Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance her Department provides to schools on gambling-like features in video games, including loot boxes and in-game spending, as part of online safety education.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Statutory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) supports children and young people to manage risk and make informed decisions in relation to their mental wellbeing and online behaviour.
The updated RSHE statutory guidance is clear that children and young people should be taught the risks relating to online gaming, video game monetisation, scams, fraud and other financial harms, and that gaming can become addictive.
Curriculum content also includes the risks related to online gambling and gambling-like content within gaming, including the accumulation of debt.
The departments online safety guidance covers how to teach about all aspects of internet safety and includes content on gaming and gambling, and can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-online-safety-in-schools.
As with other aspects of the curriculum, schools have flexibility over how they deliver important topics and use their autonomy and local community knowledge to do this.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the impact on supply teacher recruitment and retention of not requiring agencies operating under the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework to pay in accordance with the national teacher pay scale.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.
It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12th week.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to mitigate variations in pay and employment conditions arising from individual school negotiations with agencies under the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.
It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12th week.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she made an assessment of the potential merits of amending the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework to require supply teachers to be paid in line with the national teacher pay scale.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.
It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12th week.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how she plans to ensure consistency in pay and conditions for supply teachers when participation in the new Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework is on an opt-in basis.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.
It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12th week.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
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 different rates of change in the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage between 2023 and 2024 compared to changes in the student loan repayment threshold on people who have graduated in the last five years.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Changes to student loan repayment thresholds are not linked to the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage.
Borrowers are liable to repay a fixed percentage of earnings only when earning above the applicable student loan repayment threshold. Those earning below the student loan repayment threshold repay nothing. Any outstanding debt, including interest built up, is written off after the loan term ends (or in case of death or disability) at no detriment to the borrower.
A full equality impact assessment of how the student loan reforms may affect graduates, including detail on changes to average lifetime repayments under Plan 5, was produced and published in February 2022, and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-education-reform-equality-impact-assessment.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what processes are in place to ensure accountability and transparency when GCSE examination scripts are lost by exam boards.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
This is a matter for Ofqual, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation. I have asked its Chief Regulator, Sir Ian Bauckham, to write to my hon. Friend, the Member for Worthing West and a copy of his reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many incidents of lost exam scripts have been reported to the Department and Ofqual in each of the last two academic years.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
This is a matter for Ofqual, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation. I have asked its Chief Regulator, Sir Ian Bauckham, to write to my hon. Friend, the Member for Worthing West and a copy of his reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has considered allowing local education authorities to open new maintained schools.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the government is removing the legal presumption that all new schools are opened as academies, allowing local authorities to welcome proposals for all types of school, and to put forward their own proposals where they choose to do so.
These changes will better align local authorities’ responsibility to secure sufficient school places with their ability to open new schools.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of allowing schools currently managed by multi-academy trusts to return to local education authority control.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has been clear that there are no immediate plans to develop options that will enable academy schools to convert to local authority-maintained status.
The department’s priority is to ensure that all children receive the best possible education. Where the existing leadership of a school does not have the capacity to improve an underperforming school we will continue to intervene structurally. We are also strengthening our tools for school improvement through regional improvement for standards and excellence teams, who will provide mandatory, targeted intervention to drive improvements for schools.