Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will make capital investment funding available to universities to expand their physical capacity to support the training of the increased number of students that are due to start nursing degrees in the 2021-22 academic year.
Answered by Michelle Donelan
We have asked the Office for Students (OfS) to reform the Strategic Priorities Grant for 2021/22 to ensure that more of taxpayers’ money is spent on supporting higher education provision which aligns with national priorities. This includes the reprioritisation of funding towards the provision of high-cost subjects that support the NHS and wider healthcare policy (which includes nursing), high-cost STEM subjects, and subjects meeting specific labour market needs.
Specifically on capital funding, we want to be assured that capital funding is adding real value and that investment is focused on key government priorities, such as nursing, and supports provision with excellent student outcomes.
In 2021/22, this funding will be allocated through a bidding process that will target specific high-impact projects and activities that offer better value for money for students and taxpayers.
The OfS has launched a public consultation on all these reforms before final allocations for 2021/22 are confirmed and will carefully consider the impact of any changes on providers.
The consultation can be accessed at https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/consultations/.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to support the families of pupils on free school meals in Leicester South constituency during the school summer holidays in 2020.
Answered by Vicky Ford
I refer the hon. Members to the answer I gave on 23 June 2020 to Question 54195.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs on increasing children’s awareness and understanding of the environment in schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government’s 25-year environment plan, published in January 2018, sets out the ambition to improve the environment within a generation. The Department for Education (DfE) has worked closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the plan. DfE is funding the children and nature programme, a £10 million programme that aims to support children from disadvantaged backgrounds to have better access to the natural environment. The programme has been designed to make it possible for schools to undertake a range of activities in natural spaces, including learning about nature and how to care for the natural environment. The programme complements the scope that already exists to study environmental issues throughout the curriculum - in particular in science and geography lessons.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish time series data on the number of apprenticeship starts in the NHS in each month since June 2010; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Anne Milton
In November 2018, we published details of our progress against the public sector apprenticeship target for the first year of the target. These can be viewed at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-sector-apprenticeships-in-england-2017-to-2018.
This showed that, in the National Health Service (NHS), 1.2% of employees started an apprenticeship between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2018, which is 13,800 new starts. It should be noted that this data is based on self-declared information on organisation headcounts and apprentice recruitment submitted by public sector bodies.
The department also publishes data on apprenticeship starts in the health, public services and care sector subject area. This includes the number of starts on the ‘Registered Nurse’ degree apprenticeship and ‘Nursing Associate’ apprenticeship standards.
Monthly breakdowns for individual standards and frameworks, as well as for sector subject areas, have been published from 2014/15 onwards and can be accessed at the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeship-and-levy-statistics-february-2019.
The Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care are working closely with employers and Health Education England to make sure that the NHS is fully supported to recruit the apprentices they need to deliver high quality care.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on funding for hospital education since financial year 2013-14.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Funding for hospital education is included in a local authority’s high needs funding allocation, which also supports other forms of alternative provision for pupils who cannot receive education in mainstream schools, and provision for children and young people with special education needs and disabilities. It is for local authorities to determine how to spend their high needs funding on the children and young people who require specialist provision, including education for those in hospital.
The following table shows the total high needs funding allocated to local authorities since 2013-14.
| High needs block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG) |
2013-14 | £4.97 billion |
2014-15 | £5.18 billion |
2015-16 | £5.25 billion |
2016-17 | £5.30 billion |
2017-18 | £5.83 billion |
2018-19 | £5.99 billion |
In 2017-18, local authorities planned to spend £72 million of their high needs funding on hospital education.
Since 2018-19, the amount of high needs funding each local authority receives is determined by the high needs national funding formula. The national funding formula includes an amount for hospital education, which is currently on the basis of 2017-18 planned spending, plus a 0.5% uplift in 2018-19 and a 1% uplift in 2019-20. The hospital education funding in 2018-19 totals £73 million and the provisional hospital education funding in 2019-20 is £76 million.[1]
It is our intention to replace this reliance on local authorities’ planned spending in 2017-18 with a formulaic hospital education factor that takes into account both local authority spending data and NHS patient data, therefore better responding to the number of patients needing education in each local area.
The Secretary of State has conversations with other Cabinet Ministers, on a number of issues, on a regular basis. Department for Education officials have worked with officials in the Department for Health and Social Care and the NHS to develop a hospital education factor in the national funding formula.
[1] The increase between years also includes additional funding, provided as a result of the process in which local authorities can apply if there has been a change in the medical provision in their area.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of funding for hospital education in the financial years since 2013-14.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Funding for hospital education is included in a local authority’s high needs funding allocation, which also supports other forms of alternative provision for pupils who cannot receive education in mainstream schools, and provision for children and young people with special education needs and disabilities. It is for local authorities to determine how to spend their high needs funding on the children and young people who require specialist provision, including education for those in hospital.
