Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of encouraging local authorities to adopt the HAF Plus model of delivering the Holiday Activities and Food programme for 13-16 year olds.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The holiday activities and food (HAF) programme supports disadvantaged children and their families during the school holidays, offering enriching activities and healthy food to support their health, development and wellbeing. The department was very pleased to be able to make available more than £200 million for the HAF programme in 2025/26. Delivery across England has already taken place at Easter, with the summer and Christmas holidays to come.
HAF Plus has been adopted by several local authorities as a model for older children, following successful pilots. Through the department’s annual guidance to local authorities who coordinate the programme across England, we encourage flexibility to offer suitable models to older children, with careful consideration given to a different model of food and activity provision. We also strongly encourage consideration of the role that older children can have in supporting, designing and leading sessions for their peers or for younger children, in order to help them to socialise and develop leadership skills, which can be crucial for those in year 9 to 11.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions her Department has had with the Department for Health and Social Care on (a) medical student finance and (b) the adequacy of total financial support during NHS Bursary funded years of study.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department works closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) on a wide range of matters to ensure the education system is supporting healthcare students, including student funding.
The government needs to ensure that the student funding system is financially sustainable, and funding arrangements are reviewed each year. We will continue to engage with DHSC to consider the financial support that medical students receive.
Students attending the fifth and sixth years of undergraduate medical courses and years 2 to 4 of graduate entry medical courses qualify for NHS bursaries. The government has announced an increase to all NHS bursary maintenance grants and allowances for the 2025/26 academic year by forecast inflation, 3.1%, based on the Retail Price Index Excluding Mortgage Interest (RPIX) inflation index.
Medical students qualifying for NHS bursary support also qualify for non-means tested loans for living costs from the department. The government has announced that maximum loans for living costs for the 2025/26 academic year, including reduced rate non-means tested loans for students undertaking NHS bursary years, will also increase by 3.1%.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of enabling medical students to receive their student loan provision at the same rate as previous years alongside the NHS Bursary in their final years of study.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department works closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) on a wide range of matters to ensure the education system is supporting healthcare students, including student funding.
The government needs to ensure that the student funding system is financially sustainable, and funding arrangements are reviewed each year. We will continue to engage with DHSC to consider the financial support that medical students receive.
Students attending the fifth and sixth years of undergraduate medical courses and years 2 to 4 of graduate entry medical courses qualify for NHS bursaries. The government has announced an increase to all NHS bursary maintenance grants and allowances for the 2025/26 academic year by forecast inflation, 3.1%, based on the Retail Price Index Excluding Mortgage Interest (RPIX) inflation index.
Medical students qualifying for NHS bursary support also qualify for non-means tested loans for living costs from the department. The government has announced that maximum loans for living costs for the 2025/26 academic year, including reduced rate non-means tested loans for students undertaking NHS bursary years, will also increase by 3.1%.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase the uptake of free school meals by eligible children.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department recognises the vital role played by free school meals (FSM) and encourages all eligible families to take their entitlement up. There are currently around 2.1 million pupils eligible for and claiming FSM.
The department provides the Eligibility Checking System, allowing local authorities to quickly verify eligibility for FSM and ensure FSM are easily received.
The department is aware of a range of measures aimed at maximising take up of FSM, including through approaches being trialled by local authorities. We are supportive of local authorities taking action to ensure government support reaches families, subject to them meeting legal and data protection requirements.
The government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty by tackling the root causes and giving every child the best start at life. To support this, a new ministerial taskforce has been set up to develop a Child Poverty Strategy, which will be published in spring 2025. The taskforce will consider a range of policies, assessing what will have the greatest impact in driving down rates of child poverty.
As with all government programmes, the department will keep its approach to FSM under continued review.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to introduce binding sectoral bargaining to the further education sector.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government does not set or recommend pay in further education (FE) as this remains the responsibility of individual colleges who are free to implement pay arrangements in line with their local needs. There are no current plans to introduce binding sectoral bargaining in FE.
The department is investing around £600 million across in FE in the 2024/25 and 2025/26 financial years. This includes extending retention payments of up to £6,000 after tax to eligible early career FE teachers in key subject areas, including in sixth form colleges. We also continue to support recruitment and retention with teacher training bursaries worth up to £30,000 tax-free in certain key subject areas, and with support for industry professionals to enter the teaching workforce through the Taking Teaching Further programme. The department will also work with the FE sector to recruit 6,500 additional teachers across schools and colleges to raise standards for children and young people.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to reduce pay gaps between school teachers and further education teachers.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department recognises the vital role that FE teachers play in developing the skills needed to drive our missions to improve opportunity and economic growth.
