Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the policy paper entitled Plan for Change, published on 5 December 2024, CP1210, how she plans to measure good development for school readiness; whether she plans to use teacher-completed Early Years Foundation Stage Profiles to measure good development; and whether she plans to use all seven categories of Early Years Foundation Stage measurement.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Giving young children the best start in life is the foundation of the government’s Opportunity Mission. Children’s earliest years are crucial to their health, development and life chances.
The department has set a milestone of a record proportion of children starting school ready to learn in the classroom. We will measure our progress through 75% of children at the end of reception reaching a good level of development in the early years foundation stage (EYFS) profile assessment by 2028.
The statutory EYFS framework sets the standards and requirements that all early years providers must follow to ensure all children have the best start in life and are prepared for school. It requires that children be assessed against the EYFS profile in the summer term of the academic year in which they turn 5 years old.
The EYFS profile seeks to measure a child’s level of development to support their successful transitions into year 1 and to support parents, carers and early years educators to recognise children’s progress and understand their needs.
It comprises an assessment of the child’s outcomes in relation to 17 early learning goals across 7 areas of learning.
Children are defined as having a good level of development at the end of the EYFS if they are at the expected level for the 12 early learning goals within the 5 areas of learning relating to: communication and language; personal, social and emotional development; physical development; literacy; and mathematics. This is the definition that will be used to measure progress on school readiness as set out in the Plan for Change.
Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the policy paper entitled Plan for Change, published on 5 December 2024, CP1210, at what grades new teachers will be recruited; and if she will publish recruitment targets by subject area.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
Recruiting and retaining more qualified, expert teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost the life chances for every child. The within school factor that makes the biggest difference to a young person’s educational outcome is high-quality teaching. Yet this government has inherited a system with critical shortages of teachers with numbers not keeping pace with demographic changes.
This is why the government has set out the ambition to recruit 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament, including targeting shortage subjects.
The department will continue to work alongside the sector as it develops its delivery plan and seeks to re-establish teaching as an attractive profession. The department’s measures will include getting more teachers into shortage subjects, supporting areas that face recruitment challenges and tackling retention issues.
The department has already made good early progress towards this key pledge by accepting in full the 5.5% pay award, by expanding our ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’ recruitment campaign, by making £233 million available for bursaries in 2025/26 and by doubling retention payments for new teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing working in disadvantaged schools.
However, the best recruitment strategy is a retention strategy to ensure teachers stay and thrive in the profession. This is why the department is doing more to support workload and wellbeing. This includes introducing new report cards to replace Ofsted single-word judgements to provide parents with a clear picture of their schools and proportionate accountability for schools, allowing teacher’s planning, preparation and assessment time to be taken from home and making key resources to support well-being, developed with school leaders, available to teachers.
Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the policy paper entitled Plan for Change, published on 5 December 2024, CP1210, how she plans to measure progress towards her target for children to be thriving at school; and if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of using data on attainment gaps between disadvantaged pupils and their peers as a core metric for this target.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The Opportunity Mission will break the link between a child’s background and their future success. Driving high and rising standards is at the heart of the department’s vision for all schools, and these standards are crucial in supporting all children and young people to both achieve and thrive. As my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education set out in her speech to the Confederation of School Trusts in November 2024, achieving and thriving go hand-in-hand, with children who are healthy and have a sense of belonging at school most likely to achieve well. We are looking at a range of indicators for this and will set out more details. At every stage, improving outcomes for disadvantaged children and young people, and those with special educational needs and disabilities, will be a priority.