Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that children with special educational needs and disabilities have equal access to work experience.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The careers statutory guidance makes it clear that schools and colleges should offer every young person at least one experience of a workplace by age 16 and a further experience by age 18, in line with Gatsby Benchmark 6.
The department funds the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) to support schools and colleges to provide high quality experiences of workplaces. The CEC undertake targeted work with employers to stimulate employer engagement that will support young people with special educational needs and disabilities. The department will continue to make the case for employers to provide work experience for young people with special educational needs.
For young people aged 16 to 24 with Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans, the department offers Supported Internships which are personalised study programmes, specifically designed to help young people to prepare for and transition into sustained, paid employment.
In February 2022, the department announced that it is providing funding of up to £18 million over the next three years to build capacity in the Supported Internships programme. The aim is to double the number of Supported Internships to give more young people with an EHC plan the skills to secure and sustain paid employment.
As part of this funding, the department has a contract with the Internships Work consortium, led by the National Development Team for Inclusion, to deliver activities to expand and improve Supported Internships provision across the country.
The Internships Work consortium will be working closely with local authorities to double the number of Supported Internships per year by 2025 and will engage with all partners in the system to level up the quality of internships across the country. Over 700 job coaches will be trained by 2025 to ensure interns receive high quality support on their work placements.
Finally, in the Spring Budget 2023, the Chancellor announced up to £3 million to pilot extending Supported Internship to young people without EHC plans. Through this pilot, the department will seek to establish whether the Supported Internship model is an effective approach for learners with learning difficulties and disabilities but without an EHC plan. The department will identify the benefits and challenges of using the Supported Internship model to support this cohort and use learning from the pilot to consider if and how the approach could be rolled out more widely.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the of the Concluding Observations on the combined sixth and seventh periodic reports of the UK to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, published on 22 June 2023, whether the Prime Minister has made an assessment of the potential merits of appointing a Minister for Children to the Cabinet with ministerial responsibility for monitoring and coordinating activities related to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
As set out in the list of Ministerial Responsibilities, the Department for Education is the lead department responsible for protecting and supporting children, working with other departments on the basis of collective responsibility. The Secretary of State for Education is a member of the Cabinet.
The government strives to find new ways to promote children’s rights and recognises that strengthening children’s rights is a continuous process. The government welcomes the constructive challenge that was made by the Committee in Geneva and will take into careful consideration the Concluding Observations, including how we further monitor and coordinate Children’s Rights across the UK.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department holds on the real-terms level of core funding for schools in each year since 2010 using 2010 as the base year.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is committed to providing a world class education system for all pupils and has provided significant funding for education to achieve that.
The Autumn Statement 2022 announced additional investment of £2 billion in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25, over and above totals announced at the 2021 Spending Review. This means funding for mainstream schools and high needs is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23. That is on top of the £4 billion, year on year increase provided in 2022/23, an increase of £7.5 billion, or over 15%, in just two years.
This additional funding will enable head teachers to continue to invest in the areas that positively impact educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the pupils who need it most. It will also help schools to manage higher costs, including higher energy bills and staff pay awards.
Total funding for both mainstream schools and high needs will total £58.8 billion in 2024/25. This is the highest ever level in real terms per pupil, as measured by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Information on funding for schools, in real terms, is available through the Department’s published data at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics. This sets out that that when adjusted for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010/11 and 2015/16 at around £6,700 in 2022/23 prices. It then fell by 3.8% over 2016/17 and 2017/18, but subsequently increased by 1.3% over 2018/19 and 2019/20. Since then, funding has increased by 10.3% over the course of the following four years, reaching £7,220 in 2023/24 (in 2022/23 prices).
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when she plans to publish the School Teachers’ Review Body 33rd report.
Answered by Nick Gibb
As part of the normal pay round process, the independent School Teachers’ Review Body has submitted its report and recommendations to the Government on teacher pay for 2023/24. The Department is considering the recommendations and will publish the response and the report in the usual way, in due course.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has received the recommendations of the School Teachers' Review Body's 33rd report.
Answered by Nick Gibb
As part of the normal pay round process, the independent School Teachers’ Review Body has submitted its report and recommendations to the Government on teacher pay for 2023/24. The Department is considering the recommendations and will publish the response and the report in the usual way, in due course.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education,what assessment she has made of the potential impact of increases in the cost of living on students.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The government recognises the additional cost of living pressures that have arisen this year which have impacted students. The department has not directly assessed the impact of increases in the cost of living on Higher Education (HE) students. The department closely monitors the evidence produced by other organisations and uses this to inform decision-making. For example, the Office for National Statistics’ work on the behaviours, plans, opinions and well-being of students related to the cost of living from the Student Cost of Living Insights Study (SCoLIS) and the Office for Students’ brief, ‘Studying during rises in the cost of living’.
Having considered reports such as these, on 11 January 2023, the department announced a one-off funding boost of £15 million to this year's student premium. There is now £276 million of student premium funding available this academic year to support disadvantaged students who need additional help. This extra funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes.
Decisions on student support for HE courses are taken on an annual basis and changes for the 2023/24 academic year were made through regulations laid in January 2023. The department has continued to increase maximum loans and grants for living and other costs on an annual basis, with a 2.3% increase for the 2022/23 academic year and a further 2.8% increase for 2023/24.
Furthermore, students who have been awarded a loan for living costs for the 2022/23 academic year that is lower than the maximum, and whose household income for the tax year 2022/23 has dropped by at least 15% compared to the income provided for their original assessment, have been able to apply for their entitlement to be reassessed.
