Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to immediately increase the Department for Education's Capital Departmental Expenditure Limits (CDEL) to a level equivalent in real terms to that set in 2010.
Answered by Michelle Donelan
The department engages regularly with HM Treasury about investment in schools, including capital investment. The department’s budget was set at the Spending Review and included £19.4 billion in capital funding to support the education sector between the 2022/23 and 2024/25 financial years.
From this, we have announced £1.8 billion to help maintain and improve the condition of school buildings and grounds in the 2022/23 financial year. This sustains the increased level of funding announced in the 2021/22 financial year, which was significantly higher than the £1.4 billion per year typically allocated over the 2016-2021 Spending Review period. It comes on top of the new School Rebuilding Programme which will transform 500 schools over the next decade.
Our investment in this Spending Review period builds on nearly £30 billion of capital investment in education between the 2016/17 and 2021/22 financial years, including over £6 billion for new mainstream school places through basic need capital allocations, £665 million for places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities or requiring alternative provision and over £13 billion improving or replacing school buildings.
Since 2010, capital funding for schools has undergone a series of reforms. One of the drivers of differences in capital funding is closing the Buildings School for the Future programme in 2010 and reforms to drive down the costs of school building. A review of school capital investment by Sebastian James in 2011 found that the Building Schools for the Future programme was expensive and did not target schools in the greatest need. The design and procurement process was not designed to create high and consistent quality or low cost, nor to reduce costs over time. Our programmes now deliver more efficiently and better target buildings in the worst condition.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made representations to Cabinet colleagues on the potential merits of making free school meals available to all primary school children for the purposes of supporting families with the rising cost of living.
Answered by Will Quince
The provision of free school meals (FSM) to children from out-of-work families or those on low incomes is of the utmost importance to this government. Under the benefits-related criteria, the department provides a free healthy meal to around 1.7 million children, ensuring they are well-nourished and can concentrate, learn and achieve in the classroom.
Under this government, eligibility for FSM has been extended several times and to more groups of children than any other government over the past half a century, including the introduction of universal infant FSM, and further education FSM.
In addition to this, the temporary extension of FSM eligibility to some groups with no recourse to public funds that has been in place since 2020 was extended to all groups and made permanent, subject to income thresholds.
The department thinks it is right that provision is aimed at supporting the most disadvantaged, those out of work or on the lowest incomes. We do not have any plans to extend universal provision but we will continue to keep all free school meal eligibility under review, to ensure that these meals are supporting those who most need them.
The government is continuing to provide targeted cost of living support for households most in need. Through the Household Support Fund, the government is providing an additional £500 million to help households with the cost of household essentials, on top of what we have already provided since October 2021, bringing the total funding for this support to £1 billion.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made recent representations to Cabinet colleagues on the potential merits of allocating funding to ensure that children and young people have free internet access in households on universal credit.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department is supportive of the work done by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to promote access to social tariffs for households on universal credit. Social tariffs offer low-cost landline and broadband services for those on certain means-tested benefits. In April 2022, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport wrote to providers asking them to do more to promote their social tariffs to ensure low-income households know about the support available. The government will continue to engage industry in increasing awareness of the social tariffs available moving forward. In September 2021, the government partnered with industry leaders to launch the Digital Inclusion Impact Group to tackle digital exclusion. One of the pilot programmes is Dell Donate to Educate, which supports children with the right access to technology at school and at home.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the levels of adherence to his Department's statutory guidance on the cost of school uniforms in terms of whether schools are implementing an affordable uniform policy.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department published new statutory guidance in November 2021 to ensure the cost of school uniforms is reasonable and secures the best value for money for parents. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cost-of-school-uniforms/cost-of-school-uniforms.
Schools are currently beginning to implement the guidance and will be engaging with their parents and pupils as they do so. The department expects governing boards to be compliant with much of the guidance by September 2022 and fully compliant by summer 2023.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will introduce a dedicated technology budget for state schools for the purposes of tackling the digital divide.
Answered by Robin Walker
Schools’ technology is managed from their central budgets, and they have the autonomy to decide how this resource is spent so that they can prioritise their individual needs. The department has provided over 1.95 million laptops and tablets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those devices are in the hands of schools who can decide how and when children should have access to them.
The department is setting standards so that school and trust leaders know what they need to do to get their technology estate in good shape. The department is also working with commercial providers to accelerate gigabit capable broadband rollout to schools, to enable all schools to have access to a high-speed connection by 2025. Additionally, up to £150 million will be invested to upgrade schools that fall below our Wi-Fi connectivity standards in priority areas.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to suspend Ofsted inspections in schools to minimise disruption during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Robin Walker
Ofsted inspections continue to play an important role in providing independent assurance as providers respond to COVID-19. It is right though that these arrangements are kept under review, and adjustments made where appropriate.
