Asked by: Mark Logan (Conservative - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on removing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete from the school estate.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Our priority will always be to ensure the safety of pupils and staff, which is why we have taken a precautionary approach and asked schools to vacate spaces known to contain RAAC until mitigations are put in place.
To give a sense of the scale, there are around 22,000 schools and colleges in England, of which around 15,000 have at least one block constructed during the period in which RAAC may have been used. Due to the action we have taken to issue questionnaires, we now have responses from all schools and colleges with buildings from the era when RAAC was commonly used. All schools and colleges that advised us they suspected they may have RAAC have had a first survey to confirm if it is present.
The vast majority of schools and colleges surveyed to date have been found to have no RAAC. Where it is present, it may be limited to a single classroom. So far, these surveys have confirmed a very small proportion of schools and colleges – 231, or around 1% – have RAAC present.
In December 2023, we published an updated list of affected schools and colleges. Thanks to the hard work of school and college leaders the vast majority – 228, or 99% - were delivering full time face-to-face education for all pupils. At the time of publication, 3 schools had hybrid arrangements in place, all 3 are now in full-time face-to-face education for all pupils.
Each school and college has a dedicated caseworker to help implement individual mitigation plans and we have dedicated contracts to enable delivery of alternative accommodation including temporary classrooms, and structural supports where appropriate.
We will spend what it takes to resolve this problem as quickly as possible. All reasonable requests for additional help with revenue costs are being approved and we are funding further longer-term refurbishment or rebuilding projects to address the presence of RAAC in schools. Schools and colleagues will either be offered capital grants, or rebuilding projects where these are needed, including through School Rebuilding Programme.
Asked by: Mark Logan (Conservative - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the attainment gap between pupils from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils has been the focus of our education reforms since 2010. The attainment gap narrowed by 9% at secondary school level and by 13% at primary school level between 2011 and 2019.
For over a decade, the Department has consistently taken a range of steps to give priority support and deliver programmes that help disadvantaged pupils, including improving the quality of teaching and curriculum resources, strengthening the school system, and providing targeted support where needed. The Department knows that disadvantaged children have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, which has widened the gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils. The Department will continue to work to reduce this gap, as it previously has.
At a national level, the Department delivers several core policies to support disadvantaged pupils. This includes free school meals, which support around 2 million children, as well as the Holiday Activities and Food programme (HAF), which is receiving £200 million in funding a year for the next two years, The Department also supports 2,700 breakfast clubs and family hubs.
The National Funding Formula (NFF) continues to distribute funding fairly based on schools’ and pupils’ needs and characteristics. In 2023/24, the Department has targeted a greater proportion of schools NFF funding towards deprived pupils than ever before. Over £4 billion (9.8%) of the formula has been allocated according to deprivation, while over £7 billion (17.4%), has been allocated to additional needs overall. As a result, schools with the highest levels of deprivation, on average, attract the largest per pupil funding increases. On top of this core funding, Pupil Premium funding rates have increased by 5% in the 2023/24 financial year to a total of almost £2.9 billion. This increase in funding is on top of £1 billion of recovery premium funding in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years, which was allocated to deliver evidence based approaches to support educational recovery for disadvantaged pupils, and over £300 million delivered in 2021/22.
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) funds schools based on rates of disadvantage. Since the launch of the NTP in November 2020, more than £1 billion has been made available to support tutoring. From November 2020 to the 2023/24 academic year, nearly 4 million tutoring courses have been started (up to July 2023).
At a regional level, the Department has identified 55 Education Investment Areas (EIAs) with the lowest attainment outcomes. In these areas, the Department is providing £86 million for Trust Capacity funding, up to £150 million for Connect the Classroom, and extra funding for Levelling Up Premium retention payments to support schools with two or more Requires Improvement inspection reports.
24 EIAs have been identified as Priority EIAs. These areas face low attainment at Key Stage 2 and high levels of disadvantage. They therefore receive additional funding, including £42 million of Local Needs Funding, £86 million for Connect the Classroom and over £2 million for attendance mentoring pilots.
Asked by: Mark Logan (Conservative - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase the proportion of male primary school teachers.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department wants to ensure that teaching is an attractive career choice for people from all backgrounds. This includes men looking to work in primary schools.
Alongside monitoring overall numbers of male teachers in the profession, our in-house teacher recruitment services, such as the Apply for Teaching Training service, generate real time data and insights into recruitment of male primary initial teacher training (ITT) candidates, along with the recruitment practices of schools and universities that offer ITT.
Whilst men make up a smaller proportion of the teaching workforce than women, since 2010 there has been an increase of over 6,500 male teachers in state funded nursery and primary schools, rising from 28,180 in 2010/11 to 34,818 in 2022/23.
