Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of allocating funding from the apprenticeship levy to support apprenticeships in SMEs.
Answered by Anne Milton
The apprenticeship levy is paid by employers with a payroll of over £3 million a year. These employers are able to spend funds they have paid into the levy through their apprenticeship service account. All other employers use funds that have been allocated to providers, who offer apprenticeship training.
We have recently awarded hundreds of providers across the country with initial awards totalling around £485 million to deliver apprenticeship training for non-levy paying employers. Non-levy paying employers benefit from government co-investment of 90 per cent of apprenticeship training and assessment costs. 100 per cent of the cost of training is paid for small employers, with fewer than 50 employees, who take on apprentices who are 16 to 18 years old, 19 to 24 year old care leavers or 19 to 24 year olds with an Education and Health Care Plan.
From April 2018, we will allow eligible levy-paying employers to transfer up to 10 per cent of the annual value of funds entering their digital accounts to other employers, including smaller businesses.
By 2019/20 annual investment in apprenticeships in England will be £2.45 billion, double what was spent in 2010-11, ensuring that all employers can access high quality apprenticeships training.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress has been made on collating and publishing examples of good practice such as The Daily Mile in increasing children’s physical activity levels in schools.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
We are aware of a number of active mile programmes working with schools. Active miles are an excellent opportunity for schools to support their pupils to be physically active throughout the school day.
Officials have met with representatives from active mile providers and will continue to discuss good practice. This will ensure that active mile programmes can best meet the needs of schools and enable pupils to be physically active throughout the school day.
The government has worked with physical education (PE) and school sport partners to identify good practice examples for the PE and Sport Premium. They have been published on the Teaching blog at:
https://teaching.blog.gov.uk/category/pe-and-sport-premium/.
The government has doubled the primary PE and Sport Premium to £320 million a year from September 2017. Updated guidance was published in October 2017 and case studies were published via the Teaching blog site on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether an assessment has been made of the sufficiency of funding for the primary school swimming programme in all parts of the UK; what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of training of the staff on that programme and whether teachers have professional expertise regularly updated; and if he will ensure that the swimming programme is offered by all primary schools to all children.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
Swimming and water safety are compulsory elements of the physical education (PE) curriculum at key stages 1 and 2. The department is responsible for the PE curriculum and the PE and Sport Premium in England. Responsibility for the curriculums of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales lie with each devolved administration.
The government’s sports strategy, ‘Sporting Future’, published in December 2015, included a commitment to establish a working group “to advise on how to ensure no child leaves school unable to meet a minimum standard of capability and confidence in swimming”. In response, the Swim Group has published an independent report, which reviewed current practice and provision and set out a number of recommendations.
The government has formed an implementation group to review the recommendations. The group will work to increase the opportunities for all children to swim and achieve the national curriculum requirements.
The government has doubled the primary PE and Sport Premium to £320 million a year from September 2017. Updated guidance was published in October 2017 stating that the premium can be used to “provide additional swimming provision targeted to pupils not able to meet the swimming requirements of the national curriculum”. The guidance also indicates the premium can be used to provide staff with professional development, mentoring, training and resources to help them teach PE and sport more effectively.
For the 2017 to 2018 academic year, schools must publish how many pupils within their year 6 cohort are meeting the national curriculum requirement to swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres, use a range of strokes effectively and perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations. This is a new condition placed upon use of the premium.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when she plans to implement recommendation 8 of the Maynard Taskforce.
Answered by Anne Milton
We are making good progress in implementing the recommendations made by Paul Maynard’s taskforce to ensure that having a learning difficulty and/or disability is not a barrier to becoming an apprentice.
In accordance with Recommendation 8, we considered joining up funding streams to reduce potential hurdles. On reviewing departments’ policies, we found that sources of funding support for those with learning disabilities in work are already streamlined. The Department for Work and Pension’s Access to Work scheme is a highly personalised funding stream, which is already able to consider pre-existing assessments of need agreed by other agencies in emplacing support in the workplace, including Additional Learning Support assessments.
We are also evaluating how the new apprenticeship funding system is working to encourage the successful take up and likely achievement of apprentices with a disability. We have developed guidance materials, which make clearer the support available to disabled apprentices and how to access that, including a toolkit for employers to help them develop a more inclusive and accessible apprenticeship offer, and equality and diversity training materials.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the amount of student (a) fees not paid and (b) loans not repaid by foreign students from (a) EU and (b) non-EU countries was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
Statistics covering English student loans are published annually by the Student Loans Company (SLC) in the Statistical First Release (SFR) ‘Student Loans in England’.
Eligibility for student finance is based on residency prior to studying; students resident in non-EU countries prior to studying are typically not eligible for English student support.
Information on student loans held at the end of each financial year by borrowers domiciled in England and the EU prior to studying can be found in Table 1 of the SFR. The latest statistics show that at the end of the financial year 2016-17, around £89.3 billion was outstanding in higher education loans, of which £1.7 billion (1.9%) was held by EU domiciled borrowers.
Asked by: Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will replace its July 2016 guidance on schools being fitted with fire sprinklers which includes the words therefore BB100 no longer includes an expectation that new school buildings will be fitted with them with guidance which makes clear that there is an expectation that all new schools will have sprinklers fitted.
Answered by Nick Gibb
There have been no changes to the fire safety laws for schools or our determination to protect children’s safety. It has always been the case, and remains the case, that where the risk assessment required for any new building recommends sprinklers are installed to keep children safe, they must be fitted.
The draft revised fire safety design for schools guidance, issued as part of a technical consultation with experts from the fire sector, has not been adopted. The Department’s 2007 guidance continues to be extant. Alongside the rest of Government, the department will take forward any findings from the public inquiry into the tragic Grenfell Tower fire.