Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department's press release published on 22 May 2025 entitled Teachers to benefit from pay boost, what guidance she has issued to schools on steps to make savings through increased productivity.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
Schools are receiving £615 million to support them with the costs of the 2025 pay awards, over and above the funding already being provided to schools in financial year 2025/26. The increase in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) costs were considered when calculating this additional funding.
The department has asked that schools fund, on average, the first 1% of the 2025 pay awards. The impact of this will vary for individual schools based on their circumstances, as they have autonomy over how they use their funding, including any decisions on staffing.
Schools in Central Bedfordshire are receiving £4 million to support them with their NICs costs; we will publish allocations for the 2025 pay grant in the autumn. From 2026/27, funding in respect of both NICs costs, and the 2025 pay awards, will be incorporated into schools’ core budgets through the national funding formula.
The department provides a suite of free tools, guidance and support, developed in partnership with the sector, to help schools better manage their spending. Schools are already making savings and bringing core operating costs down: for example, the 400 schools who participated in the department’s new energy for schools pilot will save 36% on average compared to their previous contracts, which will free up vital funding to deliver for children and young people. We are also making plans to secure better banking solutions for schools, getting them better returns on their cash balances.
Additionally, all schools can access services such as the get help buying for schools service to get best value when procuring goods and our teaching vacancies service to save recruitment costs. Since, workforce deployment is the biggest component of school budgets, we will support schools to benefit fully from the tools we offer to benchmark and integrate resourcing and curriculum planning, such as the financial benchmarking and insights tool. We will also introduce a new toolkit to support schools to adopt evidence-based deployment models. This will focus on data that helps schools identify areas for improvement and support to learn from best practice peers who are delivering strong outcomes for pupils with an efficient deployment model.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of changes to funding for Level 7 apprenticeships on learners aged 22 and above.
Answered by Janet Daby
I refer the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire to the answer of 13 June 2025 to Question 57098.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 20 May 2025 to Question 50632 on Schools: Broadband, if she will list the five schools in Bedfordshire.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The five schools due to receive a funded update to fibre this year in Bedfordshire are:
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 21 May 2025 to Question 52040 on Private Education: VAT, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of the five month preparation period for private schools.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The government believes it is right these changes were introduced as soon as possible in order to raise the funding needed to help deliver our commitments to public services, including those relating to education and young people. Together, the VAT and business rates reforms are expected to raise £1.8 billion per year by the 2029/30 financial year.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 21 May 2025 to Question 52391 on Private Education: VAT, if she will provide a breakdown of how the additional £460m will be spent.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The government believes it is right these changes were introduced as soon as possible in order to raise the funding needed to help deliver our commitments to public services, including those relating to education and young people. Together, the VAT and business rates reforms are expected to raise £1.8 billion per year by the 2029/30 financial year.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of reductions to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund on (a) adoptive parents, (b) special guardians, (c) kinship carers and (d) the children they support.
Answered by Janet Daby
The new criteria for the adoption and special guardianship support fund enable as many children and families as possible to access the available funding. The department always assesses the impact of changes on children and their families. This includes reviewing the equalities impact assessment on children, which will be made available in the House Libraries in due course.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an estimate of the number of schools that were affected by flooding in each of the last five academic years.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The department cannot provide the information requested for all schools. However, our Risk Protection Arrangement (RPA) collects details of claims to its service. The table below shows the number of flooding related claims made to the RPA in each of the last five academic years as at 31 December 2024.
Academic Year | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25* | Total |
RPA Member Schools | 6,387 | 7,716 | 9,098 | 10,008 | 11,144 | 12,538 |
|
Members who experienced a weather-related event | 317 | 267 | 203 | 427 | 427 | 258 | 1899 |
*Partial year up to and including December 2024.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an estimate of the number of days of education lost because of flooding in each of the last five academic years.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The information requested cannot be provided as this is not held by the department.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the guidance entitled New national flood and coastal erosion risk information, published on 25 March 2025, whether her Department has held discussions with local authorities on insurance costs for schools now included in flood zones (a) two and (b) three.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education and the department’s Schools Water Strategy team work with delivery partners such as the Environment Agency, water companies and lead local flood authorities to deliver flood prevention measures in schools through a number of workstreams.
The department has invested in measures to reduce risk to flooding at 573 schools to the end of 2023/24 and through the Schools Water Strategy, we continue to invest in flood prevention in schools at risk of flooding in line with the published Sustainability and Climate Change strategy.
Local authorities can choose which insurance provider is suitable for their needs, considering both breadth of cover and value for money.
The department’s Risk Protection Arrangement is an alternative to commercial insurance and operates on a no material fact disclosure basis, which means the cost of the service to its members will be unaffected by this information.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 28 April 2025 to Question 40352 on Mathematics: Mid Bedfordshire, when she plans to publish further details on (a) funding for the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme and (b) the full offer for (i) schools and (ii) colleges in each area.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
On 6 May 2025, the department announced £8.2 million of funding for the advanced maths support programme (AMSP). More information about this programme is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/more-girls-to-study-maths-under-plans-to-improve-pathway-into-ai-careers.
The AMSP have recently provided an update on these changes, effective from 1 April 2025, with further information on the full offer for schools and colleges to be released shortly. These updates can be found via the AMSP’s website using the following link: https://amsp.org.uk/.