This will allow data to be collected directly from all schools’ electronic registers and will help the department, schools, local authorities and trusts to identify pupils who need most support to attend.
Attendance reports will help schools and local authorities make better use of attendance data to identify those in need of support earlier, as outlined in the new attendance guidance. They will also help the Department respond to national and regional issues. A report on how the data is used can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/share-your-daily-school-attendance-data.