On 2 January 2022, the government announced that Ofsted will not ask inspectors who are also school leaders to undertake inspections, so they can focus on their leadership responsibilities at this critical time. Ofsted will also encourage schools that are significantly impacted by COVID-19 related staff absence to ask for their inspection to be deferred. Ofsted will look sensitively at each deferral request and judge each case on its merits. It is right that decisions about whether an inspection should go ahead is made by the independent inspectorate.
Taken together, these measures will both reduce the overall number of inspections for a temporary period, and lead to the deferral of inspections planned for institutions managing high levels of staff absence.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many air purifiers are currently installed in school classrooms in the Wansbeck constituency; and how many air purifiers are planned to be fitted in school classrooms in that constituency and by what date.
Answered by Robin Walker
During the autumn term, we provided over 353,000 CO2 monitors to all state-funded education providers, including early years, schools and further education colleges, backed by £25 million in government funding. Feedback suggests that schools are finding the monitors helpful to manage ventilation and, in the majority of schools, colleges and nurseries, existing ventilation measures are sufficient.
Maintaining adequate ventilation remains the responsibility of individual providers. Where an area of poor ventilation has been identified that cannot be resolved through simple measures such as opening doors and windows, schools are advised to explore what remedial works may be required to improve ventilation. Where it is not possible to maintain adequate ventilation, it may be appropriate to consider the use of an air cleaning unit while the underlying ventilation issue is addressed.
When used properly, air cleaning units can help reduce airborne contaminants in a poorly ventilated space, including viruses like COVID-19. Air cleaning units are not a substitute for ventilation and should never be used as a reason to reduce ventilation. They are not necessary in spaces that are adequately ventilated.
The department will also make up to 8000 air cleaning units available for poorly ventilated teaching spaces in state-funded education providers, where quick fixes to improve ventilation are not possible.
Deliveries of air cleaning units will start from this week to special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision providers. These were allocated in the first application round announced in November 2021. The second round of applications is open until 9am on 17 January. All state funded schools, colleges and nurseries can apply. Special and alternative provision providers that were not successful or did not apply in the first round are also eligible to apply in this round. Once applications have closed, all applications will be assessed against strict criteria and allocated to providers based on need. Providers with successful applications will be contacted individually to arrange delivery, with deliveries expected from February 2022.
For those providers that are not eligible for funded units, the online marketplace provides a route to purchasing air cleaning units directly from suppliers at a suitable specification and competitive price. The marketplace is available to view here: https://s107t01-webapp-v2-01.azurewebsites.net/list/air-cleaning.
Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, we have emphasised the importance of ventilation and provided guidance to providers on ventilation requirements. In addition to our existing guidance on ventilation we have provided schools, colleges and nurseries with guidance on how to use the air cleaning units as well as how to order a unit via the marketplace. The application process has been communicated to settings via our Daily Bulletin and we continue to support providers with their queries via the Coronavirus Helpline.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has been made of the potential merits of suspending SATs in May 2022 for Year 6 pupils due to continuing high absence rates and ongoing disruption in schools due to the outbreak of covid-19.
Answered by Robin Walker
We are continuing to plan for a full programme of primary assessments to take place in summer 2022. The assessments will be crucial in helping parents, schools and the department gauge the impact of education lost and will enable us to better understand the effectiveness of education recovery initiatives.
The results from the 2022 assessments will not be published in Key Stage 2 performance tables. We will ensure that any data shared with Ofsted, regional schools’ commissioners and others is caveated with clear messages about the uneven impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on pupils and schools, and to advise caution when drawing conclusions from the data.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children and young people in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools have been confirmed with covid-19 in Wansbeck constituency since September 2021.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department collects data on the total number of pupils that are absent each day from school with confirmed COVID-19, as opposed to the total number of positive test results in an area. As we collect the total number of pupils absent from school, we are unable to determine if the same pupil is absent on consecutive days, so are unable to provide a total for the number of pupils absent in this period.
The proportion of pupils in state-funded primary and secondary schools absent due to COVID-19, since the start of the academic year, can be found on Explore Education Statistics. The lowest geographical level the data is split to is local authority level. Published data for Northumberland is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/3d84bca3-0d0c-4c10-9163-a37d888dc624.
The latest set of published data is from 11 January, available at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic--6.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many teachers working in schools in Wansbeck constituency have been confirmed with covid-19 since September 2021.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department collects data on the total number of teachers that are absent each day from school with confirmed COVID-19, as opposed to the total number of positive test results of teachers in an area. As we collect the total number of teachers absent from school, we are unable to determine if the same teacher is absent on consecutive days, so are unable to provide a total for the number of teachers absent in this period.
The proportion of teachers in state-funded schools absent due to COVID-19, since the start of the academic year, can be found on Explore Education Statistics. The lowest geographical level the data is split to is local authority level. Published data for Northumberland is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/df96718b-b549-42cb-98f4-4e34afd9ee77.
The latest set of published data is from 11 January, available at this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic--6.