Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of Sefton Council's Children's Social Care department.
Answered by Will Quince
Keeping children safe is vital, and the government takes tough measures when councils are failing them.
A Statutory Direction was issued to Sefton Council on 24 May 2022, following the 9 May 2022 Ofsted report that judged children’s services to be inadequate. The direction requires the Council to work with a commissioner appointed by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, who will issue any necessary instructions to the local authority for the purpose of securing immediate improvement. In addition, the commissioner will conduct a three-month assessment of the Council’s capacity and capability to improve itself. This report will help determine the best next steps to ensure improvements are made for vulnerable children and families.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how the £50 million granted to parenting programmes in the Spending Review will be spent; and what proportion of that funding will be spent on (a) face-to-face services and (b) digital support.
Answered by Will Quince
On 2 April the department announced the 75 local authorities eligible to receive funding under the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. This announcement can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/infants-children-and-families-to-benefit-from-boost-in-support.
This programme, jointly overseen by the Department for Education and Department for Health and Social Care, includes the £50 million allocated for parenting programmes at the Spending Review. Officials are currently engaging with the nominated local authorities on programme design and further details will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to help ensure there are an adequate number of specialist teachers to support children with SEND.
Answered by Will Quince
The department is committed to ensuring that all pupils can reach their potential and receive excellent support from their teachers. Our reformed initial teacher training (ITT) Core Content Framework (CCF) and the new Early Career Framework (ECF), both developed with sector experts, will equip teachers with a clear understanding of the needs of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
All teachers are teachers of SEND. ITT courses must be designed so that trainee teachers can demonstrate that they meet the Teachers’ Standards at the appropriate level which includes the requirement that all teachers must have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with SEND.
Consideration of SEND underpins both the ITT CCF and ECF which were both produced with the support of sector experts. The ECF is designed to support all pupils to succeed and seeks to widen access for all.
The department is determined that all children and young people receive the support they need to succeed in their education. It is a legal requirement for qualified teachers of classes of pupils with sensory impairments to hold the relevant mandatory qualification. Our aim is to ensure a steady supply of teachers for children with visual, hearing, and multi-sensory impairment, in both specialist and mainstream schools and colleges.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to boost the percentage of children aged five achieving expected level on literacy, communication, and maths early learning goals as a supporting metric for mission 5 in the Levelling Up white paper.
Answered by Will Quince
The government has reformed the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to help give children the best start in life. The reforms aim to improve outcomes for children at age five, particularly disadvantaged children, in the critical areas that build the foundations for later success, such as language development, literacy and numeracy. We are investing up to £180 million in early years education recovery.
Through investing in our English hubs and maths hubs programmes, we will improve the teaching of English and mathematics in schools, including for children in Reception. English hubs are currently delivering intensive support to over 1,000 partner schools, reaching approximately 50,000 pupils in Reception and year 1. Maths hubs programme includes our £100 million Teaching for Mastery programme, which is bringing mastery teaching to 11,000 schools across England by 2023.
To support schools to meet existing expectations on early reading, we published ‘The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy’. The guidance is available to view here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-reading-framework-teaching-the-foundations-of-literacy.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure teacher training colleges have enough funding to teach new trainees British Sign Language.
Answered by Robin Walker
Initial teacher training (ITT) is predominantly funded by tuition fees (with a small proportion of trainees completing a programme on a salaried route). It is for ITT providers to determine how they allocate the income they receive from tuition fees to training provision.
The government does not prescribe the curriculum of ITT courses. It remains for individual providers to design courses that are appropriate to the needs of trainees and for the subject, phase and context that the trainees will be teaching.
Since September 2020, all courses offered by ITT providers have been aligned to a mandatory core content framework (CCF), which was published in November 2019. The framework sets out a minimum entitlement for all trainee teachers and is underpinned by the best available evidence about what works in teaching. The ITT CCF has been designed around how to support all pupils to succeed and seeks to widen access for all, including those pupils identified within the four areas of need set out in the special educational needs and disabilities code of practice.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Let Us Learn Too and the Disabled Children’s Partnership’s SEND Money Survey published on 7 February 2022, what progress he has made on developing recommendations for the SEND green paper that will reform services to work better for families with disabled children.
Answered by Will Quince
The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) review is developing at pace and remains a high priority for this government. The department recognises that the current SEND system does not consistently deliver the outcomes we want and expect for children and young people with SEND, their families, and the people and services who support them.
A key priority for the review is to ensure that children and young people with SEND get the right support, in the right place, at the right time. As part of the review, the department will look at what is needed to improve early intervention, make clearer the support and services expected by its users, and have funding and accountability systems in place that support these aims.
