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Written Question
Nurseries: North West
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase nursery staff in the North West, in the context of the Government's plans to expand the number of free childcare places.

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

By the 2027/28 financial year, the government will expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year on free hours and early education, helping working families with their childcare costs. This represents the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever.

In February, the department launched a new national recruitment campaign for the early years and childcare sector, ‘Do something BIG. Work with small children’, and a financial incentives pilot. Eligible joiners and returners will receive a tax-free payment of up to £1,000. This followed the introduction of workforce flexibilities to the Early Years Foundation Stage in January.

The department has also introduced Skills Bootcamps for Early Years, which will create a pathway to accelerated Level 3 Early Years Apprenticeships. The number of paid childcare staff in 2023 is estimated at 347,300 compared to 334,400 paid childcare staff in 2022, an increase of 3.86%. Additionally, the department has invested up to £180 million in providing an early years education recovery package of workforce training, qualifications and support and guidance for the early years sector. This includes additional places for early years initial teacher training (EYITT), and new level 3 qualifications criteria for early years educators to ensure higher quality training and better care for children. The new criteria will come into effect from September 2024.

For the North West, the total number of staff working in group and school based providers has increased from 39,394 in 2018 to 42,027 in 2023, an increase of 6.68%.


Written Question
Schools: Absenteeism
Friday 26th January 2024

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce school absenteeism in Lancashire.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

The department has a comprehensive national attendance strategy to ensure that every child attends school every day in all regions of the country.

This includes the recently expanded attendance hubs programme. There are now a total of almost 2,000 schools, including nine schools in Lancashire, who have been assigned a hub to tackle persistent absence, reaching around 1 million pupils. Attendance hubs are led by senior leaders in schools with effective attendance practice as a way for them to share practical approaches and resources for improving attendance.

The department published guidance on working together to improve school attendance to ensure that all local authorities and schools, including those in Lancashire, work together to reduce school absenteeism. The guidance is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1099677/Working_together_to_improve_school_attendance.pdf.

Local authorities, including Lancashire, are expected to rigorously track local attendance data to devise a strategic approach to attendance. In addition, all schools in all regions are required to have an attendance policy and to appoint an attendance champion who is responsible for enforcing this. To help identify children at risk of persistent absence and to enable early intervention, the department established a timelier flow of pupil level attendance data through the daily attendance data collection.


Written Question
Bus Services: Schools
Monday 23rd October 2023

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to increase funding to local authorities for the provision of free bus travel to schools.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Department’s school travel policy aims to make sure that no pupil is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local Authorities must arrange free home to school travel for pupils of compulsory school age who attend their nearest school and would not be able to walk there because of the distance, their special educational needs, disability or mobility problem, or because the nature of the route means it would be unsafe for them to do so. There are extended rights to free travel for pupils from low income families. In the 2021/22 financial year (the most recent year for which data is currently available), Local Authorities spent £1.4 billion on home to school travel for pupils of compulsory school age.

The majority of central Government funding for home to school travel is made available to Local Authorities through the Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS) administered by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). DLUHC will bring forward proposals for the Local Government Finance Settlement 2024/25 in the usual way later in the year. When finalising budgets, local Government spending will be carefully considered to ensure councils can continue to deliver vital services. This will include considering the effect of inflation and other wider economic circumstances. The local Government finance policy statement, published last December, sets out the measures expected to be maintained into 2024/25.

The Department additionally provides grant funding to Local Authorities as a contribution towards the cost of ‘extended rights’ travel, this is just under £45.8 million in the 2023/24 financial year.


Written Question
Classroom Assistants: Pay
Tuesday 16th May 2023

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether it is her Department's policy that any future pay increases for school staff will not come from existing school budgets.

Answered by Nick Gibb

Funding for mainstream schools and high needs, including the additional funding announced at the Autumn Statement 2022, is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24 compared to 2022/23. Funding for both mainstream schools and high needs will total £58.8 billion in 2024/25, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil. After accounting for the new pay offers in 2023, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that school funding is still growing faster than school costs.

In addition to this core revenue funding, schools receive funding through a number of separate streams, including: the pupil premium, worth £2.9 billion in 2023/24 to support disadvantaged pupils; Universal Infant Free School Meals funding; and the recovery premium and the National Tutoring Programme to support education recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department provides these increases to school revenue budgets so that schools can cover cost increases in the year ahead, including to teacher pay.

