Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how the Ofsted inspection regime for the Army Foundation College differs from that used in civilian colleges of further education for the same age group.
Answered by Nick Gibb
This is a matter for Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman. I have asked her to write to the hon. Member and a copy of her reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department for Education:
What steps he is taking to help make up for teaching time lost as a result of the covid-19 lockdown announced in January 2021.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is committed to helping children and young people make up learning lost as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. This is why we have invested £1.7 billion to give early years, schools and colleges support to help pupils get back on track, including additional funding for tutoring, early language support and summer schools.
We have appointed Sir Kevan Collins as an Education Recovery Commissioner to advise on our recovery plan and academic and non-academic factors in supporting attainment will form a part of this work.
Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support reading for pleasure among children during the national covid-19 lockdown that has been in place since January 2021.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is committed to continuing to raise literacy standards by ensuring all children, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can read fluently and with understanding. The Department is aware that reading for pleasure brings a range of benefits, including reading attainment, writing ability, text comprehension and grammar, breadth of vocabulary, and pleasure in reading in later life.
In 2018, the Department launched a £26.3 million English Hubs Programme dedicated to improving the teaching of reading, particularly for disadvantaged children. Since its launch, the Government has provided a further £17 million in funding for this improvement programme, which focusses on systematic synthetic phonics, early language, and reading for pleasure. The programme has provided targeted support to several thousands of schools across England, and in the 2020-21 academic year, is providing intensive support to over 850 partner schools.
To provide support to schools in developing the ability to switch from classroom teaching to remote provision, the Department has made £4.84 million available to Oak National Academy to provide video lessons in a broad range of subjects for Reception up to Year 11. Oak National Academy’s video lessons include coverage of literacy, reading for pleasure and English as appropriate from Early Years Foundation Stage up to Key Stage 4.
To support schools in making up for lost classroom time, the Government has announced a £1 billion catch-up package, including a universal catch-up premium worth £650 million. Our expectation is that this funding will be spent on the additional measures required to support children and young people to catch up after a period of disruption to their education. This can include support in reading through systematic synthetic phonics and reading for pleasure initiatives.
The catch-up package includes a £350 million National Tutoring Programme for disadvantaged pupils. The programme comprises three elements: a tuition programme for five to 16 year olds, with tuition partners and academic mentors specialising in English available to schools; a 16 to 19 tuition fund, including support for small group tuition in English, and a targeted early language support programme for Reception aged children to support early literacy.
The Department is regularly conducting evidence reviews to understand the effect of COVID-19 on reading comprehension, as well as other subjects. As expected, published studies show that primary pupils faced considerable loss in overall reading comprehension, as well as other subjects, based on studies that assessed pupils in the autumn 2020 term, although there are some methodological limitations, which mean that the exact estimates are uncertain.
The Department has not yet published data on the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on reading for pleasure. Recognising the importance of reading during the disruption to education caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, the Department held a Reading Together Day on 16 July 2020 to celebrate the benefits of reading. As part of this, we published 10 top tips to help parents support their children to read and this information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-top-tips-to-encourage-children-to-read.