Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many days teachers have taken off work for mental health reasons in each year since 2015.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps with the Education Endowment Foundation to help ensure that none of the National Tutoring Programme volunteer tutors are unpaid interns.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The National Tutoring Programme, worth £350 million, was recently announced as part of a £1 billion COVID-19 “catch-up” package to directly tackle the impact of lost teaching time and will increase access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged young people.
We will be working closely with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to identify high quality tutoring organisations and support them to ramp up their recruitment of tutors.
The EEF will select high-quality tutoring organisations that meet agreed criteria. These organisations will have differing models - some may use volunteers to deliver tutoring sessions to pupils, while others will pay tutors. Dedicated coaches that are based in schools will all receive a salary.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the ability of (a) refugee and (b) asylum seeker children to access (i) laptops and (ii) the internet during partial school closures during the covid-19 outbreak; and what steps his Department is taking to tackle the disadvantage gap in relation to those children.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government has committed over £100 million to support vulnerable and disadvantaged children in England to access remote education and social care services, including by providing laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers.
We are providing laptops and tablets to disadvantaged children who would otherwise not have access and are preparing for examinations in year 10, those receiving support from a social worker and care leavers. This includes looked after children, including unaccompanied asylum seeking children. It also includes former unaccompanied asylum seeking children who are now care leavers. Where care leavers, children with a social worker at secondary school and children in year 10 do not have internet connections, we are providing 4G wireless routers.
The Department has ordered over 200,000 laptops and tablets and allocated devices to local authorities and academy trusts based on its estimates of the number of eligible children that do not have access to a device. Local authorities and academy trusts are best placed to identify and prioritise children and young people who need devices. This may include children in families who are refugees or who are seeking asylum. The Department is working to provide these devices in the shortest possible timeframe; deliveries to schools and local authorities began in May and have continued throughout June.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the percentage of students further education establishments are allowed to readmit following the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The guidance on how to phase the return of learners in further education is underpinned by our latest understanding of COVID-19. To limit the risk of increasing the rate of transmission, scientific advice indicates that we need to take a phased approach that limits both the number of young people in attendance and how much they mix with other learners and staff.
We are reviewing options for the Autumn term; we would like all learners to return to on site delivery as soon as possible and we are working with the sector to support them to do that, as soon as the scientific advice allows it, and with appropriate measures in place to manage the transmission risk.
Further education colleges have done fantastic work to deliver excellent online provision; many colleges had a significant online element to their offer prior to COVID-19, and we expect this to continue as there is a phased return to more on site delivery.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many local authorities offer a school clothing grant.
Answered by Nick Gibb
In England, some local authorities provide discretionary grants to help with buying school uniforms. The local authorities which offer these grants set their own criteria for eligibility. The Department does not collect figures on the number of local authorities that offer uniform grants. In addition, schools may also offer individual clothing schemes, such as offering secondhand uniform at reduced prices; this would be a decision for the school to make.
No school uniform should be so expensive as to leave pupils or their families feeling unable to apply to, or attend, a school of their choice, due to the cost of the uniform. As such the Department supports the Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Private Members’ Bill, to make our guidance regarding the cost considerations for school uniform statutory.
The Department’s current non-statutory guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-uniform.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure future covid-19 outbreaks in schools can be contained; and if he will make it his policy to introduce a comprehensive test, trace and isolate strategy for schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The new NHS Test and Trace service was launched on 28 May across England. Anyone who tests positive for coronavirus will be contacted by NHS Test and Trace and will need to share information about their recent interactions. The government has recruited 25,000 contact tracers, able to track 10,000 new cases a day.
If a child or young person in school develops symptoms compatible with COVID-19, they should be sent home and advised to self-isolate for 7 days and arrange to have a test. Where the child or young person tests positive, traced close contacts, including the rest of their class, should be sent home and advised to self-isolate for 14 days
As part of the national test and trace programme, local Public Health England health protection teams will contact all schools attended by someone who tests positive for COVID-19. The health protection team will work with the school to carry out a rapid risk assessment and advise of any further action that needs to be taken.
In some cases, a larger number of children may be asked to self-isolate at home as a precautionary measure. Where schools are observing guidance on infection prevention and control to reduce the risk of transmission, closure of the whole school will not generally be necessary and should not be considered outside of discussion with health protection teams.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools in England are in (a) financial deficit (a) and have been in financial deficit in each of the past five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department delegates to schools the management of their own budgets and the vast majority are operating with a cumulative surplus, with only a small percentage having a deficit. The latest published figures show 94% of academy trusts and 90% of local authority-maintained schools are in cumulative surplus or breaking even.
Data on maintained school deficits in financial year 2019/20 is not yet available. We will publish this data in December. The table below shows the number of maintained schools in cumulative deficit in each of the four preceding financial years. This data is published at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/la-and-school-expenditure-2018-to-2019-financial-year.
| 2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 |
Number of maintained schools in deficit | 1,000 | 1,461 | 1,532 | 1,376 |
Trusts are the legal entities responsible for academies, including their finances, and, therefore, they account at trust level. The table below shows the number of academy trusts in cumulative deficit in each of the five previous academic years. We have published this data annually in the academies sector annual report and accounts (SARA) since 2015-16, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/academies-sector-annual-reports-and-accounts.
The provisional 2018/19 figure in the table is based on financial benchmarking data, available at https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/Help/DataSources. This will be updated when the 2018/19 SARA is published in July.
| 2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 |
Number of academy trusts in deficit | 165 | 185 | 195 | 169 |
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the KiVa anti-bullying programme on tackling (a) bullying and (b) racist bullying.
Answered by Vicky Ford
We have not made an assessment of the KiVa anti-bullying programme. All schools are legally required to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying. They also have the freedom to develop their own anti-bullying strategies and monitoring approaches to best suit their environment.
Our Preventing and Tackling Bullying guidance sets out that schools should develop a consistent approach to monitoring bullying incidents and evaluating the effectiveness of their approaches. It also directs schools to organisations who can provide support with tackling bullying related to race, religion and nationality. The guidance is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preventing-and-tackling-bullying.
On 7 June, we announced more than £750,000 for the Diana Award, the Anti-Bullying Alliance and the Anne Frank Trust – to help hundreds of schools and colleges build relationships between pupils, boost their resilience, and continue to tackle bullying both in person and online. More information is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/extra-mental-health-support-for-pupils-and-teachers.
The department has also made resources available through the Educate Against Hate website. This website provides teachers, school leaders and parents with the information, guidance and support they need to challenge radical views, including racist and discriminatory beliefs, and is available here:
https://educateagainsthate.com/.
Asked by: Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will meet with (a) teachers, (b) headteachers, (c) relevant experts, (d) unions and (e) opposition politicians in the coming days to achieve a consensus on a national plan for the reopening of schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department will continue to work with a wide range of sector representatives to develop a plan for all children to return to schools in September. This engagement includes meetings with teachers and headteachers through the Department for Education’s reference groups; meetings with expert advisors from the sector; meetings with scientific experts; meetings with teaching and support staff unions; and engaging with politicians from across the political spectrum.