Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, on how many occasions officials in her Department supported local authorities in assessing children's needs in families who are seeking Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 in 2016.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children (2015), is clear that where a local authority undertakes an assessment under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 such an assessment will be carried out by a social worker.
Department for Education (DfE) officials take up a range of secondment opportunities, including in some instances to local authority children’s services, as part of gaining experience of frontline services to aid the development of better policy. However, DfE has not seconded any staff to local authorities in order to support the assessment of children’s needs under section 17 and the Department does not anticipate that any DfE officials would be directly involved in supporting such assessments.
Department officials do support local authorities to deliver improvements to children’s social care services. Such support may be provided in order to respond to inadequate performance in local areas or to help develop and deliver innovative new approaches to delivering such services.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many staff her Department seconded to local authorities to support in the assessment of needs of children in families who are seeking section 17 of the Children Act 1989 in 2016.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children (2015), is clear that where a local authority undertakes an assessment under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 such an assessment will be carried out by a social worker.
Department for Education (DfE) officials take up a range of secondment opportunities, including in some instances to local authority children’s services, as part of gaining experience of frontline services to aid the development of better policy. However, DfE has not seconded any staff to local authorities in order to support the assessment of children’s needs under section 17 and the Department does not anticipate that any DfE officials would be directly involved in supporting such assessments.
Department officials do support local authorities to deliver improvements to children’s social care services. Such support may be provided in order to respond to inadequate performance in local areas or to help develop and deliver innovative new approaches to delivering such services.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the number of additional (a) school places and (b) teachers and teaching assistants that will be required in (i) Tottenham constituency, (ii) the Borough of Haringey and (iii) Greater London between 2017 and 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring there are sufficient school places for pupils. The Department collects pupil forecasts and school capacities from each local authority through the annual school capacity survey (SCAP). This data is used to allocate capital funding to local authorities to help them provide sufficient school places where they are needed. The Department’s Pupil Place Planning team then work with the Local Authorities to determine that those places are in fact being created.
The capacity and forecasts data are published on an annual basis, giving local authority and regional totals, through the SCAP tables which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-capacity-academic-year-2014-to-2015. School capacity and forecast data is not collected at a constituency level.
The Department also publishes school place scorecards to show the challenges that local authorities are facing, together with the progress that they are making in providing sufficient good quality school places. The latest published scorecards, forecasting demand to 2017-18, can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-school-places-scorecards-2015.
The school place scorecards show that between 2009/10 and 2014/15, in Haringey, 2,416 primary school places and 494 secondary places were created. 450 further primary school places are planned for delivery between 2015/16 and 2017/18. The Department has estimated that Haringey needs an additional 60 primary places to meet demand in 2017/18.
Over the same period, across all London local authorities, 135,000 primary places have been created, with 57,000 places planned for delivery, and an estimated 10,200 places needed to meet demand in 2017/18. In secondary, 67,000 places have been created, with 21,000 planned for delivery and an estimated 1,400 places needed to meet demand.
The requested information on the number of teachers and teaching assistants that will be required in the Tottenham constituency, the Borough of Haringey, and Greater London is not available.
The Department for Education uses the Teacher Supply Model (TSM) to estimate the national requirements for the number of postgraduate Initial Teacher Training places (and as part of this process, the number of qualified teachers) to meet demand. Decisions around the specific requirements for teachers and teaching assistants in individual schools are the responsibility of schools.
The 2016/17 version of the TSM, which was used to inform the 2016/17 ITT recruitment process, along with a user guide explaining the methodology in detail, is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-supply-model.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2017 to Question 63761, on GCE A-level, where the information requested is held.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The information that the honourable member requires is not routinely available in Key Stage 5 data. I have asked the statistical head of profession to review the analysis for the information requested by the honourable member. The Department plans to publish this for the first time in a statistical bulletin on Key Stage 5 attainment by characteristics, on 16 March 2017.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2017 to Question 63762, on GCE A-level, where the information requested is held.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The information that the honourable member requires is not routinely available in Key Stage 5 data. I have asked the statistical head of profession to review the analysis for the information requested by the honourable member. The Department plans to publish this for the first time in a statistical bulletin on Key Stage 5 attainment by characteristics, on 16 March 2017.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2017 to Question 63760, on GCE A-level, where the information requested is held.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The information that the honourable member requires is not routinely available in Key Stage 5 data. I have asked the statistical head of profession to review the analysis for the information requested by the honourable member. The Department plans to publish this for the first time in a statistical bulletin on Key Stage 5 attainment by characteristics, on 16 March 2017.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of the housing market on teacher (a) recruitment and (b) retention rates in (i) Tottenham constituency, (ii) the Borough of Haringey and (iii) Greater London.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government does not publish analysis on the effect of the housing market on recruitment and retention in particular professions. However, we recognise that the housing shortage can pose significant challenges for people who want to move closer to their places of work. The Government’s Housing White Paper sets out a comprehensive package of reforms to help build the homes we need as a country.
At a national level we are retaining and recruiting the teachers we need. We recognise however, that the strengthening economy and growth in pupil numbers have made the situation more challenging and that this is more acute in certain subjects and particular schools or areas of the country.
Many schools are now participating in programmes that allow them to train their own teachers, including School Direct programmes, which are training over 10,600 postgraduates this year – including over 1,900 through teacher training providers in London.
In September we published the Schools workforce in England 2010 to 2015: trends and geographical comparisons report which can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/550970/SFR44_2016_text.pdf
This is an analysis of the annual School Workforce Census Statistical First release data at regional level. We are exploring data at a sub-regional level and investigating the factors which influence schools’ recruitment and retention of staff including the effect of the housing market.
The Greater London Authority is undertaking work to understand recruitment and retention issues for teachers in London and we will continue to work with them, sharing our knowledge and findings.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of changes to school funding on (a) teacher numbers, (b) school standards, (c) pupil outcomes and (d) levels of youth crime in (i) Tottenham constituency and (ii) the Borough of Haringey.
Answered by Nick Gibb
As a result of our proposals for a national funding formula, schools in Tottenham constituency would see an overall 2.8% reduction in funding. Schools in the Borough of Haringey would see an overall 2.7% reduction in funding. Haringey’s allocation from the central school services block, which will provide local authorities with funding for services they offer to all pupils, including local education welfare services, would increase by over £360,000. London schools, including those in Haringey, will remain among the highest funded in the country under our proposals, with schools in inner London attracting 30% more funding per pupil than the national average.
We are supporting schools to improve their financial health and efficiency and have recently published a schools’ buying strategy to help schools maximise savings from their £10 billion of non-staff spend.
Evidence shows that high-quality teaching is the most important school-based determinant of pupil outcomes. We have also published workforce planning guidance to help ensure that schools are always investing in the right mix of staff to deliver excellent pupil outcomes. This guidance is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/schools-financial-health-and-efficiency.