Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of UNICEF ranking the UK 27 out of 38 OECD and EU countries for mental wellbeing, physical health and academic and social skills.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The government has made the attainment, health and wellbeing of children and young people a priority. Many of the challenges set out require a cross-government approach.
School standards in England have improved overall since 2010. 86% of schools are now rated good or outstanding – up from 68% in 2010. Over the last 9 years, the percentage of children meeting expectations in the phonics screening check has gone up from 58% to 82%. We achieved our highest ever score in an international assessment of reading in 2016. There has been a 9-percentage point rise in key stage 2 maths results since new tests were introduced in 2016, and a significant improvement in maths scores for 15 year olds in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) international test results, driven by a decrease in the number of low attainers. Results from the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 international test results show our year 5 and year 9 pupils continue to perform strongly on the international stage - we particularly welcome the significant improvement in attainment for our year 5 pupils since 2015.
We are reforming the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and over 3,000 schools are early adopters this year. We have strengthened the high-level curriculum summaries and early learning goals, including a focus on areas we know are key predictors of later success: communication and language, literacy and mathematics.
The government plans to invest over £7 billion during 2020/21 academic year, to ensure there is a place in education or training for every 16 to 19-year-old who wants one (this includes spending on apprenticeships). Provision is funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, which works with local authorities to ensure that provision meets the needs of young people in their area.
Under Raising the Participation Age (RPA) requirements, all young people in England are now required to continue in education or training until at least their 18th birthday. In practice most young people continue until the end of the academic year in which they turn 18. More information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/raising-the-participation-age.
The Department for Education (DfE) works closely with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. There is a joint programme overseeing the implementation of the Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision green paper. This includes the provision of mental health support teams linked to groups of schools and colleges and part of a wider NHS England investment in children and young people’s mental health, which is transforming how specialist services are provided and make links to other services.
DfE also works closely with DHSC and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) on physical health, contributing to the government’s childhood obesity plan. The healthy schools rating scheme celebrates the positive actions that schools are delivering in terms of healthy living, healthy eating and physical activity, and supports schools in identifying further actions that they can take in this area.
The School sport and activity action plan sets out how we are working to support the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation that all children and young people should have access to 60 minutes a day of physical activity. We have also introduced a new curriculum covering relationships, sex and health education, which became mandatory from September 2020 and means that all pupils will be taught about ways to be physically and mentally healthy and about healthy relationships with their peers.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of pupils classed as vulnerable were attending school as at 1 December 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department does not collect attendance information for all pupil characteristics, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). We do collect attendance data for vulnerable children with an education health and care plan (EHCP) and/or social worker on a daily basis. This data is published at a national level as part of the official statistics series. The publication can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak. Data covering the period including 1 December will be published on 8 December.
We estimate that on 26 November 78% of all pupils with an EHCP on roll in all state funded schools were in attendance, and 78% of all pupils with a social worker on roll in all state funded schools were in attendance.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of pupils classed as SEND were attending school as at 1 December 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department does not collect attendance information for all pupil characteristics, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). We do collect attendance data for vulnerable children with an education health and care plan (EHCP) and/or social worker on a daily basis. This data is published at a national level as part of the official statistics series. The publication can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak. Data covering the period including 1 December will be published on 8 December.
We estimate that on 26 November 78% of all pupils with an EHCP on roll in all state funded schools were in attendance, and 78% of all pupils with a social worker on roll in all state funded schools were in attendance.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many child protection referrals were made to Children's Services in each month of 2020.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The monthly figures on the number of child protection referrals that were made to children’s social care services in England, up to March 2020, are published in the ‘Characteristics of children in need’ statistical release: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need.
The Vulnerable Children and Young People Survey collects fortnightly data from local authorities in England on the number of referrals made to children’s social care services. The data for the full month is not collected.
The attached tables show the number of referrals to children’s social care services, where the data is available for 2020.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many school pupils have tested positive for covid-19 since 1 September 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department does not hold COVID-19 testing data.
We collect data on the open status of schools, the number of schools that have indicated they have sent children home due to COVID-19 containment, and the total number of pupils reported absent due to a confirmed COVID-19 case. The data is published from this collection at a national level as part of the official statistics series. The publication can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak.
On 19 November 2020, 18,000 pupils in state-funded schools were reported absent due to a confirmed case of COVID-19. This data is collected at school level, not pupil level. Therefore, we cannot estimate a total for the number of pupils absent since the beginning of term.
Please note that Public Health England (PHE) leads in holding data on infection, incidence, and COVID-19 cases overall. PHE publishes data on COVID-19 incidents by institution, including educational settings, which can be found through the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-report.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason the Union Learning Fund is due to end in April 2021.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The decision was taken to increase the scale and reach of our offer in response to the challenges facing our changing economy, by consolidating our support in larger, more comprehensive offers.
