Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to protect freedom of speech in universities.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
This government is committed to the protection of freedom of speech and academic freedom in universities. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will strengthen existing freedom of speech duties and introduce clear consequences for breaches, as well as introducing a duty on universities and colleges to promote the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of school places available for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The department is investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to support local authorities to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), or who require alternative provision (AP). This represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. It will support local authorities to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings, and will also be used to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings, more than tripling previous levels of investment.
In March 2022, as part of this commitment, the department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment, focused on the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years. In June 2022, the department also announced that we will build up to 60 new centrally delivered special and AP free schools.
This funding comes on top of the investment of £300 million in 2021/22, and the department’s ongoing investment in new special and AP special schools. As of 1 October 2022, there are 90 open special free schools and 50 open AP free schools, with a further 48 special and 7 AP free schools due to open in the future.
This investment is alongside the increase in high needs revenue funding for children and young people with complex needs. This is rising by £1 billion in the 2022/23 financial year, an increase of 13%, which brings total high needs funding to £9.1 billion. In addition, the department is continuing to work with local authorities with the highest dedicated schools grant deficits as part of the safety valve programme and the introduction of the Delivering Better Value programme.
Alongside our continued investment in high needs, the department remains committed to ensuring a financially sustainable system, where resources are effectively targeted to need. The consultation on the SEND and AP Green Paper closed on 22 July, and the department will confirm the next steps in implementing our reform programme in due course.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase levels of adult numeracy.
Answered by Robert Halfon
We want everyone to have the opportunity to learn and develop the essential skills they need to succeed at any age.
That is why the department has launched Multiply, the Government’s new programme for improving adult numeracy, funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Up to £559m is available over the Spending Review period for Multiply, boosting funding for maths and enabling delivery of innovative approaches to improving adult numeracy.
Multiply will enable local areas to deliver innovative approaches to improving numeracy amongst adults, helping more people take the next step to higher levels of training or unlock new job opportunities. Multiply will offer a range of flexible courses and interventions that fit around people’s lives and are tailored to specific needs, circumstances, sectors and industries. For example, courses designed to increase confidence with numbers for those needing the first steps towards formal numeracy qualifications or programmes delivered with employers to support people to get a job or progress within work.
Adults who do not already have a GCSE Grade 4/C (or equivalent) or above in maths are already entitled to study fully funded maths GCSE or Functional Skills Qualifications. Multiply does not remove this entitlement, nor does it reduce funding for those qualifications through the Adult Education Budget.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to improve levels of attainment in GCSE (a) English and (b) maths.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Schools White Paper includes a vision for a school system that helps every child to fulfil their potential by ensuring that they have the right support, in the right place, at the right time, founded on achieving world class literacy and numeracy.
This includes increasing the national GCSE average grade in both English language and in mathematics from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030, backed up by an ambition that, by the end of primary school, 90% of children will achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics.
The Department has already invested over £5 billion through its multi-year recovery plan. To date, over two million courses have been started since the launch of the National Tutoring Programme in November 2020. To help teachers, the Oak National Academy has been established as a public body, which will provide free, optional, adaptable digital curriculum resources, including in English and mathematics. The Department has established Education Investment Areas, prioritising support to the areas of the country with the most entrenched underperformance.
Alongside this, the Department’s ongoing investment in English and mathematics curriculum hub programmes is supporting children to benefit from high quality teaching in early reading and mathematics respectively, including through phonics and assessment and support programmes.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate he has made of the number of Ukrainian school pupils in classrooms across the UK.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Department published data on 13 October showing that, of an estimated total of 22,100 applications for a state school place for children arriving from Ukraine, 92% (12,300 primary and 8,100 secondary) have been offered a place.
The data is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-placements-for-children-from-outside-of-the-uk/2022-september.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to (a) recruit and (b) retain teachers.
Answered by Robin Walker
The number of teachers remains high, with over 461,000 (full-time equivalent) working in schools across the country, 20,000 more than in 2010.
The department aims to continue attracting and retaining the highly skilled teachers that every child needs. To do this, we are taking action to improve teacher recruitment and retention by transforming the training and support we provide, not only to attract more people into teaching, but to encourage them to stay and thrive in the profession.
The department is creating an entitlement to at least three years of structured training, support and professional development for all new teachers, to bring teaching into line with other prestigious professions such as law, accountancy and medicine. Underpinning this is the new Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Core Content Framework and the Early Career Framework. Together, these ensure that new teachers will benefit from at least three years of evidence-based training, across ITT and into their induction.
Beyond the first few years of teaching, our priority is to help all teachers and school leaders to continuously develop their expertise throughout their careers so every child in every classroom in every school gets the best start in life. Teachers and school leaders at all levels can now benefit from an updated suite of National Professional Qualifications. Aimed at those who want to develop expertise in high-quality teaching practice, to those leading multiple schools across trusts, these professional development programmes are now free to access for those eligible to apply.
These measures will create a golden thread running from ITT through to school leadership, rooting teacher and leader development in the best available evidence.
To support recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in subjects that are harder to recruit for, we have put in place a range of measures, including bursaries worth £24,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £26,000 tax-free. This will encourage talented trainees for key subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics. Additionally, we have announced a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free for maths, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in years 1 to 5 of their careers.
