Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what requirements there are on schools commissioners to (a) declare and (b) publish professional and financial interests.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Regional Schools Commissioners are civil servants and are bound by the same rules on the declaration and publication of professional and financial interests as all other civil servants of a similar grade. Regional Schools Commissioners are required to declare any professional or business interest within the past five years, which may, or may be seen as, influencing their judgement in performing their role.
The Department for Education keeps a register of all declared interests for the Regional Schools Commissioners. This register is reviewed on a quarterly basis and published online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/schools-commissioners-group/about/our-governance
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help schools with a high number of Special Educational Needs (SEN) pupils meet the first £6,000 of SEN funding.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities have the responsibility to make sure that the schools in their area are given enough funding to meet the needs of all their pupils, including the additional support required by those with special educational needs (SEN). Local authorities design their local school funding formula to give extra money to schools likely to have more children with SEN. Authorities also have flexibility to give even more funding to schools with a relatively high proportion of such children, and to give top-up funding for individual pupils whose additional support costs more than £6,000 per year.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional support her Department is providing to schools to help provide more help to pupils with serious neurological conditions.
Answered by Edward Timpson
We recognise the need to ensure children with serious neurological conditions can access their education alongside everyone else. In recognition of this, the Children and Families Act 2014 now places a duty on governing bodies of maintained schools, proprietors of academy schools and alternative provision academies and management committees of pupil referral units to make arrangements for supporting pupils with medical conditions, which would include serious neurological conditions, at their school. This has been reinforced through new statutory guidance for maintained schools and academies on ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’ which was published in September 2014:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3
This guidance emphasises the following:
• Pupils at school with medical conditions should be properly supported so that they have full access to education, including school trips and physical education.
• Governing bodies must ensure that arrangements are in place in schools to support pupils at school with medical conditions.
• Governing bodies should ensure that school leaders consult health and social care professionals, pupils and parents to ensure that the needs of children with medical conditions are effectively supported.
Where a pupil has a neurological disorder that results in a special educational need (SEN), the school and the local authority are also under an obligation through the reformed SEN and Disability (SEND) system to meet their needs and provide appropriate support.
In 2015-16, the department has funded £5.9 million of grants through the voluntary and community sector (VCS) National Prospectus and £7 million of contracts to support implementation of the SEND reforms. These organisations provide support on specific types of SEN for schools, teachers and parents; delivery support for schools, colleges, early years settings and local authorities in implementing the new duties in the Children and Families Act 2014; and support for parent-carer forums.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the scope within the existing budget of increasing the number of SEN-trained teaching assistants so that children with high needs can have more one-to-one support.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Most teaching assistants who support children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) are employed by schools to meet the needs of those who require such intervention. Others are employed using top-up funding that the local authority provides to schools, usually for children with the most complex needs who have statements of SEN or Education, Health and Care plans.
It is for individual schools to make the necessary decisions as to how many teaching assistants they should have and how to deploy them. Schools are legally required to use their best endeavours to make sure that children with SEN get the support they need. A school may judge it appropriate to provide one-to-one support for some children. If so, it is for the school to ensure that those providing such support are suitably trained.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of false allegations of child abuse or mistreatment made against staff in (a) professional care centres, (b) social services units and (c) other contexts in each of the last three years.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities are responsible for putting in place arrangements for the appropriate management of allegations against people who work with children. Statuary guidance on handling allegations is set out in Working Together 2015 and Keeping Children Safe in Education.
The Department for Education does not hold records of allegations made against staff. While sympathetic to the position of those subject to false allegations on any matter, we have no plans to set up a scheme to enable claims for professional damages in these circumstances.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will establish a scheme whereby people falsely accused of child abuse or mistreatment can claim for professional damages incurred as a result of such allegations.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities are responsible for putting in place arrangements for the appropriate management of allegations against people who work with children. Statuary guidance on handling allegations is set out in Working Together 2015 and Keeping Children Safe in Education.
The Department for Education does not hold records of allegations made against staff. While sympathetic to the position of those subject to false allegations on any matter, we have no plans to set up a scheme to enable claims for professional damages in these circumstances.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve how child services protect children and young people at risk of abuse.
Answered by Edward Timpson
On 24 June the Prime Minister announced a new Child Protection Taskforce chaired by the Secretary of State for Education. The Prime Minister’s announcement can be found online here: www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-new-taskforce-to-transform-child-protection. The Taskforce will lead work to: extend and accelerate reforms the quality of social work practice and leadership; develop better multi-agency working between children’s social care, the police, health and other local services; improve local authority performance and promote innovative practice; and strengthen governance and accountability in children’s social care.
To improve the quality of services, we are establishing a new national centre of expertise to identify and share high quality evidence on how to tackle child sexual abuse. We have also invested around £100 million in the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme to develop, test and spread more effective ways of supporting children who need help from children’s social care services. Many of the projects are focused on whole system reforms in child protection services whilst others target specific challenges such as child sexual exploitation or female genital mutilation. All projects are being rigorously evaluated.
Social workers provide invaluable services to the most vulnerable children and families in societies and we are committed to improving the quality of the workforce to ensure that children are properly protected and supported. The Chief Social Worker for Children and Families introduced for the first time in the autumn a clear statement of the knowledge and skills that frontline social workers will need to have and display. We will be consulting shortly on similar statements for practice supervisors and practice leaders, key roles to drive high quality practice.
We have introduced Frontline and Step Up to Social Work programmes to attract high calibre graduates to social work, with a stronger focus on children’s statutory services. 101 Frontline participants are currently training in 18 local authorities in London and Greater Manchester and over 300 Step Up students completed training in 75 local authorities in spring 2015, and we are committed to grow these programmes. We are also working with four teaching partnerships, involving local authorities and higher education institutions, to ensure the initial training that social workers receive is more relevant to the demands of statutory roles.
We are also taking a robust approach to tackling failure in children’s services. Where performance is constantly poor, such as Doncaster, we have put in place new trust arrangements to deliver children’s social care services on behalf of a local authority. Trusts represents an opportunity to deliver a key public service in a different and ground-breaking way that better meets the needs of the children and families in the area. We have enabled strong local authorities to work with weaker ones to drive improvement, for example Hampshire are now running Isle of Wight’s children’s services following evidence of inadequate performance in child protection.