Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the findings from the 1972 Houghton Report on adoption; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Vicky Ford
Following on from the debate in 2018, I can confirm that my hon. Friend, the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families and current Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department of Health and Social Care, Nadhim Zahawi, met with the hon. Member for Wirral South on 24 October 2018. The meeting was attended by a number of women who had experienced these historical adoption practices. I understand it was a very difficult and moving experience to hear from women who gave up their children under historical adoption practices.
However, whilst we cannot undo the past, we now have a society that takes a very different attitude to single mothers and lessons of the time have been learned and have led to significant changes to legislation and practice.
Single parents are now supported to help ensure that families can stay together, and children are only removed permanently without the consent of the parents by a court if it is satisfied that the child is suffering significant harm or is likely to suffer significant harm.
NHS maternity services now have robust policy, guidance and processes in place to safeguard care for vulnerable women and babies.
I understand in the 2018 debate Minister Zahawi committed to making the 1972 Houghton Report available. I will ensure this is publicly available as soon as possible.
Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what his Departments' policy is on measuring attendance rates at schools where children have been sent home from school due to a covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nick Gibb
School attendance rates are based on the data collected via the termly school census. Data relating to the autumn term of the 2020-21 academic year will be collected as part of the spring 2021 census.
The Department has included an additional category ‘not attending in circumstances relating to coronavirus’ for use in situations as outlined in the following guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-attendance/addendum-recording-attendance-in-relation-to-coronavirus-covid-19-during-the-2020-to-2021-academic-year.
Sessions recorded under this category will not count towards normal absence in the statistical releases derived from this data.
In addition to the termly school census, the Department is monitoring data collected daily from schools who are self-reporting and manually inputting data through a web portal each day. We ask schools where children have been sent home due to a COVID-19 outbreak to provide the number of pupils and students not attending due to a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19, and those that have been requested to remain home due to a potential contact with COVID-19.
Asked by: Alex Davies-Jones (Labour - Pontypridd)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children have been sent home from school due to a covid-19 outbreak since March 2020; if he will publish the number of those children who have been sent home who have been counted in his Department's attendance figures; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Keeping close track of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases in schools is a priority for the Government. Public Health England (PHE) leads in holding data on infection, incidence and COVID-19 cases overall. PHE have published data on COVID-19 incidents by institution, including educational settings. This data can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports.
The Department is currently collecting data from schools on a daily basis, as well as gathering information from local areas and following up with individual settings to confirm that procedures for requiring pupils to isolate are well understood and that necessary decisions are made on the basis of public health advice.
The Department collects data on the number of schools that have indicated that they have sent children home due to COVID-19 containment measures. We are currently looking at the quality of the data collected with a view to publishing it as part of the official statistics series. The series includes published data on school openings and attendance, which shows that at a national level approximately 93% of state-funded schools were fully open on 24 September. Of all schools that responded to the survey, 6% said they were not fully open due to suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 on 24 September. Approximately 88% of all children on roll in all state-funded schools were in attendance on 24 September. More information is available at:
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak.