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Written Question
Schools: Sanitary Products
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase access to free period products within schools.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

No-one should be held back from accessing education due to their period, which is why the department has launched the period products scheme to provide girls and women with period products when they need them in their place of study. Since its launch in January 2020, 99% of secondary schools and 94% of 16-19 organisations have placed an order using the scheme. The department is also encouraging more primary schools to order products, with 75% having placed orders so far.

The period product scheme is available to all state-maintained schools and 16 to 19 education organisations in England and has been extended to July 2024. To make sure organisations have access to a wide range of period products in the most cost-effective and efficient way, the department has a contract with Personnel Hygiene Services Limited. This allows organisations to order period products and have them delivered when they need them.


Written Question
School Meals: Standards
Tuesday 2nd May 2023

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on the potential effects on health of increasing the School Food Standards minimum requirement of one portion of vegetables or salad per day; and whether she has plans to review the School Food Standards.

Answered by Nick Gibb

Obesity is a complex problem caused by many factors. The Department of Health and Social Care launched ‘Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives’ in July 2020. The strategy demonstrates an overarching campaign to reduce obesity and takes forward actions from previous chapters of the childhood obesity plan, including the ambition to halve the number of children living with obesity by 2030.

The Department for Education (the Department) wants pupils to be healthy and well nourished and encourages a healthy balanced diet and healthy life choices through school funding, legislation, and guidance. The Standards for school food are set out in The Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014. They are designed to ensure that schools provide pupils with healthy food and drink options, and to ensure that pupils get the energy and nutrition they need across the school day.

The Department has committed to support schools to improve their sustainable practices on food. Schools can voluntarily follow the Department’s buying standards, which include advice about sustainable sourcing. The Department also recognises the importance of plant based foods from a health and environmental point of view. The School Food Standards already allow schools the freedom to provide plant based meals as needed.

The School Food Standards ensure the right foods are available for pupils every day. Schools are required to provide one or more portions of vegetables or salad as an accompaniment. One or more portions of fruit must be provided every day and at least three different fruits and three different vegetables each week. My right hon. Friends, the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, have not met on this matter.

The Department believes that the current standards provide a robust yet flexible framework to ensure that pupils in England continue to receive high quality and nutritious food, that builds healthy eating habits for life. The Department is keeping the standards under review.


Written Question
School Meals: Standards
Tuesday 2nd May 2023

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she made of the potential impact of the School Food Standards on (a) children’s health and childhood obesity and (b) the Government’s net zero carbon strategy.

Answered by Nick Gibb

Obesity is a complex problem caused by many factors. The Department of Health and Social Care launched ‘Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives’ in July 2020. The strategy demonstrates an overarching campaign to reduce obesity and takes forward actions from previous chapters of the childhood obesity plan, including the ambition to halve the number of children living with obesity by 2030.

The Department for Education (the Department) wants pupils to be healthy and well nourished and encourages a healthy balanced diet and healthy life choices through school funding, legislation, and guidance. The Standards for school food are set out in The Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014. They are designed to ensure that schools provide pupils with healthy food and drink options, and to ensure that pupils get the energy and nutrition they need across the school day.

The Department has committed to support schools to improve their sustainable practices on food. Schools can voluntarily follow the Department’s buying standards, which include advice about sustainable sourcing. The Department also recognises the importance of plant based foods from a health and environmental point of view. The School Food Standards already allow schools the freedom to provide plant based meals as needed.

The School Food Standards ensure the right foods are available for pupils every day. Schools are required to provide one or more portions of vegetables or salad as an accompaniment. One or more portions of fruit must be provided every day and at least three different fruits and three different vegetables each week. My right hon. Friends, the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, have not met on this matter.

The Department believes that the current standards provide a robust yet flexible framework to ensure that pupils in England continue to receive high quality and nutritious food, that builds healthy eating habits for life. The Department is keeping the standards under review.