The government has done considerable work to engage people and organisations throughout the review, including meeting representatives from Let Us Learn Too and the Disabled Children’s Partnership. The department is committed to testing its proposals publicly through full public consultation in the first quarter of 2022. This consultation will enable it to gather feedback and expertise from a wide range of perspectives, including sector professionals, children, young people and parents, before final decisions are made.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure that SEND children with an education and health care plan receive the necessary support in school throughout their education.
Answered by Will Quince
The department’s ambition for all children and young people, no matter their special educational needs or disabilities (SEND), is that they receive the right support to succeed in their education. Under the Children and Families Act 2014, every mainstream school is required to identify and address the SEND of the pupils they support and use their best endeavours to make sure that they get the support they need.
The SEND Code of Practice explains that education, health and care (EHC) plans should be focused on education, training, health and care outcomes that will enable children and young people to progress in their learning and, as they get older, to be well prepared for adulthood. It is the responsibility of the local authority to ensure that the support specified in an EHC plan is delivered by the named school.
Through our contract with the National Association for Special Educational Needs, we have funded the Whole School SEND Consortium to equip staff in mainstream and special schools to deliver high quality teaching to all children and young people with SEND.
In addition, the SEND Review is seeking to improve the outcomes and experience of all children and young people with SEND, within a sustainable system. The Review will publish as a green paper for full public consultation in the first three months of this year.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that schools can offer all children access to speech and language therapy.
Answered by Will Quince
Under the Children and Families Act 2014, all schools are required to identify and address the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) of the pupils they support, including those with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), and to endeavour to make sure that a child or young person gets the support they need.
Schools, along with the local authority and health partners, should work with families to co-produce arrangements for delivering speech and language therapy. Spending on speech and language therapy is determined at a local level.
The department recognises the impact that the COVID-19 outbreak has had on children and young people with SLCN. In the recent spending review, we announced £1.8 billion of additional funding for those who need it most, bringing total investment in education recovery to almost £5 billion. Within this, in June 2020 we announced a £1 billion catch-up package including a catch-up premium for the 2020/21 academic year. Schools were able to decide how this catch-up premium was spent, for example, on speech and language therapy.
As part of our catch-up package, we have invested £17 million to deliver the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme, which supports children in reception with their language skills. Over two thirds of eligible mainstream primary schools are taking part in this proven, evidence-based programme, benefitting around 90,000 children most in need of language support. This is in addition to £10 million for pre-school early language development training announced February 2021.
The government recognises that the current SEND system does not deliver the outcomes we want and expect for all children and young people with SEND, their families or the people and services who support them. The SEND Review is seeking to improve the outcomes for children, with high expectations and ambitions, and is looking at ways to support mainstream settings to identify and get support to children and young people more quickly, through making best use of precious expertise such as speech and language therapists. These issues are long-standing and complex, but the government is determined to deliver real, lasting change. We intend to publish the SEND Review in the first 3 months of 2022.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional plans are in place to support schools that have been impacted by teacher absences as a result of the Omicron variant of covid-19.
Answered by Robin Walker
Our priority is to maintain high quality face-to-face education for all children and young people.
There are measures in place to help break the chains of COVID-19 transmission, minimise disruption to education and limit absences. These include regular testing, improving ventilation in classrooms and continuing the booster rollout for adults and vaccinations for secondary age pupils.
The department has reintroduced the COVID-19 workforce fund to provide financial support to eligible schools and colleges for additional staff absence costs incurred from 22 November until the February spring half term in 2022. The fund is available to support schools and colleges facing the greatest staffing and funding pressures to continue to deliver high quality face-to-face education to all pupils.
The department has also called for ex-teachers to return to the classroom and, on 12 January, it published initial data from a sample of supply agencies gathered between 20 December 2021 and 7 January 2022. This showed that 485 former teachers have signed up with supply agencies, and over 100 Teach First alumni have also expressed interest in returning to the classroom.
Given the size of the sample, the true number of sign-ups since the call was launched will be larger. Full details of the data release can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/number-of-ex-teachers-joining-the-school-workforce-2021-to-2022.
We have also published sector-led case studies that illustrate practical ways in which schools can work to remain open in the face of staff shortage. Our priority is that all schools offer in-person learning for all pupils. This might involve hybrid lessons, remote teaching, streaming teaching to more than one class at a time, combining face-to-face classes, timetable solutions and using recorded teaching.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that children with long-term illnesses are fully supported throughout their education.
Answered by Will Quince
The government is committed to pupils with medical conditions and long-term illnesses being properly supported at school so that they have full access to education.
In 2014, the government introduced a new duty on schools to support pupils with all medical conditions and has published statutory guidance on this for schools and others. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3.
Schools also have duties under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments and not to discriminate against disabled children, which may include some children with long-term medical conditions, in relation to their access to education and associated services. Schools must make reasonable adjustments to their practices, procedures and policies to ensure that they are not putting those with a disability at a substantial disadvantage compared with their peers.