Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how she plans to measure the effectiveness of the SEND change programme.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
In March 2023, the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan committed to testing a suite of SEND and AP policy proposals. The Change Programme is a vehicle for testing these proposals. Since the Change Programme launched in September 2023, the department has been working with the Change Programme authorities, including Bedford which is the lead local authority for the East of England Change Programme Partnership (CPP).
The effectiveness of the Change Programme will be measured through a formal independent evaluation for which the department has appointed an independent evaluator to conduct a process and implementation evaluation of the SEND and AP Change Programme as a whole. The evaluation will help the department understand which elements of the change programme are working well or less well and help shape suitable recommendations for improving ongoing delivery and future policy and practice.
As the Change Programme partnerships test the reforms they will feedback as to what is and is not working.
This feedback loop, led by the department and the change programme delivery partner, REACh, will not only help understand effectiveness but will also allow the department to share any early insights into the effectivity of reforms more widely. Feedback is received through the department’s frequent meetings with REACh.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many primary schools in (a) Bedford constituency and (b) England employ a play or creative arts therapist.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The 2022 Schools White Paper sets out the Government’s plan for all schools to provide safe, calm and supportive school environments, with targeted academic, pastoral and specialist support, helping children and young people to fulfil their potential.
It is for schools to decide what support or therapies they provide, considering the needs of their pupils. The information requested is not held by the Department.
The roles of staff employed by schools is collected as part of the annual School Workforce Census each November. The data can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.
Data from the November 2022 census is currently being collected and will be published in the summer of 2023.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of extending the Period product scheme for schools and colleges in England to also include higher education institutions.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The Period Products Scheme launched in January 2020 and has recently been extended until July 2024. Within the first two years of the scheme, 94% of secondary schools and 90% of post-16 organisations had ordered products at least once. Higher Education providers are autonomous bodies, and it is up to them how they meet their students’ needs. This can include providing discretionary financial support where required, which can be used to cover the purchase of period products.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what comparative assessment his Department has made of the reading and spelling levels of children taught through (a) the phonics approach and (b) alternative methods.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
There is significant evidence that systematic phonics works better than other methods for teaching early reading. In 2005, the Department commissioned a review into the teaching of early learning and the report from the review, led by Sir Jim Rose, was published in 2006. The Rose Review recommended that systematic phonics should be the prime approach for teaching children to read.
The review can be found here: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5551/2/report.pdf.
A review on phonics was carried out by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Sutton Trust who are, together, the Government-designated What Works Centre for Education. They found that phonics is more effective on average than other approaches for early reading, when embedded in a rich literacy environment. Systematic phonics consistently supports younger readers to master the basics and the EEF considers it the most secure area of pedagogy.
The review can be found here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/phonics.
The Department is committed to raising literacy standards, ensuring all children can read fluently and with understanding. Since 2010, the Government has accelerated the effective teaching of phonics, by placing it right at the heart of the curriculum. This has included introducing the annual phonics screening check (PSC) in 2012 for pupils at the end of year 1 and changing the national curriculum published in 2013 which requires schools to teach reading using systematic phonics. In 2019, 82% of 6-year-olds met the expected phonics standard, compared to 58% in 2012. Success in phonics is also predictive of later reading comprehension.
In 2016, England recorded its highest ever score in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, with a significant improvement compared to 2006 and 2011. This improvement is largely attributable to increases in the average performance of lower performing pupils and boys. These results followed a greater focus on reading in the primary curriculum, and a particular focus on phonics.
In 2018, the Department also launched a £26.3 million English Hubs Programme dedicated to improving the teaching of reading, with a focus on supporting children making the slowest progress in reading, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The 34 English Hubs in the programme are primary schools which excel at teaching early reading. The Department has since invested a further £17 million in this school-to-school improvement programme, which focusses on systematic synthetic phonics, early language, and reading for pleasure.
The teaching of reading now also receives greater focus in Ofsted’s inspection framework.
In 2021/22 the academic year, the Department introduced the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) to act as a baseline for primary progress measures at the end of key stage 2. The assessment will help determine a pupil’s experience prior to primary school, which will be influenced by various factors. At present there are no plans to publish interim progress measures as there is currently no data to assess the pupil’s progress in phonics between the RBA and PSC (the first cohort to have taken the RBA will complete their PSC in June 2023).
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the announcement of 2 January 2022 entitled More support to keep pupils in the classroom, how many of the 7,000 air purifiers his Department has delivered to schools; and how much of the £25 million funding committed for CO2 monitors has been (a) delivered and (b) spent as of 13 July 2022.
Answered by Will Quince
As of 24 June 2022, there were 8,026 department-funded air cleaning units and 386,699 department-funded CO2 monitors delivered to state-funded education providers.
A total of £23,933,979.60 (including VAT) has been spent on CO2 monitors in this contract.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
What steps he is taking with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that homeless children aged 16 and 17 without family support are accommodated by their local authority as looked-after children.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) have issued joint guidance to local authorities which makes clear that children’s services have responsibility for assessing the needs of 16 and 17 year olds who are homeless or are at risk of homelessness and that, if they need to be accommodated, they should normally become a looked after child. A copy of this guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/provision-of-accommodation-for-16-and-17-year-olds-who-may-be-homeless-and-or-require-accommodation.