The Department also has a capital budget of £7 billion for 2023/24, which funds a range of programmes for schools, such as the school rebuilding programme. Information about this particular programme is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-rebuilding-programme.

In February 2023, the Department set out its best assessment of teachers’ pay affordability to the School Teachers’ Review Body, so that they could make an informed independent decision on the pay award. The Department’s approach reflected some of the continued uncertainty around areas like energy costs, as this is a particularly important consideration this year. The written evidence acknowledged that there were circumstances where a pay award in excess of 3.5% might become affordable, on average, for schools. In particular, if energy prices drop significantly. This would provide scope for additional spending in areas which will further benefit pupils, including a higher pay award.

In March, the Government offered teachers a £1,000 payment on top of this year's pay rise, a commitment to cut workload by five hours per week, and a headline pay increase of 4.5% for next year. The offer included further funding of around £620 million in 2023/24, including a grant of £530 million for the one-off payment, as set out here: https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2023/03/28/teacher-strikes-latest-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-teacher-pay-offer/.

By taking into account the Government’s most up-to-date assumptions for both energy prices and support staff pay for 2023/24, it calculates that a 4% teacher pay award should be affordable within existing funding. This includes the overall £3.5 billion funding increase schools are seeing this year, thanks to the additional £2 billion funding announced at the 2022 Autumn Statement. The Government’s judgement of the affordability of teacher pay increases is, as usual, based on national figures, which equate to the position for an average school.

The additional £620 million offered as part of the pay offer would have covered the remaining 0.5% of the 4.5% pay offer, meaning that the pay offer would have been fully funded as per the Department’s national calculations. The Office for Statistics Regulation has confirmed that the Department has set out how it has reached this conclusion transparently, in line with its regulatory guidance on statements about public funding.

Following unions’ rejection of the offer, the teachers’ pay award for 2023 will now be decided through the independent pay review body process, as usual. The Department’s position remains that a 4% teacher pay award should be affordable, nationally, from the funding increases already promised to schools.

As usual, schools should plan for how teacher pay awards could be managed within this existing funding. It would be sensible for schools to consider the range of possible scenarios on pay that might materialise and what the implications would be for their individual school.


Written Question
Teachers: Lancashire
Tuesday 16th May 2023

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of teachers in Lancashire who have left the profession in the last (a) one, (b) two and (c) five years.

Answered by Nick Gibb

One of the Department’s priorities is to ensure that it continues to attract, retain and develop highly skilled teachers to inspire the next generation.

As at November 2021, the latest data available, there were 465,500 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers working in state funded schools in England, of which 9,600 were in Lancashire. This is an increase of 4,400 since the previous year, and an increase of 170 in Lancashire.

Information on the school workforce, including the number of teachers leaving service nationally, is published in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical publication, which can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.

The table below provides the FTE number of qualified teachers leaving, and the leaving rate, from state funded schools in Lancashire Local Authority and England, for the 2016/17 to 2020/21 academic years, which is the latest data available.

FTE qualified teachers leaving and leaving rate1 from state funded schools

As at November 2016 to 2020:

Lancashire

England

Leavers

Leaving rate

Leavers

Leaving rate

2020/212

658

7.0%

36,262

8.1%

2019/20

702

7.5%

32,249

7.3%

2018/19

783

8.4%

41,150

9.4%

2017/18

865

9.5%

43,102

9.8%

2016/17

1,037

11.1%

46,667

10.6%

Source: School Workforce Census

1Leaving rate is the number of leavers divided by the total number of qualified teachers in post in November each year.

2For example, 2020/21 leavers are those who left service between November 2020 and November 2021.

Leavers are defined as qualified teachers leaving the state funded sector in England, for example due to a change of career or joining other UK education sectors and those leaving on career breaks, such as maternity leave or secondments outside of the school sector. Some of these teachers may re-join a state funded school in England at a later date.

Almost 9 in 10 (87.5%) teachers who qualified in 2020 were still teaching one year after qualification, and just over two thirds (68.8%) of teachers who started teaching five years ago are still teaching.

The Department provides bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000 to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing for those starting teacher training in 2023/24.