Recruitment campaigns are targeted at audiences of students, recent graduates, and potential career changers, regardless of gender. The Department takes every effort to ensure that our advertising is fully reflective of this across the full range of marketing materials used. The Department is also working with our Teacher Vacancy Service to ensure online case studies encourage more male primary teachers into the profession, through sharing positive and encouraging stories from teachers.
The Department wants teaching to be an attractive and competitive profession. From September 2023, starting salaries will raise to at least £30,000 in all areas of the country. In fulfilling this manifesto commitment, the Department is ensuring that all teachers launch their career on a competitive starting salary.
Asked by: Mark Logan (Conservative - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to reduce absence rates of pupils in secondary schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
This Government understands how important school attendance is for pupils’ education, wellbeing, and life chances. The Department’s approach to tackling attendance is a support-first strategy.
The Department published stronger expectations of schools, trusts, governing bodies and Local Authorities in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance. Schools are now expected to publish an attendance policy, appoint an attendance champion, and use data to identify and then support pupils at risk of becoming persistently absent. The Department deployed 10 expert attendance advisers to work with 155 Local Authorities and trusts to review practices, develop plans to improve and meet expectations set out in the guidance. To help identify children at risk of persistent absence and to enable early intervention, the Department established a timelier flow of pupil level attendance data through the daily attendance data collection. The ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance.
The launch of the £2.32 million attendance mentor pilot aims to deliver intensive one-to-one support to a group of persistently and severely absent pupils from year 6 through to year 11. The findings from this pilot should enable schools, trusts, and Local Authorities to address persistent and severe absence more effectively. The Department recently launched new attendance hubs with ten lead schools sharing their effective practice on attendance with up to 600 partner schools, reaching hundreds of thousands of pupils. This is alongside intensive support to children in need through Virtual Schools Heads.
The Secretary of State and I co-chair the ‘Attendance Action Alliance’ of national system leaders to work to remove barriers to attendance and reduce absence through pledges. This is in addition to the £5 billion that has been made available for education recovery, helping pupils to recover from the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. This funding includes up to £1.5 billion on tutoring and nearly £2 billion of direct funding to schools so they can deliver evidence-based interventions based on pupil needs.
Asked by: Mark Logan (Conservative - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether Ukrainian diplomas and other education credentials are recognised (a) in the UK and (b) by UK employers.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The UK and Ukraine are both signatories to the Lisbon Recognition Convention. The UK is also a signatory to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Global Recognition Convention, which will soon come into force. The terms of these Conventions oblige the UK to recognise higher education qualifications and qualifications giving access to higher education unless they are substantially different from the UK equivalents.
The UK European Network for Information (ENIC) service provides advice on the comparability of international qualifications at all levels of education with those of the UK, on behalf of Government. The service maintains an extensive database of international qualifications and education systems, including for Ukraine, and are fully prepared to deal with Ukrainian and other refugees’ qualifications.
Organisations and individuals can apply for Statements of Comparability through the standard UK ENIC portal. Within the portal, there is provision for individuals to be able to identify as refugees, meaning more flexibility is given for document submissions. Many organisations, including education institutions and employers, also subscribe to the UK ENIC service and use its database when assessing applications.
Asked by: Mark Logan (Conservative - Bolton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
What steps his Department is taking to ensure that children do not miss time in education as a result of local covid-19 lockdowns.
Answered by Gavin Williamson
The department is supplementing the £100 million it has already invested to support remote education. In the event of local lockdowns due to a coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak where face-to-face education is not possible, there will be an ongoing role for remote education. DfE can provide additional devices to schools for them to support disadvantaged children. The department is initially making an additional 150,000 laptops and tablets available to schools, from September, available to schools to support disadvantaged children who would not otherwise have access to remote education; specifically disadvantaged children:
We have already provided over 50,000 4G wireless routers to support disadvantaged children to learn at home and access vital social care services. These routers come with free data for the autumn term and will allow LAs and academy trusts to support children who may have their education and care disrupted because of official coronavirus restrictions or disruption to face-to-face contact.
In partnership with BT, the department has also launched a service to provide children and young people free access to BT Wi-Fi hotspots. Through the pilot, up to 10,000 families should be able to access a BT Wi-Fi connection. We are currently working with BT to expand this offer for the autumn term to allow more children to access the internet through their network of BT Wi-Fi hotspots.
We are also working with the major telecommunications companies to improve internet connectivity for disadvantaged and vulnerable families. We are piloting an approach where for families who rely on a mobile internet connection, mobile network operators will provide temporary access to free additional data offering them more flexibility to access the resources that they need the most.