Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of current school building standards in protecting pupils and staff from extreme heat, and what steps her Department is taking to improve school infrastructure to ensure resilience to rising temperatures associated with climate change.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
I refer my hon. Friend, the member for Warrington North to the answer of 30 June 2026 to Question 13129.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the (a) availability and (b) consistency of guidance offered to parents of children with communication difficulties.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
As part of our new investment, schools will be able to access support, advice, training and specialist expertise from professionals such as speech and language therapists, educational psychologists, occupational therapists and specialist teachers. These experts will work directly with school staff to equip them with the skills and strategies to better meet need, including delivering group‑level interventions to address needs early and effectively.
We will also set out guidance on inclusive, evidence-based ordinarily available provision through the National Inclusion Standards, to support all mainstream settings to meet the needs of all children and young people effectively. Schools will be required to produce an Inclusion Strategy, encouraging effective cohort-level planning for common and predictable needs and the meaningful implementation of inclusive education.
We also continue to involve and engage with families and special educational needs and disabilities stakeholders through our Participation and Family Support programme.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
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 adding Ukrainian language GCSE to the curriculum.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Decisions about which languages to offer at GCSE in England are taken by four independent awarding organisations, AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel and WJEC, rather than by central government. These organisations have the freedom to create a Ukrainian GCSE based on the subject content for modern foreign languages set by the department. We have written to these organisations to ask them to consider introducing a Ukrainian GCSE.
The British government stands steadfast behind the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian government. The department is proud to support children and families from Ukraine during their transition to a new life in the UK. To do our part to support the Ukrainian people, we are supporting the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science in policy development and this year have launched a UK-Ukraine Schools Partnership programme, twinning 100 schools in the UK and Ukraine.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will review the statutory walking distance for free school transport.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to make sure that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport.
Local authorities must arrange free home-to-school travel for children of compulsory school age, 5 to 16, who attend their nearest school and would not be able to walk there due to the distance, their special educational needs, disability or mobility problem, or because the nature of the route means it would be unsafe for them to do so. There are extended rights to free travel for children from low-income families, intended to help them exercise school choice.
The government is committed to creating opportunities for all children so that they can achieve and thrive and is working with department officials to understand how well home-to-school travel supports children to access educational opportunity.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to add pharmacy to the list of degree courses that will be funded if an applicant already has a degree.
Answered by Janet Daby
Under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, additional entitlement may be available for priority subjects or longer courses in addition to an individual’s core 4-year entitlement. Details of these additional entitlements will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent progress her Department has made on the implementation of a GCSE in British Sign Language.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The new British Sign Language (BSL) GCSE is a key feature of our commitment to enhancing the status of BSL in education and society.
The department published subject content for the BSL GCSE in December 2023.
As is the usual process for introducing a qualification, the independent qualifications regulator, Ofqual, is currently running a public consultation on its proposed assessment arrangements and expects to confirm its decision on the qualification rules in autumn 2025. At this point, any exam board that chooses to offer the GCSE will be able to start developing specifications.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will meet with (a) Adoption UK and (b) other representative organisations to discuss the adoption and special guardianship support fund.
Answered by Janet Daby
In my role as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, I have recently met with Adoption UK and other representative organisations to discuss the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) and other issues during the adoption sector roundtable on 21 May 2025.
I also met with adopters at the Adoption Reference Group meeting on 6 May 2025, which again discussed the ASGSF, as well as other adoption support issues.
The department is intending further engagement with sector bodies on the approach to managing the ASGSF in future years.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of making the adoption and special guardianship support fund permanent.
Answered by Janet Daby
I refer my hon. Friend, the member for Warrington North, to my written statement of 22 April 2025, which is available here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2025-04-22/hcws589.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department plans to take to ensure wraparound childcare is sufficiently funded in areas with high SEND staffing requirements.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The department knows that parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) need childcare provision that meets their and their children’s needs. This government is determined to help these parents and has funded the national wraparound programme to support working families and improve the availability of before and after school childcare, to ensure that parents have the flexibility they need to care for their children.
Wraparound programme funding includes resource for additional staffing to support inclusive provision, including for pupils with particular needs. Local authority allocations are varied to take account of regional differences in the number of pupils with SEND.
The Childcare Act 2006 places a legal duty on local authorities to ensure there are enough childcare places within its locality for working parents or parents who are studying or training for employment, for children aged 0 to 14, or up to age 18 for disabled children. All local authorities should be able to demonstrate how they have discharged this duty and should include specific reference to how they are ensuring there is sufficient childcare to meet the needs of children with SEND, as per the statutory guidance. This should be available from the local authority.
The wraparound programme is helping local authorities discharge this duty, by distributing funding to ensure that local areas can increase the supply of wraparound places. Local authorities across England can decide how best to use the funding to set up or expand wraparound childcare in their area to meet the needs of their local community, including children with SEND.
The government is also committed to making quick progress to deliver on our commitment to offer breakfast clubs in every primary school. Departmental officials are working closely with schools and sector experts to develop a programme that meets the needs of all children, including those with SEND.
In order to test and learn about how best to support schools in implementing new free universal breakfast clubs, we have selected 750 early adopter schools to deliver from April 2025, ahead of the national roll out to all schools with primary aged children. This includes 50 special schools and alternative provision settings. These settings will receive a higher funding rate, in addition to the fixed termly payments and set up cost funding, in recognition of the need for higher staff to pupil ratios.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to increase funding for wraparound care.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Any future decisions on departmental spending are subject to the spending review process.