Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to reverse recent reduction in the recruitment of secondary teachers of Religious Education; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Data from the School Workforce Census shows that the number of religious education teachers in the academic year 2021/22 was 15,529, the highest number since 2016/17.
The Department publishes postgraduate initial teacher training (PGITT) trainee targets on an annual basis. The targets for PGITT trainees to start training in 2022/23 were published in April 2022, and performance against those targets was reported within the Initial Teacher Training Census publication on 1 December 2022.
The final PGITT trainee target for religious education in the academic year 2022/23 was slightly reduced to 450 compared to 470 in the previous academic year.
The Department has no plans to revise the 2022/23 religious education PGITT trainee target, but will review it again next year as part of an annual cycle.
The Department recognises the need for schools to have a sufficient supply of teachers qualified to teach basic curriculum subjects and continues to take action to improve teacher supply. The Department is investing in attracting the best teachers where they are needed most.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which local authorities entered the (a) highest and (b) lowest proportion of their year 11 cohort for GCSE Religious Studies in the 2022-23 academic year.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department does not hold information related to the number of pupils entering GCSE Religious Studies exams for the 2022/23 academic year. This will be available from Autumn 2023.
The closest available information is the percentage of pupils in each Local Authority entered for GCSE Religious Studies in the 2021/22 academic year. This can be found in the attached file.
In the 2021/22 academic year, the Local Authority with the highest percentage of pupils entering GCSE Religious Studies was the Isles of Scilly with 86.7%, but this is based on only 15 pupils at the end of Key Stage 4. The next highest percentage was for Tower Hamlets, with 81%. The Local Authorities with the lowest percentage were Wakefield and Somerset. Both entered 14.4% of pupils for GCSE Religious Studies.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children were in receipt of free school meals in Lewisham East constituency in each academic year since 2018-19.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department publishes annual figures based on school census data on the number of pupils who are eligible for free school meals. The most recently published figures are for January 2022. The full collection of publications can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-and-pupil-numbers.
The attached table provides detail for Lewisham East from the 2018/19 to 2021/22 academic years.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 27 October 2022 to Question 67210 on Young Offenders: Housing, how the funding made available in the 2021 Spending Review was allocated by region.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
The Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021 announced £259 million of funding to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential children’s homes.
Following this, the department launched two waves of bidding rounds for local authorities to submit applications for this funding for both open and secure children’s homes. The department has allocated £112 million of this funding to local authorities throughout England and we are working with them to deliver projects by March 2025. Of this, £17 million has been allocated to open children home projects and £95 million to secure children’s home projects. This includes plans to build two new secure children’s homes in London and the West Midlands, and the rebuild and expansion of an existing home in Lincolnshire. These areas are currently lacking in provision for children and were priorities for this funding round.
The remaining funding will be allocated to open and secure children’s homes projects this financial year. The department is unable to set out regional awards until all clearances are in place. When all funding has been agreed, and successful local authorities have been notified, the department will share final award details, including regional funding allocations.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the impact of the changes to the publication of secondary school and college results data on parents ability to choose a school place for their children.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Parents are being provided with secondary school and college data on a similar timetable to previous years. Secondary school performance data was published on 20 October 2022 and 16-18 school and college data will be published on 2 February 2023.
While it is important that the Department returns to publishing such data, we also recognise that a school or college’s performance data may be affected by the uneven impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, the Department has removed the comparison tables, added caveats about treating the data with caution and changed the name of the website to Find School and College Performance Data to reduce the emphasis on comparison.
These changes were informed by the Department’s user research with parents of students in years 5, 7, 12 and 13. This showed parents understood that data from this year should be considered alongside a range of other information about the school or college and its individual circumstances.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an estimate of the sufficiency of childcare provision in Lewisham East constituency.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The department continues to monitor the sufficiency of childcare. 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 local authorities of any current sufficiency problem in Lewisham East Council, which holds the statutory duty to secure sufficient childcare in this borough.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an estimate of the affordability of childcare provision in Lewisham East constituency.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The department is committed to improving the cost, choice, and availability of childcare. We continue 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.
Lewisham East constituency falls within the London Borough of Lewisham, where the latest data shows the average hourly fee band for childcare to be £6.50 for two-year-old children, and £6.50 for three and four-year-old children.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to address repairs backlogs in further education colleges in Lewisham East constituency.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
The Further Education Capital Transformation Programme is delivering the £1.5 billion manifesto commitment to upgrade further education (FE) college estates.
Through this programme, £200 million was allocated to all FE colleges and designated institutions to undertake immediate remedial work and upgrade the condition of their estates. Lewisham College, which supports learners from the Lewisham East Constituency, is part of Newcastle College Group (NCG). Overall, the NCG group received an allocation of £4,597,902 of capital funding to improve their estate in August 2020. College groups were able to prioritise how and at which sites they could use this funding to tackle immediate condition improvement projects.
The next stage of the programme of investment to upgrade the FE estate is due to be announced later this year.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many child foster placements there are in (a) Lewisham East constituency and (b) the borough of Lewisham as of 9 June 2022.
Answered by Will Quince
There were 358 children looked after in foster placements in Lewisham local authority as of 31 March 2021. These figures on foster placements are available in the statistical release Children Looked After in England (including Adoption) year ending 31 March 2021 at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2020-to-2021.
Figures on children looked after at June 2022 are not held by the department. The department is currently collecting data on children looked after for the reporting year ending 31 March 2022 from local authorities. The figures will be published towards the end of the year and will show the number of children in foster placements as of 31 March 2022 and during the reporting year (1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022).
The department does not collect data on looked after children by parliamentary constituency.