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 take steps to ensure that all primary school children (a) learn to swim and (b) are knowledgeable about water safety.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The Government is committed to ensuring that swimming and teaching water safety takes place in schools. Swimming is compulsory for maintained schools in the national curriculum. All pupils must be taught to swim at least 25 metres unaided and be able to use recognised swimming strokes by the end of key stage 2 (age 11). It also requires that a child can demonstrate an understanding of water safety.
The Government has committed over £450 million of ring-fenced funding up to and including 2015/16 for primary schools to improve their provision of PE and sport. Head teachers are best placed to decide how the funding should be used. They can choose to provide additional training and instruction in swimming and water safety but this must be over and above the requirements of the national curriculum.
There are a range of resources to help schools provide high quality teaching, including from organisations such as the Amateur Swimming Association and from the Royal Lifesaving Society.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many cases in the family courts resulted in removed children being returned to their parents in each of the last five years.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The table below shows, for each of the last five years:
The number of children taken into care.
The number of children who are subsequently ceased to be looked after and returned home to live with parents or relatives,
The number of children who have not returned home to live with parents or relatives but were subsequently placed with parents whilst still looked after.
Year ending
| Of which: | ||
Have subsequently ceased to be looked after to return home to live with parents or relatives2,[3] | Have subsequently been placed with parents and have either remained in care or have since ceased to be looked after for some other reason than returning home to live with parents or relatives2,[4] | ||
31 March 2010 | 9,580 | 2,960 | 1,470 |
31 March 2011 | 9,560 | 2,860 | 1,500 |
31 March 2012 | 10,140 | 2,750 | 1,340 |
31 March 2013 | 11,140 | 2,680 | 1,380 |
31 March 2014 | 10,920 | 2,120 | 1,070 |
Source: SSDA903 children looked after return 2014
[1] Children who were taken into care are children who started to be looked after under a care order, police protection, emergency protection order or child assessment order. Only the first occasion on which a child was taken into care in the year has been counted, but a child may appear more than once if they started to be looked after in one year, left care and then returned to care in a subsequent year.
[2] Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10.
[3] The child may have ceased to be looked after at any subsequent point in time and it is possible the child could have returned to care since ceasing to be looked after. This includes children who, prior to ceasing care, were placed with parents at some point during their period of care.
[4] The child was placed with parents at some point during the period of care, however, the child may have changed placements subsequently. This excludes children who ceased to be looked after to return home to live with parents or relatives.
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 has taken to help schools which are not spending the school sport premium appropriately.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The Department for Education is working across Government and with external partners to support schools to spend the money effectively and sustainably, to improve the quality of Physical Education (PE) and sport provision. There are a number of case studies of best practice which can be found online:
www.gov.uk/government/policies/getting-more-people-playing-sport#case-studies
Ofsted has also published guidance that includes examples of effective use of the PE and sport premium.
PE and sport organisations are offering expert advice to schools on how to ensure the greatest improvement in PE and sport provision, as well as where to seek further support at a local level. They have produced resources to help schools assess their PE and sport provision and guidance to generate action plans and how to evidence impact. Posters have also been distributed to schools to help inform effective investment into teacher professional learning and the employment of coaches. These posters capture the latest national advice and guidance, and include information to help schools maximise the investment and understand statutory obligations and minimum standards specifically around the delivery of PE and school sport.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what sanctions there are for schools which fail to spend the school sport premium appropriately.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The conditions of the funding are clear; it must be spent on improving the provision of Physical Education (PE) and sport for the benefit of pupils so that they develop healthy lifestyles. All schools must abide by the conditions of the funding. Schools should publish on their website: the amount of grant received, how it has been spent (or will be spent) and what impact the school has seen on pupils’ PE and sport participation and attainment as a result.
Schools are held accountable for how they spend their funding through Ofsted whole-school inspections. Ofsted have strengthened the coverage of PE and sport in their Inspection Handbook. Inspectors assess and report on how effectively the funding is being used to improve PE and sport provision when making a judgement on the quality of the school’s leadership and management.
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 efficacy of incentives designed to keep experienced teachers in the classroom.
Answered by David Laws
Teacher retention remains high: 90% of those entering the profession are teaching one year later, and 78% are teaching after five years. Reforms to teachers’ pay mean that schools have greater flexibility to attract, retain and reward the very best teachers.
A report by the Sutton Trust in 2011, Improving the impact of teachers on pupil achievement in the UK, concluded that a more flexible pay and promotion system would have the potential to attract and retain more high quality applicants to the teaching profession.
We are intending to evaluate pay implementation, including the impact on teachers’ career intentions. This will begin in the autumn.
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 request Ofsted to record how many children leave primary school able to swim.
Answered by Edward Timpson
There are no plans to ask Ofsted to collect this information. Ofsted inspections report on the effectiveness of teaching and the quality of schools’ leadership and management.
Swimming is part of the national curriculum, and all pupils must be taught to swim at least 25 metres unaided and be able to use recognised swimming strokes by the end of key stage 2 (age 11). It remains compulsory in the national curriculum following the curriculum review.
The Government has committed over £450 million of ring-fenced funding up to and including 2015/16 for primary schools to improve their provision of Physical Education and sport. Schools have the freedom to use the funding for additional provision for swimming but this must be for activity over and above the national curriculum requirements.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to deal with emotional neglect of children.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Our revised statutory safeguarding guidance, ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children 2013', includes a definition of emotional abuse which social workers already act on when deciding on what action to take to keep a child safe.
We want social workers and other professionals who work with children and families to recognise the early signs of all forms of abuse and neglect and take appropriate action. To support this, the Department is working on a number of initiatives. We have brought together a panel of experts to review the evidence concerning indicators of neglect that are associated with a likelihood of future harm to babies, pre-school children and school-age children.
We are reviewing the recommendations in the Action for Children report ‘Child Neglect: The scandal that never breaks' and the Ofsted report ‘In the child's time: professional responses to neglect' and will consider how to support professionals in recognising early signs of all forms of neglect. We are also working with the Department of Health on their proposals for the development of a new criminal offence of ill-treatment or wilful neglect. Following the Narey review, we are improving social work training and developing further the skills of social workers in critical areas including neglect and how to undertake a good quality assessment.
We have also published training materials commissioned from Action for Children and the University of Stirling. These materials, ‘Childhood neglect: Improving outcomes for children', contain guidance and training resources to help staff identify and respond early to all signs of neglect and to know what types of interventions are the most effective.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average cost per pupil of running a pupil referral unit was in the last year for which figures are available.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
The Department for Education does not routinely collect data on the average per pupil cost of running a pupil referral unit. Pupil referral units cater for a diverse range of needs and so the actual cost per pupil will vary significantly between institutions.
The Department introduced new funding arrangements in April 2013 that take account of this variation. The new system offers stability for pupil referral units by providing £8,000 for each identified alternative provision place. This funding is supplemented by local authorities or schools when they place pupils into a pupil referral unit. The amount of top-up funding provided is determined locally to reflect the actual costs of educating pupils at that pupil referral unit.