Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of the Government's plan to make every school an academy on nursery school education.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The government has confirmed that the expectation that all schools will become academies by 2020 does not include the early years.
We know that close working between primary schools – whether they are academies or maintained schools - and nursery schools is essential to improving pupils’ transition to Reception. We would expect those excellent local relationships that already exist to continue, regardless of whether the school is an academy or not.
Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of new nursery staff in (a) Burnley and (b) Lancashire who will be affected by the new requirements for staff taking a Level 3 in childcare.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The requirements have been in effect since 2014 for individuals taking the level 3 Early Years Educator qualifications.
The requirement for level 3 Early Years Educator staff to hold a GCSE Maths and English at grade C or above was introduced to make sure that new entrants to the workforce have the numeracy and literacy skills they need to operate in a level 3 role. Staff working in level 3 roles can have a range of responsibilities, all of which require them to be highly skilled and well-qualified. Level 3 staff are likely to work directly with children, and many will have additional responsibility as room leaders and some will lead and manage an entire childcare setting.
The department holds national data on level 3 staff in the early years sector. We know excellent progress has been made over the past few years in which qualification levels have continued to rise. Between 2008 and 2013, the proportion of the 233,200 full day care staff with at least a level 3 qualification grew from 75% to 87%[1]. We are continuing to collect data on level 3 staff through the Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey this year, and will collect data from 2016 in the Early Years Census.
We have been talking to childcare employers and training organisations about early years qualifications. We want to continue to work with the sector to understand the challenges faced, and find ways to tackle these whilst ensuring a quality workforce remains.
[1] Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey 2013
Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many times she has attended public meetings of the Education Committee since her appointment.
Answered by Nick Gibb
My Rt Hon Friend the Secretary of State for Education has given evidence to the Education Select Committee six times since she was appointed in July 2014.
Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children were not allocated a place at their preferred primary school place in Burnley in the academic year 2015-16.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Information on school place preferences being met is not available at constituency level. Data is collected at local authority level and the figures for Lancashire local authority (which includes the Burnley constituency) show that for the academic year 2015-16 a total of 448 applicants did not receive an offer of any of their top three preferences. Full details are provided in the table below.
Lancashire local authority, primary school preferences, 2015/16 | |||
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| Number | % |
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| Total number of applicants | 13,444 |
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| Applicants who received 1st preference | 11,889 | 88.4 |
| Applicants who did not receive 1st preference | 1,555 | 11.6 |
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| Applicants who received a preferred offer | 12,996 | 96.7 |
| Did not receive a preferred offer | 448 | 3.3 |
Lancashire’s figures were an improvement on their results for 2014/15, when 504 applicants did not receive an offer of any of their preferred schools, out of a total of 13,543 applications. This meant that 3.7% did not receive a preferred offer (compared to 3.3% in 2015/16), whilst 96.3% did receive an offer of one of their preferred schools.
Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if the Government will make it its policy to allocate revenue raised from the soft drinks industry levy to maintain the grant for summer schools.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The Government has no plans to use the soft drink levy to maintain the grant for pupil premium summer schools. The 2016 budget statement identified that the soft drinks industry levy would be used to double the amount of funding to £320m per annum that we dedicate to sport in every primary school and to make it easier for up to a quarter of secondary schools to extend their school day to include a wider range of activities, including extra sport.
The Government has protected the pupil premium at current per pupil rates for the rest of the Parliament, providing schools with around £2.5 billion per year of additional funding to support their disadvantaged pupils. Schools have the choice to continue running summer schools and can use their pupil premium allocation to fund places for their disadvantaged pupils.
Asked by: Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many graduate teachers in each subject area were recruited in each year since 2010.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The information requested is available in Table 1c of the Main tables: SFR46/2015 spreadsheet available on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2015-to-2016
This table includes the number of postgraduates recruited to Initial Teacher Training in each subject from the academic years 2011/12 to 2015/16. The Department does not hold data for the academic year 2010/11.