The deparment remains committed to increasing teacher starting salaries to £30,000 to make teaching an attractive graduate option. We are continuing our efforts to support teacher wellbeing, including by launching the education staff wellbeing charter, and driving down unnecessary burdens and reducing teacher workload though the use of our workload reduction toolkit. Further information on the staff wellbeing charter and workload reduction toolkit are available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter and https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support schools with internet connectivity.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department wants all schools in the country to have access to fast internet. We are committed to continued investment, ensuring that every school has access to modern internet connectivity in the classroom and benefiting thousands more children and teachers.
Recognising the importance of broadband infrastructure in education, we are working with industry and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to accelerate the full-fibre internet connectivity rollout to all schools in England. Children in more than 1,000 schools are now enjoying next generation internet speeds thanks to government investment, with around a further 2,000 to be connected by 2025. Most schools in the UK are in urban or suburban areas which already have access to fast full fibre broadband, so this government investment is focused on mostly rural or hard-to-reach areas, to ensure they do not miss out on next-generation speeds.
The government remains committed to investing £5 billion to bring gigabit coverage to the hardest to reach areas and will continue to work with suppliers to accelerate this investment, taking account of industry capacity to bid for, and deliver, contracts to build in uncommercial areas alongside their commercial plans. GigaHubs is one of the programmes DCMS is using to deliver the government’s ambition of gigabit capabilities across the UK by 2030. As part of the wider Project Gigabit, GigaHubs will use up to £110 million to connect public buildings such as rural schools, doctors’ surgeries, and libraries to gigabit broadband. This will allow whole classes of schoolchildren to be online, at once, with no interruptions.
Ensuring good connectivity is just the first step. The actual internet speed experienced is also affected by the technology and Wifi arrangements in place within institutions. We have published a suite of resources to help steer schools, colleges and other providers through the key questions and issues to consider when implementing technology infrastructure, including broadband and local infrastructure issues. To ensure investment made in fast broadband carries through into a high-quality experience in the classroom, we have also set up the ‘connect the classroom’ pilot programme, which is investing up to £30 million to upgrade Wifi for around 1,000 schools.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to protect freedom of speech on university campuses.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Woking, to the answer I gave on 10 September 2021 to Question 41864.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, introduced on 12 May, has now passed through committee stage in the House of Commons.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress his Department has made on providing fiscal support to encourage people to (a) upskill and (b) change career paths.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
At the recent Spending Review we announced that we are investing £3.8 billion more in further education and skills to ensure people can access high-quality training and education that leads to good jobs, addresses skills gaps, boosts productivity and supports levelling up.
We are continuing to invest in education and skills training for adults through the Adult Education Budget (AEB) (£1.34 billion in academic year 2021/22). 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 in gaining the skills they need for work, an apprenticeship or further learning.
The National Skills Fund will help adults learn valuable skills and prepare for the economy of the future and we are investing £1.6 billion through the fund in the next three years, on top of the £375 million already committed in financial year 2021/22. This will include extending the eligibility for Free Courses for Jobs to more adults and further expanding Skills Bootcamps. More details will be announced in due course.
Since 1 April this year, the National Skills Fund (NSF) is supporting any adult who does not have A level equivalent or higher qualifications, to access over 400 fully funded level 3 courses, with Free Courses for Jobs. This offer is a long-term commitment, backed by £95 million from the NSF in year one.
Complementing this support for adults, Skills Bootcamps offer free, flexible courses of up to 16 weeks, giving people the opportunity to build up sector-specific skills and fast-track to an interview with a local employer.
As part of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, from 2025 we will introduce a Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE) equivalent to four years of post-18 education. It will be available for both modules and full years of study at higher technical and degree levels (levels 4 to 6), regardless of whether they are provided in colleges or universities. The LLE will support study throughout a learners’ life, with the opportunity to train, retrain and upskill as needed in response to changing skills needs and employment patterns. Under this flexible skills system, people can space out their studies and learn at a pace that is right for them. We will consult on the scope and policy of the LLE in due course, as part of our planned pathway to delivery from 2025.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the 2021 summer schools programme.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government made £200 million available this summer so that secondary schools could deliver face-to-face summer schools. Schools were able to fund provision based on the needs of their students, delivering a blend of academic activities and enrichment activities, including mental wellbeing support. This is alongside wider support funded through our Holiday Activities and Food Programme across the country, where £220 million was made available to local authorities.
Over 2,800 secondary schools signed up to the participate in the summer schools programme. This is 74% of all eligible mainstream secondary schools and it means that over 500,000 pupils will have been invited to take part. This will help recover lost education and to give pupils the confidence they need to start the academic year. Schools will claim their funding for summer school places in October on the basis of pupil attendance.
As part of the Government’s commitment to developing a longer-term education recovery plan, understanding the effectiveness and success of the 2021 summer schools programme is a key priority for the Department. We have designed a research study to help us to better understand the perceived impact of summer schools on children’s wellbeing, transition to secondary school, and academic recovery. An independent research agency will carry out the analysis and reporting of this important research for the Department, and the evaluation will be published on gov.uk.