Through the Department’s Levelling Up Premium, specialist teachers in the first 5 years of their career will be able to receive up to £3,000 tax-free each year from 2022/23 to 2024/25.

The Department has made good progress towards raising starting salaries to £30,000, with all new teachers to earn at least £28,000 from September, an 8.9% uplift, alongside a 5% pay award for more experienced teachers and leaders.

The Department is taking action to improve teacher quality and pupil outcomes by transforming the training and support we provide for teachers. The Department will deliver 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities by 2024, giving all teachers and school leaders access to world class, evidence based training and professional development at every stage of their career, including providing specialist training to drive better literacy through a new National Professional Qualification for Leading Literacy and a new National Professional Qualification for Early Years Leadership.


Written Question
Classroom Assistants and Teachers: Pay
Tuesday 16th May 2023

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to provide above-inflation pay increases for teachers and school support staff.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Department recognises teachers’ invaluable work in shaping future generations. This is why last year teachers were given the highest pay award in 30 years, up to 8.9% for new teachers, alongside a 5% award for experienced teachers and headteachers.

Looking to the next academic year, pay rises for teachers in 2023/24 must strike a careful balance between recruiting and retaining the best teachers and recognising their vital importance, alongside considering both affordability for schools and the wider economic context. On 21 February 2023, the Department published its written evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body, giving its views and inputs to help them form their recommendations for teachers’ pay this year.

The Government provided funding for both mainstream schools and high needs, including the additional funding announced at the Autumn Statement 2022, which is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23. This will total £58.8 billion in 2024/25, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil. The Government provided these increases to school revenue budgets so that schools can cover cost increases in the year ahead, including teacher pay.

The Department knows challenges to recruitment and retention vary from subject to subject based on the demand in each area. Therefore, in addition to pay, there are several measures in place to tackle this, including: bursaries worth up to £27,000; scholarships worth up to £29,000 to encourage talented trainees to apply to train in key subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics, and physics; £20,000 tax-free bursary for biology trainees in 2023/24; reintroduction of a £15,000 tax-free bursary for English trainees in 2023/24 and a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools.

The Government’s education reforms gave schools freedom to make their own decisions about budgets. For most staff, including teaching assistants, schools have the freedom to recruit according to their own circumstances and set pay and conditions.

Many schools pay teaching assistants according to Local Government pay scales. These are set through negotiations between the Local Government Association, which represents the employer, and Local Government trade unions (UNISON, Unite, and the GMB), which represent the employee. Central Government does not have any formal role in these matters.


Written Question
Schools: Finance
Tuesday 16th May 2023

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that schools are able to purchase all the classroom resources they need.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Government is committed to providing a world class education system for all children. The Autumn Statement 2022 announced additional funding of £2 billion in 2023/24 and 2024/25, over and above totals announced at the 2021 Spending Review. This means funding for mainstream schools and high needs is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23. That is on top of the £4 billion, year on year increase provided in 2022/23. This represents an increase of £7.5 billion, or over 15%, in just two years.

​Total funding for both mainstream schools and high needs will total £58.8 billion in 2024/25, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil. After accounting for the new pay offers in 2023, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that school funding is still growing faster than school costs.

​In addition to this core revenue funding, schools receive funding through a number of separate streams. This includes the Universal Infant Free School Meals funding, the recovery premium and the National Tutoring Programme to support education recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

​The Department also has a capital budget of £7 billion for 2023/24, which funds a range of programmes for schools, such as the school rebuilding programme. Information about this programme is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-rebuilding-programme.

​This additional funding will enable head teachers to continue to spend money in the areas that have a positive effect on educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the children who need it most, as well as to help schools to manage higher costs.

​The Department’s Schools Resource Management offer includes a free range of practical tools and information to help all schools unlock efficiencies on, for example, how to save money on regular purchases such as classroom resources.


Written Question
National Education Union: Industrial Disputes
Tuesday 16th May 2023

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions she has had with the National Education Union on industrial action by its members.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Government and the education trade unions took part in a period of intensive talks between 17 March and 23 March, where ministers and officials spent over 200 combined hours working with the unions to reach an agreed position. An in principle offer was made of a one-off payment of £1,000 for this year, and a 4.5% pay award for 2023/24, alongside a range of non pay offers.

