Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made with Cabinet colleagues on rolling out the Family Hubs programme.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
On 9 February 2023, the government announced a number of updates which demonstrate positive progress in delivering the manifesto commitment to champion family hubs and their continued commitment to ensure every baby has the best start in life. The announcement included:
An additional £28 million has also been made available to the 75 local authorities to improve children's home learning environments, helping them to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-of-families-to-benefit-from-local-support-in-rollout-of-family-hubs.
Thousands of parents and carers across England will be able to access local, co-ordinated support and advice in raising a family, through the 75 upper tier local authorities that have received investment from the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme.
The 75 upper tier local authorities who are eligible for this Family Hubs and Start for Life funding were announced on 2 April 2022. The Programme Guide and sign up process was launched in August 2022 and all 75 local authorities have now signed up to the programme. We are now working with local authorities on their delivery plans.
Local authorities will be expected to open family hubs in the first half of 2023 and meet programme expectations by the end of March 2025.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve education outcomes for care leavers.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
This government is committed to ensuring that all care leavers are supported to succeed in education and achieve positive outcomes.
On 2 February, the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, our strategy for the reform of children’s social care. The strategy sets out the department’s plans to improve the education, employment, and training outcomes of children in care and care leavers. This includes, from 2027, a year-on-year narrowing of the gap in care leaver higher education participation rates compared to the general population.
The department will do this by increasing the support available in both higher and further education including the expansion of the Virtual School Head role to include care leavers up to 25 years old, the introduction of a gold standard accreditation scheme for higher education and further education institutions supporting care leavers, and further £24 million in pupil premium plus style between 2023 and 2025.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to upgrade further education colleges.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
We have committed £1.5 billion between 2020 and 2026, through the further education (FE) Capital Transformation Programme, to upgrade FE colleges. This programme seeks to tackle poor condition in the FE college estate so that FE colleges are excellent places for young people and adults to learn.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
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 Health and Social Care on increasing covid-19 vaccination uptake among school pupils.
Answered by Robin Walker
Vaccines are the best way we can protect ourselves and keep children and young people in face-to-face education. On 22 December, the government accepted advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation that a primary course of vaccination should be offered to children aged 5 to 11 years old who are in a clinical risk group, or who are a household contact of someone (of any age) who is immunosuppressed. On 24 January, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that the department will distribute a total of £8 million in funding to NHS England to support secondary schools with the vitally important in-school vaccination programme for young people. This comes as over 50% of 12 to 15-year-olds, over 1.5 million people, have now had at least one dose of the vaccine.
To accelerate the COVID-19 programme in schools, the NHS has bolstered the in-school offer to make it more efficient and increase the scale and pace of delivery, as well as target communications to parents, young people and the public to improve uptake and increase overall confidence in the programme.
To ensure even more young people can get the vaccine as quickly as possible, the national booking service is open for vaccination bookings for young people. This service is available at: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/.
To support schools, and based on feedback we gathered, we have published a new ‘how to’ guide which is available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cT6adcSVsLer0kvcSuI4QcBYdlmdgb5x. This includes useful information and resources for schools, including a template letter that can be used to communicate with parents. The COVID-19 vaccination guidance and leaflets for parents, children and young people are being translated by Public Health England. The accessible versions include braille and British Sign Language, as well as web and print versions in 27 languages.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to implement the recommendations of the Early Years Healthy Development Review.
Answered by Will Quince
At the Budget, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a £300 million to transform ‘Start for Life’ and family help services in half of the council areas across England.
This will fund a network of Family Hubs and specific support, within those Hubs, for parent-infant mental health, breastfeeding services and parenting programmes. In addition, we will be asking all 75 local areas to publish their 'Start for Life' offer and providing funding for trials of innovative workforce models in a smaller number of areas.
Family hubs are a way of joining up locally to improve access to services, the connections between families, professionals, services and providers, and putting relationships at the heart of family help.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the National Tutoring Programme.
Answered by Robin Walker
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) aims to deliver up to 2 million courses this year, and up to 90 million tuition hours by the 2024/25 academic year across the programme’s three pillars.
Details of the NTP’s performance so far this year was published on 11 January. This estimated just over 300,000 tuition courses had been started since September. This is almost exactly the number of courses delivered in the whole of the previous academic year.
Independent evaluations are being conducted for both year one and year two of the NTP. We expect results from the year one overarching evaluation to be published in summer 2022. This will include insights into how the NTP has been implemented and the extent to which the programme is having an impact on pupil progress.
The year two evaluation will again focus on pupil progress and will also look into school and teacher impacts and reasons for non-participation. Interim findings from the year two evaluation will be shared with the department during the evaluation to help inform decision-making. Findings will be published in 2023.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that pupils can learn safely in education settings.
Answered by Robin Walker
Protecting face-to-face education is our top priority. There is a package of measures and support in place to help reduce transmission and retain face-to-face teaching as much as possible.
All education and childcare staff, and students of secondary school age and above should continue to test twice a week a home, 3 to 4 days apart with lateral flow device test kits. Testing remains voluntary but is strongly encouraged. As of 19 January, over 109.5 million tests (including household bubble and support bubble tests) have been completed in all education providers, including higher education.