The government does not set or recommend pay in further education (FE), and the FE sector does not have a Pay Review Body. Colleges are not bound by the national pay and conditions framework for school teachers and are free to implement their own pay arrangements.
We are investing around £600 million across the financial years 2024/25 and 2025/26, including extending retention payments of up to £6,000 after tax to eligible early career FE teachers in key subject areas. We also continue to support recruitment and retention with teacher training bursaries worth up to £30,000 tax-free in certain key subject areas, and with support for industry professionals to enter the teaching workforce through our Taking Teaching Further programme.
My right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has announced a Budget on 30 October, which will be followed by a multi-year spending review in the spring of next year. Decisions about future post-16 funding and capital programmes will be subject to the outcomes of these fiscal events.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department held discussions with disability groups prior to the award of the assessment contract to Capita by the Student Loans Company.
Answered by Robert Halfon
Procurement for this contract was managed by the Student Loans Company (SLC). SLC, through its Disabled Students’ Stakeholder Group (DSSG), has important relationships with third sector bodies and advocacy groups in the education and disability sectors. SLC engaged with a number of organisations who support disabled students to gather their feedback and insights in developing quality standards for the new model, prior to the invitation to tender, which was published in July 2022. To support the new service design, SLC also established a DSSG Procurement sub-group consisting of DSSG members and other sector bodies to discuss how the new quality standards could be defined and measured at each stage of the customer journey. SLC also invited written contributions from members.
As this procurement was managed by SLC, the Department did not hold any discussions with disability groups on this matter prior to the contract being awarded.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what contingency plans he has in place to ensure that children who travel to school by coach can continue to do so in the event that some coach operators cease trading by April 2021 due to the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department has allocated more than £70 million to Local Transport Authorities (LTAs), enabling them to increase dedicated home to school and college transport capacity over the autumn term: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/esfa-update-14-october-2020/esfa-update-further-education-14-october-2020. LTAs have flexibility in how they use this funding to meet the needs of local families, including hiring extra coaches. We are reviewing funding arrangements for the spring term.
Government Departments continue to work collaboratively and with representatives from the coach sector, including the Confederation of Passenger Transport, to understand the ongoing risks and issues the sector faces and how these could be addressed.
The Government has also provided £4.6 billion of un-ringfenced funding to local authorities to support them with the pressures they are facing as a result of COVID-19: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-emergency-funding-for-local-government. This funding can be used to support school and college travel.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the debate in Westminster Hall on Children's health: Access to milk of 28 March 2017, if her Department will make an assessment of the recommendations in Tetra Pak's Making more of milk report to improve access to and uptake of milk in primary schools.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
The Government encourages consumption of dairy products as part of a healthy, balanced diet through legislation, funding and guidance.
The School Food Standards ensures milk must be available every school day for drinking. Practical guidance including portion sizes is available on the School Food Plan website. Where we have evidence that individual schools are not meeting the standards, we follow up directly with the school.
We have no plans to extend eligibility for free school milk to all children in reception classes. Disadvantaged pupils over the age of 5 are entitled to free school milk. To help subsidise the cost of school milk, schools can choose to take part in the Nursery Milk Scheme and the EU School Milk Subsidy Scheme. We will consider the longer-term approach to school milk provision as part of a future domestic policy programme.
We do not intend to take a formal assessment against the recommendations in this report, however, we have agreed to meet representatives of Tetra Pak and departmental officials are currently in contact.
Asked by: Mary Glindon (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions her Department has had with key external stakeholders on the childhood obesity strategy; how frequently such discussions take place; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
The Department for Education is playing an integral role as part of the government’s aim to reduce England’s rate of childhood obesity significantly within the next ten years. We are working with other departments and agencies, including the Department of Health and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, to deliver the childhood obesity plan.
Our department supports the provision of nutritious food in schools to enable pupils to be well nourished, develop healthy eating habits and to concentrate and learn in school. Our school food standards regulate the food and drink provided during the school day, and foods high in fat, salt and sugar, as well as low quality reformed or reconstituted foods, are restricted.
Alongside these standards, we are leading several significant programmes of work, as outlined in ‘Childhood Obesity: A plan for action’. This includes doubling the Primary PE and Sport Premium, investing £10 million a year into school healthy breakfast clubs and introducing a new voluntary healthy rating scheme for primary schools. We will come forward with further information on each of these programmes soon.
The department has regular formal and informal conversations with a wide range of stakeholders on these programmes, including external organisations with an interest in school food, health, sport and physical activity. We look forward to continuing to work with these organisations as we deliver our programmes.