The Unionlearn model has its limitations. It is reliant on a trade union presence in the workplace, which is more focused on larger employers and does not necessarily reach the unemployed, self-employed, start-ups, and many more small and medium-sized businesses that do not have union representation. The 2018 evaluation by Exeter University found only 2% of people supported through Unionlearn were unemployed and 5% were self-employed.
We are focussing on a much larger and more comprehensive package of training support, including the establishment of a £2.5 billion National Skills Fund to help adults get the skills they need, including the Lifetime Skills Guarantee – to support any adult who does not yet have an A-level equivalent qualification to obtain one. This is in addition to the existing entitlement for adults without English and maths level 2 qualifications or Basic Digital Skills level 1 to get fully funded support to gain these essential qualifications.
As a result, it was decided not to continue to fund the smaller Unionlearn offer. All the money will be invested in skills and retraining that will be fully accessible to everyone.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that recently unemployed individuals are able to acquire new skills.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The department wants to ensure that a wide range of opportunities are available to people of all ages to meet their future skills needs.
The department has introduced a number of additional measures this year as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, such as through the Plan for Jobs announced by my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in July 2020, and the Lifetime Skills Guarantee announced by my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, in September.
The Lifetime Skills Guarantee is aimed at eligible adults, including those that have become unemployed. As part of this, adults who do not currently have a level 3 qualification will be fully funded for their first full level 3 course, enabling participants to access the valuable courses that will help them get ahead in the labour market. This offer will be funded from the National Skills Funding, established to help people learn new skills and prepare for the economy of the future.
The Prime Minister has also announced skills bootcamps, which will be available in 6 areas across the country. The bootcamp training courses will provide valuable skills based on employer demand and are linked to real job opportunities, helping participants to find jobs, and employers to fill much-needed vacancies. We are planning to expand the bootcamps to more of the country from spring 2021, and we want to extend this model to include other technical skills training.
In addition, the government launched The Skills Toolkit in April 2020. This offers a wide range of digital and numeracy courses for all skills levels. Courses are available for free to the public, offering an opportunity for individuals to upskill and build on their CV. We have recently expanded The Skills Toolkit to increase the range of courses so that people can now choose from over 70 courses, covering digital, adult numeracy, employability and work readiness skills, which have been identified as the skills employers need the most. These courses will help people stay in work or take up new jobs and opportunities.
We are also investing £17 million in the sector-based work academy programme (SWAP) to triple the number of SWAP placements in 2020/21, enough funding to support an extra 40,000 job seekers with additional training opportunities and the chance of a job.
We are continuing to invest in education and skills training for adults through the Adult Education Budget (AEB), worth £1.34 billion in the 2020/21 financial year. The AEB fully funds or co-funds skills provision for eligible adults aged 19 and above from pre-entry to level 3, to support adults to gain the skills they need for work, an apprenticeship, or further learning.
Our apprenticeship reforms are driving up quality and delivering the skills that employers need. As an incentive to employers to take on new apprentices we are providing a new payment of £2,000 to employers (in England) for each new apprentice they hire aged under 25, and a payment of £1,500 for each new apprentice an employer hires aged 25 and over, before 31 January 2021. We have also introduced incentive payments, enabling employers to apply for £1000 per learner, for employers who offer traineeship work placement opportunities between 1 September 2020 and 31 July 2021.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the value was of the block grant to England’s higher education institutions in 2019-20.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
In the academic year 2019/20, the Office for Students distributed £1.3 billion of funding to higher education providers via the teaching grant. The majority of this was allocated via the recurrent teaching grant to fund high-cost courses and specialist providers and to support student access and success for particular student groups. A further £100 million was provided as capital funding in the academic year 2019/20.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people have obtained qualifications using the Union Learning Fund since 1998.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
Unionlearn and the Union Learning Fund provides very little training and education itself, but instead supports, encourages and mentors individuals to undertake learning. In most cases, the actual learning is funded through the Adult Education Budget.
In the financial year 2019/20, our grant to the Union Learning Fund allowed Unionlearn to support 189,094 people in learning. The learning itself is provided by a range of providers including colleges, independent training providers and others. The type of learning is very wide and covers informal Adult Community Learning, basic skills, continuing professional development, as well as learning which leads to a formal qualification. We do not keep records on the actual qualifications gained.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people obtained qualifications using the Union Learning Fund in 2019.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
Unionlearn and the Union Learning Fund provides very little training and education itself, but instead supports, encourages and mentors individuals to undertake learning. In most cases, the actual learning is funded through the Adult Education Budget.
In the financial year 2019/20, our grant to the Union Learning Fund allowed Unionlearn to support 189,094 people in learning. The learning itself is provided by a range of providers including colleges, independent training providers and others. The type of learning is very wide and covers informal Adult Community Learning, basic skills, continuing professional development, as well as learning which leads to a formal qualification. We do not keep records on the actual qualifications gained.