Asked by: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the value is of Wakefield City Academies Trust pension deficit.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The information requested is not held centrally. The number of part‑time and full‑time staff employed by Wakefield City Academies Trust (WCAT) and the cost of those staff are a matter for the Trust. Financial statements from the Trust are in the public domain.
The value of the WCAT pension deficit is also a matter for the Trust.
Asked by: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many multi-academy trusts have collapsed since the introduction of such trusts.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The department’s latest records show that no academy trust has collapsed. Where there is a risk to public funds, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will intervene in a proportionate manner to avoid financial issues affecting school provision.
The ESFA has a robust intervention strategy to support an academy trust, which is a company limited by guarantee and subject to company law, to reach a stronger financial position. Intervention actions range from supporting and building trust capacity through to issuing a Financial Notice to Improve, or in the most serious cases, terminating a funding agreement after schools have been transferred to another trust.
Asked by: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support pupils who experience mental health problems at school.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Many schools provide support to pupils with mental health issues, but teachers are not mental health professionals and need specialist support.
The Department is making available an additional £1.4 billion between 2015 and 2020 to improve mental health services for children and young people. The NHS Long Term Plan sets out a continued focus on improving specialist services to build on this. It makes a commitment that expenditure on children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than overall NHS spending and sets out plans to increase access to treatment.
This provision will include new Mental Health Support Teams working in or near schools and colleges to provide earlier access to a wider range of support and treatments. The first of these teams will be set up this year in 25 trailblazer areas that will test how they can work in practice. The aim is to cover a fifth to a quarter of England by 2023.
To support schools to engage with specialist support, the Government will fund the training of a designated senior lead in every school on how to put in place a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.
Asked by: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many in-flight files of EU legislation exist that effect the policy areas managed by his Department; and which in-flight files of EU legislation his Department intends to implement in UK law.
Answered by Anne Milton
The regulation establishing 'Erasmus', the union programme for education, training, youth and sport 2021-27 will be adopted by the EU during the implementation period but does not take effect until January 2021.
There is a range of EU legislation led by other departments that could affect the policy areas managed by the Department for Education. The Official Journal of the European Union publishes upcoming EU legislation for implementation. This is publicly available online: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/oj/direct-access.html.
Asked by: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many young people have been contacted by the National Collaborative Outreach Programme in each region; and how many schools are working with the National Collaborative Outreach Programme.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP) targets those areas of the country where progression into higher education (HE) is both low overall and lower than expected given typical GCSE attainment rates, in order to increase the proportion of disadvantaged young people in HE.
The Higher Education and Funding Council for England (HEFCE), who operate the NCOP, are currently collating data on outreach from the 2017 end of year monitoring returns, with a view to publishing the outcomes in spring 2018.
The Programme consists of 29 consortia undertaking outreach activity in geographical areas. The target wards and consortia that are working to close the HE participation gaps in these areas can be found via HEFCE’s website:
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/sas/ncop/maps/.
Asked by: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many disposable coffee cups were purchased by his Department in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The information requested is not held centrally. Disposable coffee cups are purchased by an external catering supplier, which was unable to provide this information.
Asked by: Mary Creagh (Labour - Coventry East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many vehicles in his Department's fleet are (a) electric vehicles and (b) ultra-low emission vehicles.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The department has no fleet vehicles.