Written Question
Pupils
Wednesday 29th March 2023

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure pupils affected by staff sickness caused by covid-19 receive the support they need to learn.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Department is focusing on recovering from the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic through an ambitious multi year programme and has made almost £5 billion available for recovery. This funding in education recovery includes £400 million for teacher training opportunities and up to £1.5 billion for tutoring. It also includes nearly £2 billion of direct funding for schools to deliver evidence based interventions based on pupil needs, and over £800 million for additional hours in 16-19 education.

This support is focused on helping the most disadvantaged, vulnerable, or those with least time left in education, wherever they live.

Head teachers are best placed to determine the workforce required to meet the needs of their pupils. In the case of staff absence, in the first instance schools should follow their usual process for covering absences so that they can continue to deliver face to face, high quality education to all pupils.

Some Local Authorities and multi academy trusts operate supply teacher pools, while other schools have found greater efficiency in working with private employment agencies.

Where schools choose to engage private agencies, the Department recommends they use the Agency Supply Framework, which is a commercial deal that supports schools with getting value for money when hiring agency supply teachers and other temporary staff. Further details are available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/deal-for-schools-hiring-supply-teachers-and-agency-workers.


Written Question
Schools: Bristol East
Thursday 9th February 2023

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 20 July 2022 to Question 37614 on Schools: Buildings, which schools had at least one construction element in condition grade (a) C and (b) D in Bristol East constituency when that data was collated; and which of those schools (i) have received and (ii) expect to receive funding in the next two years from the School Rebuilding Programme.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Condition Data Collection (CDC) is one of the largest and most comprehensive data collection programmes in the UK’s public sector. It collected data on the building condition of government funded schools in England. It provides a robust evidence base to enable the Department to target capital funding for maintaining and rebuilding school buildings.

The key, high level findings of the CDC programme were published in May 2021 in the ‘Condition of School Buildings Survey: Key Findings’ report. This is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/989912/Condition_of_School_Buildings_Survey_CDC1_-_key_findings_report.pdf.

Individual CDC reports have been shared with every school and their responsible body to use alongside their existing condition surveys to plan maintenance schedules and investment plans. The Department plans to publish detailed school level CDC data. The data is being prepared and will be published as soon as possible.

Well maintained, safe school buildings are a priority for the Department. Our funding is directed both to maintaining the condition of the school estate and rebuilding schools. The Department has allocated over £13 billion for improving the condition of schools since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed this financial year.

The ten year School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) is condition led. 400 of the 500 available places on the programme have been provisionally allocated. A list of these schools and the methodology used to select them is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-rebuilding-programme-schools-in-the-programme.

The following table shows the constituencies specified that have schools or colleges selected for the SRP:

Parliamentary constituency

Schools selected for SRP

Feltham and Heston

Rivers Academy West London, announced July 2022 St Mark's Catholic School, announced December 2022

The 239 schools announced in December 2022 will enter delivery at a rate of approximately 50 per year, over a five year period from 2023. The Department is currently undertaking due diligence on these schools prior to scheduling them, with schools prioritised according to the condition of their buildings, readiness to proceed, and efficiency of delivery. The scope and funding for each project will be confirmed following detailed feasibility studies and condition surveys of buildings.

Where a school identifies significant safety issues with a building, that cannot be managed within local resources, the Department considers additional support on a case-by-case basis. This includes applications for Urgent Capital Support (UCS) from eligible institutions. Schools eligible for Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) can apply for UCS where there are urgent health and safety issues that threaten school closure and cannot wait until the next CIF bidding round.


Written Question
Children: Disability
Monday 4th July 2022

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure adequate provision of social care services for children and young people with disabilities and their families.

Answered by Will Quince

In the past three months we have published the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Green Paper, and the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care published its final report.

The SEND and AP Green Paper aims to ensure the right support is delivered in the right setting at the right time for children and young people with SEND. Our proposals include the introduction of national standards for how needs are assessed, identified and met across education, health and care in order to drive greater national consistency

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care has also now published its final report, making a number of recommendations on the support that disabled children and their families should receive. To respond to this Review we will publish a detailed and ambitious implementation strategy later this year. We are committed to aligning this with the SEND and AP reforms so that we build a coherent system with the best interest of all vulnerable children at its heart.