The following table shows the total high needs funding allocated to local authorities since 2013-14.
| High needs block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG) |
2013-14 | £4.97 billion |
2014-15 | £5.18 billion |
2015-16 | £5.25 billion |
2016-17 | £5.30 billion |
2017-18 | £5.83 billion |
2018-19 | £5.99 billion |
In 2017-18, local authorities planned to spend £72 million of their high needs funding on hospital education.
Since 2018-19, the amount of high needs funding each local authority receives is determined by the high needs national funding formula. The national funding formula includes an amount for hospital education, which is currently on the basis of 2017-18 planned spending, plus a 0.5% uplift in 2018-19 and a 1% uplift in 2019-20. The hospital education funding in 2018-19 totals £73 million and the provisional hospital education funding in 2019-20 is £76 million.[1]
It is our intention to replace this reliance on local authorities’ planned spending in 2017-18 with a formulaic hospital education factor that takes into account both local authority spending data and NHS patient data, therefore better responding to the number of patients needing education in each local area.
The Secretary of State has conversations with other Cabinet Ministers, on a number of issues, on a regular basis. Department for Education officials have worked with officials in the Department for Health and Social Care and the NHS to develop a hospital education factor in the national funding formula.
[1] The increase between years also includes additional funding, provided as a result of the process in which local authorities can apply if there has been a change in the medical provision in their area.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department has allocated from the public purse to hospital education in each financial year since 2013-14.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Funding for hospital education is included in a local authority’s high needs funding allocation, which also supports other forms of alternative provision for pupils who cannot receive education in mainstream schools, and provision for children and young people with special education needs and disabilities. It is for local authorities to determine how to spend their high needs funding on the children and young people who require specialist provision, including education for those in hospital.
The following table shows the total high needs funding allocated to local authorities since 2013-14.
| High needs block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG) |
2013-14 | £4.97 billion |
2014-15 | £5.18 billion |
2015-16 | £5.25 billion |
2016-17 | £5.30 billion |
2017-18 | £5.83 billion |
2018-19 | £5.99 billion |
In 2017-18, local authorities planned to spend £72 million of their high needs funding on hospital education.
Since 2018-19, the amount of high needs funding each local authority receives is determined by the high needs national funding formula. The national funding formula includes an amount for hospital education, which is currently on the basis of 2017-18 planned spending, plus a 0.5% uplift in 2018-19 and a 1% uplift in 2019-20. The hospital education funding in 2018-19 totals £73 million and the provisional hospital education funding in 2019-20 is £76 million.[1]
It is our intention to replace this reliance on local authorities’ planned spending in 2017-18 with a formulaic hospital education factor that takes into account both local authority spending data and NHS patient data, therefore better responding to the number of patients needing education in each local area.
The Secretary of State has conversations with other Cabinet Ministers, on a number of issues, on a regular basis. Department for Education officials have worked with officials in the Department for Health and Social Care and the NHS to develop a hospital education factor in the national funding formula.
[1] The increase between years also includes additional funding, provided as a result of the process in which local authorities can apply if there has been a change in the medical provision in their area.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking with the Department of Health and Social Care, to improve the education of children and young people in hospital.
Answered by Nick Gibb
On 16 March the Department published ‘Creating Opportunity for All: Our Vision for Alternative Provision’. This set out the Department’s vision to ensure that all children in alternative provision (AP), including those placed in AP for reasons related to their health, receive a high quality education.
The Department is working collaboratively with local authorities, schools and the wider AP sector, including hospital schools, to build a strong evidence base of effective practice to raise standards. The Department is developing and sharing effective practice within AP, including ensuring AP settings can access school improvement resources and launching a dedicated AP Innovation Fund. The Department is also strengthening partnership arrangements for commissioning and delivering AP, including clarifying the role of schools, alternative providers and local authorities in delivering high quality AP.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effect of alcohol misuse on the costs of child social care in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
The ‘Children in Need’ annual census collects data from local councils on children receiving social services within the year. The annual statistical first release from this collection displays the percentage of children in need by factor identified at the end of assessment, including alcohol misuse. This is shown in Figure K of the most recent release:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need-2016-to-2017.
It is not possible to quantify the impact on costs of children’s social care from this data.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of officials of her Department resigned in each of the last six years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The table below shows the number and proportion of officials who resigned in each of the last six financial years.
DfE Resignations 2010-2016 |
|
| |
Year | Number of resignations | Proportion of staff[1] | Headcount at year end (March) |
2010/11 | 54 | 2% | 2,586 |
2011/12 | 47 | 2% | 2,789 |
2012/13 | 117 | 4% | 3,886 |
2013/14 | 90 | 2% | 3,476 |
2014/15 | 117 | 3% | 3,477 |
2015/16 | 113 | 3% | 3,545 |
Source: RM
The Department’s headcount increased from 2,789 in March 2012 to 3,886 in March 2013 following Arms Length Bodies reform, when the department closed a number of ALB and instead created three Agencies within the department.
[1] Proportion based on average of start and end year headcount figures.