All eligible staff and students aged 12 and over are encouraged to take up the offer of the vaccine, including boosters, where eligible. On 22 December 2021, the government accepted advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation that a primary course of vaccination should be offered to children aged 5 to 11 years old who are in a clinical risk group, or who are a household contact of someone (of any age) who is immunosuppressed. On 24 January, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that the government will distribute a total of £8 million in funding to NHS England to support secondary schools with the vitally important in-school vaccination programme for young people.
In addition to over 353,000 CO2 monitors already delivered to education providers, we are also making a total of up to 9,000 air cleaning units available for poorly ventilated teaching spaces in state-funded education providers, where quick fixes to improve ventilation are not possible.
We no longer recommend that face coverings are worn in classrooms, teaching spaces or when moving around the premises outside of classrooms, such as in corridors and communal areas. Directors of public health may temporarily, and exceptionally, advise individual providers experiencing outbreaks to use face coverings in either communal areas or classrooms, as part of their responsibilities in outbreak management. The contingency framework provides more information on the principles of managing local outbreaks of COVID-19 in education and childcare providers. This framework is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-local-restrictions-in-education-and-childcare-settings.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to provide schools and pupils with access to covid-19 lateral flow tests.
Answered by Robin Walker
Educational providers can continue to place orders for test kits via the dedicated online ordering channel and should call 119 if they require further advice or support. Orders placed by 5pm each Tuesday will be delivered the following week. 119 can also be contacted for further advice and support.
If an emergency replenishment is required, that will be processed and can take up to 48 hours for schools to receive. Schools will be given an expectation as to when they can receive their delivery
Schools and further education providers use a different supply route to get their lateral flow tests. The department continues to work with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to ensure education providers are able to receive adequate supplies of test kits.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support disadvantaged pupils over this academic year.
Answered by Will Quince
In financial year 2022-23, the National Funding Formula (NFF) will allocate £6.7 billion, 17% of all funding allocated by the NFF, through additional needs factors, including deprivation. That includes an increase of £225 million, or 6.7%, in the amount distributed through deprivation factors.
In addition, in financial year 2022-23 schools will receive a supplementary grant, which will provide significant further funding for deprivation: £85 for each primary pupil and £124 for each secondary pupil who have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the last six years (FSM6). Schools’ individual allocations from the supplementary grant will be finalised in the coming months.
On top of this core funding, pupil premium funding rates are increasing by 2.7% in financial year 2022-23, to £1,385 for each FSM6 primary pupil and £985 for each FSM6 secondary pupil. This means that the per pupil funding rate will be the highest, in cash terms since the introduction of the pupil premium in 2011. Total pupil premium funding will increase to over £2.6 billion in 2022-23, from £2.5 billion this year.
We are also supporting disadvantaged pupils this academic year through our investment in education recovery. Overall direct investment announced for education recovery is almost £5 billion, including an additional £1.8 billion of funding announced in the recent Spending Review to support young people to catch up on education lost. Recovery premium funding will be based on the same disadvantage eligibility criteria as the pupil premium. During the 2021/22 academic year mainstream schools will attract a total of £145 for each eligible pupil.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support young people into high quality jobs.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The department has introduced a range of skills reforms and published the ‘Skills for Jobs’ white paper in January 2021, which sets out our blueprint to reform post-16 education and training to support young people to get the skills they need to succeed throughout their lives, wherever they live in the country.
It is focused on giving people the skills they need now, and in the future, in a way that suits them. We are investing £3.8 billion in further education and skills to ensure people can access high-quality training and education that leads to good jobs, addresses current and future skills gaps, boosts productivity and supports levelling up.
My right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced on 27 October 2021 that we are investing an extra £1.6 billion for 16-19 education in 2024-25 compared with the 2021-22 financial year. This means an investment of up to £615 million in the 2022-23 financial year and is much needed support for our excellent further education sector.
This follows the extra £691 million allocated in the previous two years and the specific funding made available to help recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak, including the 16-19 Tuition Fund which will make available £400 million over four years (2020-21 academic year until 2023-24 academic year).
This investment will support our aim to ensure that every young person has access to an excellent education, and providers can make better decisions around what courses they offer and focus on delivering the skills needed for a thriving and productive economy and society, with a particular emphasis on levelling up.
We are introducing T Levels, boosting access to high quality technical education for thousands of 16–19 year olds. Young people are now benefitting from these pioneering new qualifications, designed by employers to ensure students get the skills they need for great jobs.
We are supporting the largest-ever expansion of traineeships, providing funding for up to 72,000 places over the next three years. We are introducing more occupational traineeships, which are aligned to apprenticeship standards and will significantly increase the opportunities for young people to progress into apprenticeships or other employment.
Funding for apprenticeships in England will grow to £2.7 billion by the 2024-25 financial year to support more apprenticeships in employers of all sizes. We are encouraging more young people to consider apprenticeships through our Apprenticeship Support & Knowledge programme which provides resources and interventions to help better educate young people about apprenticeships
In January we launched our ‘Get the Jump’ campaign to help young people aged 14-19 to understand their education and training choices, how they compare and where they can lead. Further information can be found here: https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/explore-your-education-and-training-choices.