Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to recruit more private applied behaviour analysis tutors nationally.
Answered by Will Quince
Autism is a spectrum condition where children have a range of strengths and difficulties. There is no well-founded research to show that any one intervention for children with autism (such as Applied Behaviour Analysis) is more effective than all the other interventions or which interventions are best for which children on the spectrum. The government believes that intervention decisions should be taken by professionals locally, in consultation with parents and young people, after a thorough assessment of the child or young person’s needs.
All schools are required to identify and address the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) of the pupils they support and to use their best endeavours to make sure that a child or young person gets the support they need.
High needs funding, which is specifically for supporting children with SEND, will be increasing by £1 billion in financial year 2022-23 and will bring the overall total of funding for high needs to £9.1 billion. This unprecedented increase of 13% comes on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the last two years. Decisions about how funding is used, including for the employment of specialist tutors or the use of specific interventions, are made by local authorities and schools.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made on the adequacy of funding provided to local authorities to support the provision of support services to SEND students.
Answered by Will Quince
High needs funding for children and young people with complex needs is increasing in the next financial year 2022-23 by £1 billion to over £9.1 billion. This unprecedented year-on-year increase of 13% comes on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the last 2 years, and will continue to support local authorities and schools with the increasing costs they are facing.
As well as substantial increases in high needs funding for all local authorities, of at least 12% per head, the department are also targeting extra support for those authorities in the most financial difficulty and reviewing the overall system of support for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what financial support the Government is providing to students with visa applications for studying within the UK; and what recent progress has been made on the processing of delayed Erasmus grants to UK students studying in the UK.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
International students are required to demonstrate their ability to financially support themselves during their studies as part of the visa application process. The UK government does not offer financial support to students applying for a visa to study in the UK.
Students that have a UK visa and are studying full-time on a course at degree level or above at a higher education provider with a track record of compliance are able to work 20 hours per week during term time and full-time during vacation periods.
In specific cases, immediate hardship funding can be made available by universities for students in need. Students should speak to their providers if they find themselves in need of hardship support.
The UK government funds several programmes offering scholarships and bursaries to support international students looking to study in the UK. The UK National Agency for Erasmus+ confirms that there have been no delays in disbursement of funds to existing beneficiaries.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has plans for summer-born children to be given automatic admission to secondary school for children who currently have a delayed start.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department remains committed to legislating to change the School Admissions Code to allow summer born children to be automatically admitted to Reception at the age of five, where that is what their parents' wish, and to remain with that cohort throughout their compulsory education.
In September 2020, we published updated guidance for admission authorities and advice for parents on the current arrangements for requesting admission outside a child’s normal age group. The guidance states that where children have delayed their start in Reception and are applying for transition to junior, middle or secondary school, unless there are sound educational reasons to do otherwise, the assumption should be that they remain outside their normal year group and in the year in which they have been educated so far. The guidance will help ensure that decisions are taken in the best interests of the child concerned.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many officials in (a) his private office and (b) the wider Department have been allocated to the production and promotion of online content for use on social media in (a) 2018-19, (b) 2019-20 and (c) 2020-21.
Answered by Nick Gibb
There has been no-one in my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education’s private office allocated to the production and promotion of online content for use on Department for Education social media.
The number of officials in the central social media team based in the communications division are outlined by year in the following table:
Year: | Number of Officials: |
2018-19 | 5 |
2019-20 | 7 |
2020-21 | 10 |
This reflects the increasing importance of communicating directly on social media to parents, students and school, college and university staff with clear, practical information and support during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason the Student Loans Company is not permitted to support young people who have Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK with access to student finance for the purposes of undertaking higher education courses.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Generally, to be eligible for student support a student must be resident in England and have ‘settled’ status or a recognised connection with the UK on the first day of the first academic year of the course and must have been resident in the UK and Islands (Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) for the 3 years prior to that date.
Student finance is, therefore, available to those persons who have indefinite leave to enter or remain in the UK provided they meet the relevant residence and other requirements.
The Student Loans Company relies on information from the Home Office in relation to immigration matters when assessing eligibility.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he plans to publish his (a) response, (b) agreed actions and (c) timetable for change to the Information Commissioner's compulsory audit of his Department, published on 7 October 2020, which was due to be published in January 2021.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The official departmental response to the 2020 Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) data protection audit of the Department for Education is publicly available and was deposited in the House Libraries 28 January 2021. The document can be found through the following link: https://depositedpapers.parliament.uk/depositedpaper/2282906/files.
The Department continues to work with the ICO to deliver against the recommendations identified within the audit report. The official response sets out that the Department is committed to a programme of work and will publish a further update in June 2021.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many officials in their Department were dedicated to their Department's responsibilities associated with the delivery of the Industrial Strategy in (a) 2017, (b) 2018, (c) 2019, (d) 2020 and (e) 2021.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
Numerous teams across the department have worked to develop and deliver policies that contribute to delivering the Industrial Strategy, so we are unable to quantify staff numbers in this respect.
This includes teams focusing on: the introduction of ground-breaking T Levels; establishing new Institutes of Technology; developing the National Skills Fund; increasing funding for 16-19 provision; improving take up of science and maths at A level; improving digital education at all levels through changes to the curriculum and a new digital entitlements for adults; and the introduction of Skills Advisory Panels and the Skills Productivity Board.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the decision to fund local authorities on the basis of their January 2021 census for early years provision, what assessment he has made of the effect of that decision on the financial viability of early years providers; and if he will bring forward proposals to raise the cap on top-up funding to 100 per cent of the January 2020 level for local authorities that demonstrate a commensurate growth in spring term attendance.
Answered by Vicky Ford
On 17 December 2020 the government announced a return to funding early years settings for the spring term on the basis of attendance, as measured by the January 2021 census. The early years census count has gone ahead as expected and the census guidance is unchanged. To support local authorities, we issued some technical advice on how that guidance can be applied this year.
If attendance rises after the census is taken, we will top-up councils to up to 85% of their January 2020 census level, where a local authority can provide evidence for increased attendance during the spring term. This will give local authorities additional financial confidence to pay providers for increasing attendance later in the spring term. We were expecting a small decrease in the number of children taking up the entitlements to manifest in the January 2021 census due to projected demographic changes, irrespective of the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, there will be fewer children to fund for the entitlements than last year.
As is usual, the Early Years dedicated schools grant funding allocations published in December are provisional and based on the January 2020 census, as the most recent available data point. We expect lower demand to manifest in the January 2021 census due to a range of factors, including known demographic changes, irrespective of the COVID-19 outbreak, which will feed into future allocations updates.
We plan to spend £3.6 billion on the early years budget envelope in the 2020-21 financial year to fund the free early education and childcare entitlements.
We stay in regular contact with the early years sector and have heard from them already on this subject. We publish regular official statistics on attendance in early years settings here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak. We will be closely monitoring both parental take-up of places and the capacity and responses of providers.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he will publish his (a) response, (b) agreed actions and (c) timetable for change to the Information Commissioner's compulsory audit of his Department, published on 7 October 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department has been working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office since the audit was undertaken in February 2020 to address all the recommendations. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education will be publishing a formal response in January 2021.