Asked by: Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of whether the Pupil Premium is being used to supplement core funding.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The pupil premium is additional funding that schools are allocated to help support pupils from financially disadvantaged family backgrounds and those who are currently looked after or who have left care through adoption or other routes. We give schools flexibility over how they spend this funding, as they are best placed to determine how to use it most effectively to support those pupils who it is intended to benefit. We hold schools to account for their use of the pupil premium through a specific focus in Ofsted inspections and through analysis of school performance tables on the progress and attainment of disadvantaged pupils.
While it is for schools to decide how to use the totality of their funding to support the education of their pupils, we require all local authority maintained schools to publish details online about how much pupil premium funding they have been allocated, the ways in which that funding has been spent and the impact this has had on eligible pupils.
We also encourage schools, when planning their strategy for use of the pupil premium, to draw on high quality research evidence about effective and cost effective approaches to increasing the progress and attainment of eligible pupils. This is reflected in the work of the Education Endowment Foundation, which has received £137 million of Government funding to identify what works to improve disadvantaged pupils’ academic progress.
Asked by: Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to review the effectiveness of the apprenticeship levy on primary schools.
Answered by Anne Milton
As with other parts of the public sector, the Department for Education (DfE) will be monitoring the uptake of apprenticeships by the school workforce. Public sector bodies in scope of the public sector apprenticeships target - including primary schools - are required to annually publish and report to DfE on the number of apprenticeship starts in their workforce. The first reports (covering the period 1 April 2017 – 31 March 2018) will be published later in the Autumn.
In June 2018, we published updated guidance for schools on apprenticeships to support them in getting the most from our reforms: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apprenticeships-reforms-guide-for-schools. This includes case studies of good practice, myth-busting frequently asked questions and an up-to-date list of apprenticeship standards for schools to use.
A range of new apprenticeship standards for the school workforce are now available, including for trainee teachers, teaching assistants and school business managers.
Asked by: Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that higher needs funding for people with additional educational needs is targeted effectively.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The government has reformed the funding for children and young people with high needs to make it fairer, by introducing a new national funding formula for high needs. The formula takes into account an up to date assessment of the level of need in each area.
Allocations to local authorities in 2018-19 were calculated on the basis of the national funding formula, and provisional allocations for 2019-20 can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-tables-for-schools-and-high-needs-2019-to-2020.
The department is monitoring the impact of the national funding formula on local authority spending decisions, and are keeping the overall amount of funding for high needs under review.
Asked by: Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to (a) provide for and (b) promote the study of (i) agriculture and (ii) related land-based subjects as academic subjects in non-rural areas.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Subject to meeting legal requirements, it is for individual schools and colleges to decide which subjects to include in their curriculum.
A number of GCSEs contain content relevant to agriculture. In GCSE geography, pupils are taught about resources and resource management, including the modification and change of ecosystems in order to obtain food, energy and water. In the food preparation and nutrition GCSE, the economic, environmental, and ethical influences on food availability and production processes are covered.
There are a number of vocational qualifications that count in 16-18 performance tables, covering agriculture and other land-based subjects. Apprenticeship standards already exist in land-based service engineering, and there are a number of further standards in development, including crop technician, farrier, poultry technician and stockperson. The Department is also reforming technical education. This includes the introduction of T levels in an agriculture, environment and animal care route.
Asked by: Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent in North Herefordshire constituency since 2015.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department does not hold information on all allocated funding for education per constituency. The table below shows the funding allocated to Herefordshire Local Authority in 2015-16 and 2016-17 to deliver education from early years to school sixth form and further education colleges. This does not include those of the Department’s budgets which are not available by local authority, for example higher education and adult education:
Herefordshire | 2015-16 | 2016-17 |
| £m | £m |
Dedicated Schools Grant before recoupment (including Early Years, the Early Years Pupil Premium, schools and High Needs) | 115.5 | 116.5 |
Pupil Premium | 5.5 | 5.6 |
Education Services Grant | 1.5 | 1.4 |
Universal Infant Free School Meals | 2.1 | 2 |
Primary PE and Sport Premium | 0.7 | 0.7 |
School Sixth Forms | 0.3 | 0.3 |
Further Education colleges | 19.8 | 20.5 |
16-19 academies | 3.5 | 3.1 |