Local authorities have access to £54.1 billion core spending power in the 2022/23 financial year to deliver their services, including for children and young people, this is £3.7 billion more than in the 2021/22 financial year.

As part of this, the government has boosted the social care grant, increasing it by £636 million, and so bringing it to a total of around £2.35 billion in the 2022/23 financial year. Local authorities will have access to a one-off Services Grant in the 2022/23 financial year, which is worth over £800 million and can be used for all services, including children’s social care.

The department is also making better respite care available for those who care for children with special educational needs and disabilities, with councils invited to bid for an extra £30 million for the next three years to set up more than 10,000 additional short break and respite placements for vulnerable children.

We will publish proposals to improve support for young people with disabilities and their families.


Written Question
Sixth Form Education
Tuesday 23rd November 2021

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the potential financial benefits for sixth form colleges of converting to academy status as a result of (a) VAT exemptions, (b) VAT refunds, and (c) additional funding opportunities.

Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)

Sixth form colleges are independent statutory bodies and it is their responsibility to make an assessment of all the potential benefits and disbenefits of conversion to a 16-19 academy. The department has issued guidance to help inform their assessments: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/16-to-19-academies-application-process-for-sixth-form-colleges.


Written Question
Children: Social Services
Monday 1st November 2021

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

What assessment he has made of the need to identify and provide support services for children with a parent serving a term of imprisonment.

Answered by Will Quince

We recognise the impact that a parent going to prison can have on a child’s learning, behaviour, mental health, and wellbeing. This is why statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear that anyone who has concerns about a child’s welfare should make a referral to local authority children’s social care.

The local authority and its social workers have specific roles and responsibilities to lead statutory assessments. Every assessment should reflect children’s needs within their family and community context, including taking account of a parent being in prison. These children’s circumstances vary considerably and therefore local agencies are best placed to determine what support is needed – whether early help, statutory social care services, or support for other needs such as mental health.

Statutory guidance for schools (Keeping Children Safe in Education) is clear that staff should consider the additional needs of children with a family member in prison or who are affected by parental offending. The guidance highlights the risk of poor outcomes including poverty, stigma, isolation, and poor mental health. It signposts staff to the National Information Centre on Children of Offenders website which provides specialist staff advice and resources to support professionals working with offenders’ children and their families, to help mitigate negative consequences for those children.


Written Question
Schools: Meat
Monday 13th September 2021

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he plans to remove the School Food Standards requirement to serve meat three times a week in line with the Reference Diet recommended in the National Food Strategy.

Answered by Vicky Ford

The School Food Standards provide the legislative framework to ensure schools provide children with healthy food and drink options, and to make sure that children get the energy and nutrition they need across the school day. The School Food Standards are in line with current government advice on red and processed meat, encouraging schools to serve it in moderation as a good source of nutrients, including iron, zinc and vitamin B12.

Work to update the standards was paused during the COVID-19 outbreak. We do however keep this position under review, and are working with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to carefully consider the National Food Strategy’s recommendations and will respond in full with a White Paper in due course.


Written Question
Schools: Food
Monday 13th September 2021

Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with departmental colleagues on the introduction of an updated Reference Diet as set out in recommendation 14 of the National Food Strategy.

Answered by Vicky Ford

The School Food Standards provide the legislative framework to ensure schools provide children with healthy food and drink options, and to make sure that children get the energy and nutrition they need across the school day. The School Food Standards are in line with current government advice on red and processed meat, encouraging schools to serve it in moderation as a good source of nutrients, including iron, zinc and vitamin B12.

Work to update the standards was paused during the COVID-19 outbreak. We do however keep this position under review, and are working with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to carefully consider the National Food Strategy’s recommendations and will respond in full with a White Paper in due course.