Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of childcare provision in Easington constituency.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The department continues to monitor the sufficiency of childcare nationally. The key measure of sufficiency is whether the supply of available places is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents and children. Ofsted data currently shows that the number of places offered by providers on the Early Years Register has remained broadly stable at 1.3 million places since August 2015.
Officials from the department also discuss sufficiency of provision in regular conversations with local authorities. Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring sufficient childcare places in their area. The department has not been made aware by any local authority of any current sufficiency problem. Durham Council, which holds the statutory duty to secure sufficient childcare in Easington, is not reporting that these closures will affect their ability to fulfil this duty.
According to findings from the 2021 childcare and early years providers survey, 7 in 10 group-based providers reported having spare places in their full day provision and 49% of childminders reported having spare capacity on average across the week.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will undertake a review of the operating resilience of early years childcare providers in Easington constituency; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
According to Ofsted records, as of 31 March 2022, 0 providers on non-domestic premises and 10 childminders had left the Early Years Register in Easington between March 2021 and March 2022. Over the same period, 1 provider on non-domestic premises and 1 childminder joined the Early Years Register in Easington.
Ofsted’s publication provides data on both joiners and leavers to the register, but not at a parliamentary constituency level, so this analysis is based on the differences in the Early Years register between March 2021 and March 2022.
The department has no plans to make a statement on the operating resilience of early years childcare providers in Easington constituency.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an estimate of the number of (a) nurseries and (b) other early years childcare settings which have closed in Easington constituency since March 2021.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
According to Ofsted records, as of 31 March 2022, 0 providers on non-domestic premises and 10 childminders had left the Early Years Register in Easington between March 2021 and March 2022. Over the same period, 1 provider on non-domestic premises and 1 childminder joined the Early Years Register in Easington.
Ofsted’s publication provides data on both joiners and leavers to the register, but not at a parliamentary constituency level, so this analysis is based on the differences in the Early Years register between March 2021 and March 2022.
The department has no plans to make a statement on the operating resilience of early years childcare providers in Easington constituency.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the level of affordability of childcare provision in Easington constituency.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The department continues to look at ways to make childcare more affordable and to encourage families to use government-funded support they are entitled to.
The department collects data on the main characteristics of childcare and early years provision in England and fees data can be broken down to local authority level.
Easington constituency falls within Durham County Council, where the latest data shows the average hourly fee for childcare to be £5.00 for two-year-old children, and £4.75 for three and four-year-old children.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much Government funding has been provided to schools in Easington constituency through the National Tutoring Programme in each month since the Programme was launched.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Department does not hold information on tuition partners or academic mentors in the required format at constituency level.
School-led tutoring grant allocations by school and local authority for the academic year 2021/2022 have been published at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1071234/School_Led_Funding_Publication_File_flat_values_v1.ods
Payment information relating to school-led tutoring for the academic year 2021/2022 will be published by the Educational Skills and Funding Agency once the reconciliation process has been completed for that period.
School-led tutoring grant allocations for the academic year 2022/23 have been published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-tutoring-programme-ntp-allocations-for-2022-to-2023-academic-year.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to include people with lived experience of childhood disability on the new National Implementation Board for children’s social care.
Answered by Will Quince
The department recognises the importance of engaging directly with people with lived experience, building on the impressive work of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in hearing and accounting for the voices of children and their families, including people with lived experience of childhood disability.
We are committed to continuing this approach, by keeping the views and interests of those with lived experience at the heart of our work as we develop our implementation strategy for children’s social care. The new National Implementation Board will include people with their own experience of the care system, alongside those with experience of leading transformational change.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure the new National Children’s Social Care Framework works with the proposed new National SEND Standards, as outlined in the SEND Review, to meet the social care needs of families with disabled children.
Answered by Will Quince
The government is committed to building a coherent children’s social care system that has the interests of families and vulnerable children at its heart.
The department will align its implementation strategy for children’s social care with reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities system that it is consulting on through the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Green Paper.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Answer of 28 April 2022 to Question 158937, what assessment he has made of the prospect of the policy proposal in the SEND Review on deciding the levels of support disabled children get from a national banding system having the potential effect of reducing the level of support disabled children and families currently receive.
Answered by Will Quince
The special education needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision green paper sets out our proposals to improve the outcomes and experiences of children and young people with SEND and their families so that they can fulfil their potential and lead happy, healthy, and productive adult lives. The proposals aim to drive national consistency in how needs are assessed, identified, and met across education, health and care through the introduction of national standards.
The department wants to ensure the most effective use of our investment in high needs funding and the proposal for national framework of funding bands has the potential to ensure far greater consistency in funding arrangements throughout the system. The department is consulting on how it can best develop a national framework for funding bands and tariffs, to achieve its objectives and help make it easier for all children and young people and their families to understand not only the provision they can access locally but also the funding levels that provision would attract, giving them greater assurance that their child’s needs will be met appropriately.