Decisions on student finance have had to be taken alongside other spending priorities to ensure the system remains financially sustainable and the costs of HE are shared fairly between students and taxpayers, not all of whom have benefited from going to university.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to improve (a) monitoring and (b) oversight of school exclusion rates.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department collects data on suspensions and permanent exclusions from all state funded schools through the termly School Census. Schools must provide information on the type and reason for the exclusion for the previous two terms.
Prior to the 2021/22 academic year, data was published on an annual basis covering the whole academic year. Since November 2022 the Department has published the data on a termly basis.
This fulfils the Department’s commitment to the 2021 report ‘Strengthening Home Education’, where the Education Select Committee suggested that only having an annual statistical release on exclusions may prevent the identification of illegal exclusion practices.
To further improve the monitoring and oversight of school exclusions, the Department has taken further action by capturing the information directly from schools as part of the Daily Attendance Data Collection. This collects daily attendance data on schools' management information systems. Data is published fortnightly at Local Authority, regional and national level, allowing for more real time data on the use of the attendance code for exclusions (Code E).
To ensure Local Authorities receive real time data on all suspensions regardless of length, the Department took action through the School Discipline (Pupil Exclusions and Reviews) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 requiring all schools since September 2022 to share suspension data with Local Authorities ‘without delay’, to assist Local Authorities and safeguarding agencies to successfully support the most vulnerable pupils.
The Department is investing over £50 million to fund specialist support in mainstream and Alternative Provision schools in the areas where serious violence most impacts pupils.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department is taking steps to increase protections for victims of child criminal exploitation who are excluded from school.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department collects data on suspensions and permanent exclusions from all state funded schools through the termly School Census. Schools must provide information on the type and reason for the exclusion for the previous two terms.
Prior to the 2021/22 academic year, data was published on an annual basis covering the whole academic year. Since November 2022 the Department has published the data on a termly basis.
This fulfils the Department’s commitment to the 2021 report ‘Strengthening Home Education’, where the Education Select Committee suggested that only having an annual statistical release on exclusions may prevent the identification of illegal exclusion practices.
To further improve the monitoring and oversight of school exclusions, the Department has taken further action by capturing the information directly from schools as part of the Daily Attendance Data Collection. This collects daily attendance data on schools' management information systems. Data is published fortnightly at Local Authority, regional and national level, allowing for more real time data on the use of the attendance code for exclusions (Code E).
To ensure Local Authorities receive real time data on all suspensions regardless of length, the Department took action through the School Discipline (Pupil Exclusions and Reviews) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 requiring all schools since September 2022 to share suspension data with Local Authorities ‘without delay’, to assist Local Authorities and safeguarding agencies to successfully support the most vulnerable pupils.
The Department is investing over £50 million to fund specialist support in mainstream and Alternative Provision schools in the areas where serious violence most impacts pupils.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to increase diversity in senior leadership teams in schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department actively monitors diversity data, including leadership data, through published reports such as: ‘School leadership in England 2010 to 2020: characteristics and trends (April 2022)’, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-leadership-in-england-2010-to-2020-characteristics-and-trends. It is also monitored through ‘Working lives of teachers and leaders – wave 1 (April 2023)’, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-lives-of-teachers-and-leaders-wave-1.
Results show improvements over time in representation of some groups in leadership. However, some groups remain underrepresented in the teaching workforce and at leadership level.
The Department’s world class teacher development programmes, such as National Professional Qualifications, are designed to support all teachers through to executive headship and to reach as many people as possible, regardless of their background.
Governors have an important role to play in promoting diversity, equality and inclusion when appointing school leaders and guidance from the Department makes this clear.
School governance boards are expected to have an understanding of, and an adherence to, the Equalities Act 2010, promoting equality and diversity throughout the organisation, including in relation to its own operation. They should understand the full diversity of the cultural context of the school and community they serve as set out in the Governance Handbook and in the current guidance on recruiting a headteacher, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/recruiting-a-headteacher.
High quality trusts should ensure inclusive working environments, support flexible working, and take action to promote equality and diversity for the teaching workforce as recommended in the published descriptions of trust quality, which can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1152301/Trust_Quality_Descriptions.pdf.
The Government has also issued new guidance to assist employers with applying positive action in the workplace. The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/positive-action-in-the-workplace-guidance-for-employers.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made a recent assessment of the potential impact of diversity in schools' senior leadership teams on exclusion rates.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department agrees with the findings of the Timpson Review of School exclusion, in that it must back head teachers to create strong school cultures that deliver the best outcomes for every pupil. It is important to consider the diversity of senior leadership teams to ensure there are positive role models for all pupils in every school.
The Department monitors data on the teaching workforce, including statistics on the diversity of teachers and senior leadership teams.
The Department wants to see more diversity, so that teachers and leadership teams are representative of the communities they serve and the pupils they teach. If the Department is to recruit and retain the best possible candidates, the full potential of the teaching and leadership talent pool should be recognised and realised.
The Department’s world class teacher development programmes, such as National Professional Qualifications, are designed to support all teachers in the early stages of their careers right the way through to executive headship. These programmes are supported by unprecedented levels of investment to ensure they reach as many people as possible and facilitate the recruitment, retention and promotion of the best teachers and senior leadership teams, regardless of their background.
Through the suite of National Professional Qualifications (NPQs), current and aspiring leaders can develop the knowledge, behaviours, and networks they need to be high performing leaders at a variety of levels and deliver the best possible outcomes for the staff and children in their diverse communities. There are four leadership NPQs currently available: Senior Leadership, Headship, Executive Leadership, and Early Years Leadership.