It is disappointing that the education trade unions rejected this offer, and that the National Education Union has since organised two strike days in April and May, with three more due to take place in June or July. Final decisions on teachers’ pay for next year will now be made following the independent pay review process.

The Department recognises teachers’ invaluable work. This is why the Department implemented the recommendations of the independent School Teachers’ Review Body for this academic year. This gave teachers the highest pay award in 30 years, going up to 8.9% for new teachers, alongside a 5% award for experienced teachers and leaders.

The Government is on track to deliver a £30,000 starting salary for teachers as per the manifesto commitment, ensuring teaching is a financially competitive career option within the graduate labour market. The Department has already increased teachers’ starting salaries to £28,000 this year. This year, the Department expects around 40% of classroom teachers to receive pay rises through progression or promotion, of between 8.5% - 15.9%. For experienced classroom teachers at the top of the pay scale, roughly a third of our classroom teachers, there is a strong starting salary with earnings of at least £43,685. Average classroom teacher pay of £39,500 remains significantly above the national average for full time employees, sitting within the top 40% of earners.

There is also a strong pay package for head teachers. The average primary head teacher earns £67,400, whilst the average secondary head teacher earns £94,900. These average salaries are in the top 10% of earners (full time employees in England).

Alongside this, teachers benefit from a Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) which is significantly more generous than the private sector average, with a 23.6% employer contribution in the public sector Defined Benefit schemes. The TPS is a defined benefit scheme, which means that members receive a guaranteed, index linked income in retirement. The TPS has a generous employer contribution element, provides insurance benefits, and is underwritten by HM Treasury. The TPS exists as a valuable incentive to enter teaching and a significant inducement for continuing in service. It compares very favourably with private sector pension schemes and most other forms of investment.

For the average classroom teacher on a £39,500 salary, the total remuneration package including the 23.6% employer pension contribution is worth £48,800.

We are committed to do more to ensure teaching remains an attractive profession. This includes tax free bursaries worth up to £27,000 and tax-free scholarships worth up to £29,000, to encourage talented trainees to train in key subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics.

We have also introduced a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free for maths, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in their first five years, who work in disadvantaged schools.

This is part of a wider package of new measures to make teaching in England even more attractive to the best teachers and trainee teachers from around the world.


Written Question
Teachers: Standards
Thursday 24th November 2022

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of trends in the level of specialist teachers on the educational attainment of students in (a) primary, (b) secondary and (c) further education.

Answered by Nick Gibb

Teacher quality is the most important in-school determinant of pupil outcomes. This is why the Department is taking action to attract more people to teaching and enable them to succeed through transforming their training and support.

9 in 10 hours taught in English Baccalaureate subjects in state funded secondary schools in 2021/22 were taught by a teacher with a relevant post-A level qualification. The Teachers’ Standards specify the subject knowledge required for the award of Qualified Teacher Status.

Information on teachers’ post-A level qualifications and the subjects taught in secondary schools is published in the annual ‘School Workforce in England’ national statistics. Details can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.

The Department does not hold or publish data linking subject specialist teachers with attainment.

The Department has introduced a range of measures to attract teachers for the 2023/24 academic year, including tax-free bursaries worth £27,000 and tax-free scholarships worth £29,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics, and physics. There are also bursaries of £25,000 for languages and scholarships of £27,000 for French, Spanish and German. The Department has also introduced an initial teacher training scholarship in modern foreign languages from 2023 to attract the most talented language graduates to teaching.

The new national further education (FE) recruitment campaign and Teach in FE service will support prospective FE teachers into jobs. It is expected to reach millions of prospective teaching staff, and target those with valuable experience in industry to train the next generation of technical experts.

The Department also funds the Taking Teaching Further programme which supports industry experts to move into FE teaching, and the Department is providing bursaries worth up to £26,000 in 2022/23, matched to school scholarship values, to support FE teacher training in priority subject areas such as science, mathematics and engineering.


Written Question
Teachers: Vacancies
Thursday 24th November 2022

Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the number of specialist teacher positions that remain vacant after (a) 6 months and (b) 12 months in (i) Preston constituency, (ii) Lancashire and (iii) England.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The information requested is not collected by the Department.

Information on the state-funded school workforce in England, including the number and rate of teacher vacancies by school, post and subject (where applicable) each November, is published in the annual ‘School Workforce in England’ national statistics release at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.