Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of directly employed civil servants in his Department earn under £50,000 per annum.
Answered by Anne Milton
The department and its executive agencies have 4,544 staff earning a gross basic salary under £50,000 per annum, which represents 73% of the workforce. This information is based on data as of September 2018.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has estimated the number of hate crimes reported on university property in the 2016-17 academic year.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The government takes all forms of hate crime extremely seriously. There is no place in our society - including within higher education – for hatred or any form of harassment, discrimination or racism.
Information on the number of hate crimes on university property in the 2016-17 academic year is not held centrally.
The Universities UK Harassment and Hate Crime Taskforce, which was set up in September 2015 at the government’s request, makes a number of recommendations on tackling harassment and hate crime on campus, including on improving reporting rates and mechanisms for disclosure in higher education providers. These include, that relevant internal and external support should be signposted, and that reporting procedures should be centralised, accessible, and allow for anonymity if preferred, as well as enabling accurate data to be captured to determine the scale of a problem and track year on-year trends. The government expects higher education providers to take these recommendations seriously and to have robust policies and procedures in place to investigate and address hate crime.
To support providers in implementing the Taskforce’s recommendations, the Office for Students is supporting and evaluating over 100 safeguarding projects to the value of £4.5 million. This includes 63 projects to improve responses to hate crime and online harassment on campus, and 11 to tackle religious-based hate crime.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether any pupil nationality data collected by schools has been shared with the Home Office for immigration enforcement purposes since September 2016.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The National Pupil Database (NPD) is a longitudinal research database that provides invaluable evidence on educational performance to inform independent research, as well as studies commissioned by the Department. This data does not include nationality or birth information.
Data on nationality and country of birth have not and will not be shared with the Home Office. These data items are for evidence and analysis by the Department for Education only and are not processed into the National Pupil Database.
The former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the School System (Lord Nash) publicly committed to this during a House of Lords debate on 31 October 2016 on the Education (Pupil Information) (England) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016 as found in columns 510 - 512 of volume 776 of Hansard.
The current Memorandum of Understanding between the Department and the Home Office is in the House Library.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to increase the number of overseas students studying in UK universities over the next 10 years.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The government fully recognises the important economic and cultural contribution that EU and international students make to the UK’s higher education sector. We want that contribution to continue and we are confident – given the world class quality of our higher education sector – that it will. We welcome international students and there continues to be no limit on the number who can come here to study, nor any plans to limit any institution’s ability to recruit international students from outside the EU.
The UK remains a highly attractive destination for non-EU students, with their numbers remaining at record highs – over 170,000 non-EU entrants to UK higher education institutions (HEIs) for the seventh year running. We actively promote study in the UK through the GREAT Campaign and to over 100 countries through the British Council. To encourage ambition across the sector, the government also set an aspiration to increase education exports (up to 60% of which is comprised of international students at UK HEIs) to £30 billion by 2020.
To help inform decisions on the future migration system, the government has commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee to provide an objective assessment of the impact of EU and non-EU international students by September 2018. This has provided an important opportunity for the sector to share views and evidence.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of school governors England are BAME.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The information is not held centrally.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which external recruitment agencies are used by his Department's non-departmental public bodies.
Answered by Anne Milton
The Institute for Apprentices have used Gatenby Sanderson and the Office for the Children’s Commissioner have used Hays in this financial year.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether an equality impact assessment has been conducted on its policy of allowing greater freedom to faith schools to select on the basis of (a) religion (b) denomination.
Answered by Anne Milton
Such assessments are standard practice across the public sector in accordance with the Equality Act 2010.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 15 January 2018 to Question 121648, what discussions he has had with the National Union of Students on his Department’s support for the right of (a) the English Defence League, (b) Hizb-ut-Tahir iii) the Muslim Public Affairs Committee to speak on university campuses in opposition to the NUS' position of no-platforming.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The Department’s support for freedom of speech within the law has been made clear publicly on a number of occasions. We will continue to relay that position in any discussions with NUS officers.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what consultations the Government had with stakeholders prior to the announcement of the National Office for Students.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
A full public consultation on creating an Office for Students took place following the publication of proposals set out in the green paper ‘Fulfilling our potential – Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’ (November 2015): https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/474227/BIS-15-623-fulfilling-our-potential-teaching-excellence-social-mobility-and-student-choice.pdf.
In response to this consultation, the government set out its intention to create an Office for Students in the white paper ‘Higher education: success as a knowledge economy’ (May 2016), supported by the Higher Education and Research Act 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-education-success-as-a-knowledge-economy-white-paper.
During 2017, the department launched seven consultations on aspects of the reforms, set out in this legislation, relating to how the Office for Students will undertake its role as the new regulator for the higher education sector. These included, registration and other fees; the regulatory framework; the designation of the data and quality bodies; Degree Awarding Powers and University Title; and monetary and financial penalties.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 2 February 2018 to Question 125493 on Faith Schools; what discussions his Department has had with local authorities on the effect of the removal of the cap on the distribution of (a) school admissions and (b)catchement areas.
Answered by Anne Milton
The department is considering carefully its response to the 'Schools that work for everyone' consultation, including in relation to the faith cap. We will set out our response in due course.
With any free school proposal, the department takes account of the views of local authorities when making decisions. This will continue for future free schools application rounds.