There are only two circumstances in which a local authority might find that a homeless young person should be accommodated by homelessness services under the Housing Act 1996, rather than by children’s services under section 20 of the Children’s Act 1989 – becoming looked after. These are where the young person is either:
Alongside this guidance, Coram Voice’s 'Always Heard' safety net service, funded by the Department for Education, has provided vital advocacy support for looked after children, care leavers and children on the edge of care since 2017. As a direct result of the work of the Always Heard service, children have been made safe, removed from homelessness, and poor or unlawful care planning decisions have been challenged. Coram Voice continued to provide vital advocacy support during the COVID-19 outbreak to young people at most risk – with over half of the children and young people using the safety net service in 2020-21 from harder to reach groups, including homeless children. The department will continue to work together with MHCLG, to ensure this group of young people receive support and accommodation which meets their needs and, most importantly, keeps them safe.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure accommodation for homeless and looked after 16 and 17 year olds is regulated and safe.
Answered by Vicky Ford
We have consulted on a set of ambitious proposals to reform unregulated provision for children in care and care leavers, including how to enforce new national standards for providers to drive up quality, keeping young people safer and delivering better outcomes. We will be responding to this consultation and setting out our plans for ensuring the high-quality of unregulated semi-independent and independent accommodation in due course. Our proposals are available here:
https://consult.education.gov.uk/unregulated-provision/unregulated-provision-children-in-care/.
The government is clear that any 16- or 17-year-old who is homeless, or threatened with homelessness, must be assessed by children’s services, as set in the statutory guidance. This guidance is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/provision-of-accommodation-for-16-and-17-year-olds-who-may-be-homeless-and-or-require-accommodation.
Every child, who children’s services have a duty to accommodate, will have to be placed in a setting that meets the new national standards. There are only 2 circumstances in which a local authority might find that a homeless young person should be accommodated by homelessness services under the Housing Act rather than by children’s services under section 20 of the Children’s Act. These are where the young person is either:
In those circumstances, where a young person is accommodated by homelessness services under the Housing Act rather than by children’s services, the department will continue to work together with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, local communities, the government and with sector experts, to ensure this group of young people get the right support and accommodation they need.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support and activities will be available to vulnerable children during the summer holidays in 2020.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The summer period is a time of increased risk and vulnerability for many children and young people, which is why across government we have looked to strengthen our existing provisions to meet vulnerable young people’s needs over the summer period.
The Holiday Activities and Food programme, backed by £9 million of investment, will provide free healthy meals and enriching activities to thousands of disadvantaged children throughout the summer of 2020, building on the success of the 2018 and 2019 programmes.
As well as the Holiday Activities and Food programme, we are providing food vouchers for disadvantaged children through the COVID Summer Food Fund. Due to the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 outbreak, we recognise families will face increased pressure on household budgets over the coming months. This fund will enable children who are eligible for benefits-related free school meals to be supported over the summer holiday period. During the COVID-19 outbreak, we have also temporarily extended the free school meals eligibility to include some groups who have no recourse to public funds.
Alongside this support, we also have a comprehensive set of services that will continue to support young people over the summer months. The National Citizen Service (NCS) will provide a new support offer for 16 to 17 year olds. Further education colleges and schools will be offered a menu of NCS activities over 2-10 days, which can be tailored to support any summer or autumn activities that the college or other provider are running as part of their post COVID-19 re-engagement or induction phases with students. This support will be free to further education colleges and schools and delivered in late summer and throughout autumn.
We have also distributed funding to strengthen key frontline services, including £34.15 million to support vulnerable children’s charities. This funding has been used to provide online counselling, therapy and face to face support for vulnerable children through a coalition of charities led by Barnardo’s, as well as funding to expand helplines and provide ongoing support to particularly vulnerable groups.
A range of other support for vulnerable children will continue over the summer holidays including maintaining contact with families through the Ministry of Communities, Housing and Local Government’s Troubled Families programme, as well as the Home Office’s Violence Reduction Units that will continue to bring together multi-agency partners to tackle violent crime and provide summer provision.
The government is also providing £1 billion of catch-up funding to directly tackle the impact of lost teaching time over the 2020-21 academic year. This includes £650 million to be shared across state primary and secondary schools, which can be used to support pupils through summer school provision.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to protect children that have underlying health conditions that attend special educational needs provision from covid-19.
Answered by Vicky Ford
Supporting education settings to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 is the department’s highest priority.
We are working closely with colleagues across the government to ensure that all appropriate arrangements and support are in place for all of the department’s sectors, from early years and childcare to schools and children’s social care and also for vulnerable groups including children with long-term medical conditions.
Schools should continue to support their pupils’ health needs as normal and should follow Public Health England advice at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public.
Asked by: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps he has taken to tackle teacher shortages.
Answered by Nick Gibb
There are over 453,000 teachers in our schools – 12,000 more than in 2010 – and postgraduate recruitment to teacher training is at its highest level since 2010-11. The Government recognises that we need to do more to attract and retain teachers, particularly as the economy improves, pupil numbers grow and the demand for talented graduates increases.
Last year, the Department launched the first ever integrated strategy to recruit and retain more teachers. This included the biggest teaching reform in a generation: the Early Career Framework (ECF). The ECF will provide new teachers with the solid foundations for a successful career in teaching, backed by £130 million a year in funding when fully rolled out in 2021.
The strategy also set out priorities to make it easier for great people to join the profession, develop clearer career pathways for classroom teachers, and help school leaders establish more supportive school cultures to reduce teacher workload.
The Department has committed to raising starting salaries for new teachers to £30,000 by 2022-23, putting teaching on a par with other top graduate professions. We are also offering generous bursaries of up to £26,000 during training in key secondary subjects such as mathematics, physics and modern foreign languages. Additionally, physics, mathematics, languages and chemistry trainees starting initial teacher training in 2020-21 will receive three early-career payments totalling £6,000 spread across years two, three and four of teaching. This total may increase to £9,000 if the trainees are teaching in local authority areas the Department has identified as having high need for teachers, as determined by our published data.