Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information he holds on the amount that Gloucestershire County Council has spent on legal activity regarding education, health and care plans in each of the last three years for which figures are available.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The Department for Education does not collect specific information regarding the amounts that local authorities spend on legal activity around education, health and care (EHC) plans.
Local authorities must adhere to legal requirements when making EHC needs assessments, when producing EHC plans and when meeting challenges from parents, young people and others. These are set out in the Children and Families Act (2014), supporting regulations and the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Code of Practice, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-code-of-practice-0-to-25.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that schools are offering adequate help and support for children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
It is important that children with medical conditions, such as juvenile idiopathic arthritis, are supported to receive a full education. Under Section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014, governing boards are required to make arrangements to support pupils with medical conditions and to have regard to statutory guidance.
The guidance is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3, and covers a range of areas including the preparation and implementation of school policies for supporting pupils with medical conditions, the use of individual healthcare plans, staff training, medicines administration, roles and responsibilities, consulting with parents and collaborative working with healthcare professionals. It was developed with a range of stakeholders including the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance (HSA), school leaders, academy organisations, unions, young people and their parents, and Department of Health and Social Care officials and is based on good practice in schools.
We continue to work with organisations such as the HSA to help raise further awareness of the duty on schools.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to his Department's consultation on draft regulations, statutory guidance, and regulatory impact assessment relating to Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education, which opened on 19 July 2018, for what reason his Department is providing discretion to schools on whether they teach same sex relationships in the regulations being consulted on.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is making Relationships Education compulsory in all primary schools, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) compulsory in all secondary schools and Health Education compulsory in all state-funded primary and secondary schools.
A guiding principle of the subjects is that teaching will start from the basis that pupils, at age appropriate points, need to know the laws on relationships and sex to ensure they act appropriately and can be safe. The draft guidance is also clear that there should be an equal opportunity to explore the features of stable and healthy same-sex relationships.
As with other aspects of the curriculum, schools will have flexibility over how they deliver this content; and, in the case of schools with a religious character, in accordance with their faith. All schools must comply with the Equality Act.
The Department hopes as many people as possible will contribute to the consultation, which closes on 7 November.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of including additional educational needs funding in the base budget for schools as part of the new funding formula.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Core schools funding is increasing to £43.5 billion by 2020, and within that total the high needs budget is £6 billion this year, the highest on record.
All the evidence shows that pupils from deprived families, those with low prior attainment, those who do not speak English as a first language, and those who start school part-way through the year are most likely to fall behind their peers. The national funding formula protects the £5.9 billion of funding directed towards pupils with additional needs, to help them catch up. This funding is provided to schools through their base budgets. In addition to the schools formula, the pupil premium will provide schools with over £2.4 billion to improve the support provided to children who have been in receipt of free school meals in the last 6 years. Beyond this, the national funding formula for high needs provides funding for local authorities to direct to the most vulnerable children and young people. In 2018-19, the high needs national funding formula totalled £6 billion; £140 million more than in 2017-18.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has plans to commission an independent investigation into trends in the level of school exclusions; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
In March, the Government launched an externally led review of exclusions practice, led by Edward Timpson CBE. The review will explore how head teachers use exclusion in practice, and why pupils with particular characteristics are more likely to be excluded from school. It will also consider the differences in exclusion rates between areas and schools across England.
The review will aim to report by the end of the year. The full terms of reference for the review can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-exclusions-review-terms-of-reference.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the number of permanent exclusions from school as a proportion of the overall school population in each local authority area in each of the last five years where figures are available.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The National Statistics release ‘Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England: 2015 to 2016’ includes numbers and rates of exclusions. The full release is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-in-england-2015-to-2016.
Table 15 of the ‘Local Authority tables: SFR35/2017’ includes a breakdown of exclusion rates for each local authority in England in the 2015/16 academic year. Historic information (from the 2006/07 academic year onwards) is also available in the release’s Underlying data: SFR35/2017 section, in file ‘SFR35_2017_national_region_la_school_data.csv’. The figures can be filtered by the ‘la_name’ column.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many current contracts his Department has with Serco; and what the (a) value, (b) start date and (c) end date of each of those contracts is.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Since January 2011, details of central government contracts above the value of £10,000 are published on Contracts Finder. Contracts published prior to 26 February 2015 can be viewed at: https://data.gov.uk/data/contracts-finder-archive.
Those published after 26 February 2015 can be viewed at: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of his Department's reform of apprenticeship on progress on meeting the Government's target of three million new apprenticeships by the end of the 2017 Parliament.
Answered by Anne Milton
Our apprenticeship reforms will give employers and apprentices the skills they need to grow and progress in the long term.
Our reforms are making apprenticeships higher quality, at all levels, with a minimum duration of one year and 20 per cent off-the job training, and with a proper end point assessment. The 20 per cent off the job training rule, the shift to higher quality standards with a longer average duration, and the drop off in use of frameworks, have already contributed to a 20 per cent rise in expected apprenticeship training hours over the past year. Nearly 37 per cent of starts are now on the new, employer-designed apprenticeship standards, compared to just 3 per cent in the same period last year. More information on the progress of our reforms can be found at the link below: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/707896/Progress_report_on_the_Apprenticeships_Reform_Programme_May_2018.pdf.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much and what proportion of the apprenticeship levy has been invested in apprenticeships in each region of the UK.
Answered by Anne Milton
Information on the apprenticeship levy collected by HM Treasury and invested in each region of the UK is not available in the format requested.
The majority of levy-paying employers operate across multiple geographical areas which means we cannot reasonably attribute the levy collected and spent in individual locations within the UK.
In England, these employers are free to spend their apprenticeship funding wherever they wish, in locations that best meet the skills needs of the business.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their fair share of the levy so the devolved administrations will receive £460 million (in 2019/20). As skills is a devolved matter it will be for the devolved administrations to decide how funds raised from the levy should be used in their administrations.
We publish regular statistics on apprenticeships here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeship-and-levy-statistics-june-2018.
These reflect the way that the levy is collected and spent.
Asked by: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to ensure that apprentices enrolled and training on a Standard Appenticeship Course, and working towards their end-date have an end-point assessment organisation in place.
Answered by Anne Milton
All new apprenticeship standards will have an end point assessment. Apprentices cannot start until the relevant assessment plan has been approved and published. Apprentices will know what their end point assessment will involve before they start on a standard.
Over 99 per cent of apprentices on programmes have an end point assessment organisation registered against the standard. However, there are a small number of standards with starts which have not yet confirmed the end point assessment organisation. We are tracking these starts so that we can confirm an end point assessment organisation for these standards at the earliest opportunity.
The number of end point assessment organisations on the register and coverage of standards is increasing each month; and we are confident that we will have assessment organisations in place for all apprentices taking their end point assessment.