Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to tackle underperformance in schools in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is committed to educational excellence everywhere. The Education and Adoption Bill includes powers designed to help raise standards in Greater Manchester, ensuring that all failing maintained schools become academies with strong sponsors and coasting schools will be challenged to improve. The Regional Schools Commissioner has already prioritised Greater Manchester for the Northern Fund and brought a new, high-performing sponsor into the area. Where standards are unacceptably low in academies, she has held sponsors and academy trusts to account and has used the Secretary of State’s powers to issue Pre-Termination Warning Notices (PTWNs) to trusts that have failed to drive forward the necessary improvements at pace.
The department publishes all PTWNs at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/letters-to-academies-about-poor-performance#termination-notices
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to increase school capacity and alleviate pressure on secondary schools for additional places.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring sufficient school places in their area, and supporting them to do this is one of the Government’s top priorities. That’s why we have committed to investing £23 billion in school buildings up to 2021, to create 600,000 new school places, open 500 free schools and address essential maintenance needs.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that local authorities have the (a) financial and (b) other capacity to deliver free childcare to those people who are most deprived.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
Since September 2014 around 40% of disadvantaged two-year-olds have been entitled to an early education place. In 2012 the Government contracted ‘Achieving 2-year-olds’ to support local authorities in expanding the two-year-old entitlement. This support is working, and data from the latest voluntary survey of local authorities shows that an estimated 182,000 children were funded during the seven week period in the autumn of 2015, as take-up of the entitlement has increased to 72% of eligible children. This is building on local authorities’ successful delivery of 15 hours of early education per week to all three- and four-year olds, with 99% of four-year-olds and 94% of three-year-olds taking up a place.
The Government is investing in childcare at record levels, and total Government spend on childcare will increase from £5 billion in 2015-16 to over £6 billion by 2019-20. This includes almost £4 billion for the current free entitlement for three- and four-year-olds, disadvantaged two-year-olds and the early years pupil premium for three- and four-year-olds, as well as funding for the extended entitlement for working parents of three- and four-year-olds. The funding also includes £300 million for a significant uplift to the rate paid for the two, three and four-year-old entitlements, including for children from deprived backgrounds.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to promote good mental health among teachers and students.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
Good mental health and wellbeing is a key priority for this Government. We have high aspirations for all children and want them to be able to fulfil their potential. Schools should consider how to provide appropriate support to students and staff, along with good teaching to support pupil attainment. We want schools to be able to decide on the best way to do this given their individual circumstances. One of the best ways is as part of a ‘whole-school’ approach. We have taken a range of actions to support them.
We have recently revised and updated our counselling guidance which provides practical, evidence-based advice, informed by experts on how to ensure school based counselling services achieve the best outcomes for all students, including vulnerable children and young people. Having this provision in schools also provides support for teaching staff as they are able to easily and quickly get advice from the counsellor about issues that they are concerned about.
We have also provided schools with other resources including: guidance and age-appropriate lesson plans on teaching mental health in PSHE; guidance on mental health and behaviour; and MindEd, a free online portal which has been developed to enable all adults working with children and young people learn more about specific mental health problems and how to support them.
We are providing opportunities to help young people support each other effectively. We recently launched a suite of peer support activities, which includes a call for evidence for stakeholders, children and young people and funding of up to £1.5m. This includes a new digital innovation fund to develop online reliable, engaging and trusted advice to help young people understand their own and their peers’ mental health.
In addition we are contributing to a £3m joint pilot with NHS England which is testing how single points of contact in CAMHS and schools can secure effective mental health support to pupils.
We are also working closely with the Department of Health on a national campaign to reduce stigma and raise awareness of mental health issues amongst parents and children, which includes resources for schools.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the per-pupil-funding is for primary and secondary schools in each local authority area in 2015-16.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The government distributes schools funding to local authorities on a per pupil basis, known as a schools block unit of funding (SBUF). The SBUF applies to all pupils in a local authority and does not vary according to school phase. The SBUFs of all local authorities for 2015-16 are published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2015-to-2016 (see the document entitled ‘Dedicated Schools Grant 2015 to 2016: updated February 2016’ and the tab ‘2015-16 DSG allocations’). The SBUFs for 2016-17 have also been published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2016-to-2017
The schools block unit of funding is multiplied by the total number of pupils to give each local authority their schools block. Local authorities, in consultation with their schools forums, devise local funding formulae to distribute the schools block to schools in their areas. Local authorities can vary their formulae according to school phase. These formulae are published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-block-funding-formulae-2015-to-2016 (please see the document entitled ‘Local authority funding proforma data 2015 to 2016’ and the second tab).
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the role of the local authorities is in identifying poorly performing schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Local authorities have a number of statutory powers they may use in maintained schools that are “eligible for intervention”. These powers are described in more detail in the Schools Causing Concern guidance, available on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/469299/Schools_causing_concern_draft_guidance.pdf
Schools are “eligible for intervention” where they have been judged as inadequate by Ofsted, where they have failed to comply with a warning notice or where - following 2016 results – they fall within the definition of coasting. Local authorities have powers to give warning notices to maintained schools where they have concerns about unacceptable performance (e.g. where a school is below floor standards), where there has been a breakdown in leadership and governance, or the safety of pupils or staff may be being threatened.
We ran a public consultation during October to December 2015, which sought views on draft revisions to the Schools Causing Concern guidance in light of the Education and Adoption Bill. The consultation response and the revised Schools Causing Concern guidance will be published shortly.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to tackle the level of mental illness among primary and secondary school children.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
We have high aspirations for all children and want them to be able to fulfil their potential both academically and in terms of their mental wellbeing. This attainment is best supported if they have good mental health, character and resilience. Schools can play an important role in promoting good mental wellbeing and in responding to issues that arise.
To support them in doing this we have funded the PSHE Association to provide guidance and lesson plans which support age-appropriate teaching of mental health issues. We have also revised and updated our counselling guidance for schools to include a section on vulnerable children and what schools may need to do to make counselling accessible to them.
The department recently launched activity to identify how to help young people help their friends to talk about mental health issues, including a call for evidence for stakeholders and children and young people. We also announced funding of up to £1.5m for projects to take this forward once the call for evidence is complete, including a new digital innovation fund to develop reliable, engaging and trusted advice online to help them understand both their own, and their friends’ mental health.
Schools need support from specialist services locally to ensure that pupils with mental illness get the support they need. That is why the Government is investing an additional £1.4bn in children’s mental health this Parliament. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) across the country have worked with partners, including schools and colleges, to produce local transformation plans for children and young people’s mental health services. These should set out what will be done locally to make the best use of the resources available – changing how CAMHS is delivered in response to the challenges set out in the Future in Mind report.
In addition we are contributing to a £3m joint pilot with NHS England which is testing how single points of contact in CAMHS and schools can secure effective mental health support to pupils. The pilots are involving over 250 schools in 27 CCG areas through joint training, which supports schools and CAMHS leads to identify specific activity to improve support in their area.