Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools' 2026 Research Insights, published in March 2026, what steps she is taking to improve access to training for school staff on responding to misinformation and conspiracy theories, in the context of the finding that 35 per cent of school staff have received no such training.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department will strengthen media literacy education and skills for young people to critically engage with and assess information from a range of sources in the national curriculum, following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report. This will help pupils learn how to spot misinformation and disinformation, including AI-generated content, and to develop critical thinking skills.
The department is engaging with sector experts to determine how to reflect this in the updated curriculum and training requirements for teachers. Following public consultation from September, the new curriculum will be taught from September 2028.
Updated relationships, sex and health education guidance, to be implemented from September 2026, includes strengthened content on staying safe online and online wellbeing. Secondary pupils will learn how advertising and information is targeted at them and how to be a discerning consumer of information online, understanding the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation online, including conspiracy theories.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to tackle online conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation in the classroom.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department will strengthen media literacy education and skills for young people to critically engage with and assess information from a range of sources in the national curriculum, following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report. This will help pupils learn how to spot misinformation and disinformation, including AI-generated content, and to develop critical thinking skills.
The department is engaging with sector experts to determine how to reflect this in the updated curriculum and training requirements for teachers. Following public consultation from September, the new curriculum will be taught from September 2028.
Updated relationships, sex and health education guidance, to be implemented from September 2026, includes strengthened content on staying safe online and online wellbeing. Secondary pupils will learn how advertising and information is targeted at them and how to be a discerning consumer of information online, understanding the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation online, including conspiracy theories.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential for Family Hubs to act as neighbourhood anchors bringing together childcare, parenting support, early years education and wider community services.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The government is determined to remove barriers to opportunity and raise the healthiest generation of children ever. Best Start Family Hubs and Healthy Babies are central to that ambition, bringing together childcare, health, parenting support and early years services in one place.
The Best Start Family Hubs and Healthy Babies programme guidance makes clear that Hubs should act as neighbourhood anchors, supporting families through a connected local network of parenting support, early years education, health and wider community services. We are investing over £900 million in Best Start Family Hubs and Healthy Babies to create up to 1,000 hubs and 2,000 network sites across England by the end of 2028.
The Hubs will connect families to wider services including housing and cost-of-living support across the 0 to 19 age range (25 for children with special educational needs and disabilities). Network sites will extend into places families already use, including early years settings, schools, libraries and community venues, helping families access support close to home.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of childcare on meeting the needs of parents working irregular hours, shift patterns or in insecure employment.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department is investing over £1 billion more in the early years entitlements this year compared to 2025/26 and an above inflation increase to entitlements funding rates. In 2026/27, we expect to provide over £9.5 billion for the early years entitlements. In addition to funding increases, we will consult on changes to how early years funding is allocated and distributed as part of the ongoing review of childcare provision and regulation.
Local authorities must, so far as is reasonably practicable, secure sufficient childcare for working parents in their area. The department’s statutory guidance states that they should assess the childcare needs of parents and ensure there is provision that supports participation in work and training. When assessing sufficiency, local authorities should consider families who may have difficulty accessing childcare, including those working outside standard hours or with changing work patterns.
By allowing funded hours to be stretched across the year, deducting closures from calculations, and enabling mixed‑provider models, the system is designed to work alongside all‑year childcare businesses, managing funding and fees transparently and within national limits, broadening parental choice.
We continue to monitor the sufficiency of childcare places; the key measure being the supply of available places is sufficient to meet requirements.
Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006 states that local authorities are responsible for ensuring the provision of childcare is sufficient in their area.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the findings of the Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes, published in June 2026.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department welcomes the findings of the Inquiry and, as stated in the ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper, intends to build on its work to develop better insights into issues specific to white working-class children, families and their relationships with schools.
We are already taking forward a comprehensive programme of reform, including strengthening early family support, introducing free breakfast clubs, revitalising youth services, improving how disadvantage funding is targeted, and consulting on a new progress measure alongside Progress 8 to better recognise pupils who start secondary school behind their peers.
We are also launching and funding two place-based missions, Mission North East and Mission Coastal, to transform outcomes for young people locally and provide a blueprint for national change.
The department will continue to engage with the Inquiry as it enters its second phase focused on advancing further research.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to reduce rates of persistent and severe absence among pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in coastal towns.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
Absence is a key barrier to opportunity. For children to achieve and thrive they need to be in school. The department is committed to improving the attendance of all pupils, regardless of background and geographical location.
Thanks to the efforts of the sector, we saw record improvements in 2024/25 with children attending over five million more days compared to the previous year, and 147,000 fewer children persistently absent.
We are tackling barriers to attendance faced by disadvantaged pupils, including through rolling out breakfast clubs to all primaries to ensure all children are on time and ready to learn.
Our attendance mentoring programme provides over 10,000 persistently absent children with one-to-one support covering ten areas with some of the worst attendance rates in the country, including in coastal areas such as Blackpool, Hartlepool, Portsmouth and Hastings.
We have also launched Mission Coastal to transform outcomes for young people in communities where disadvantage is entrenched and educational outcomes remain stubbornly low.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support schools to tackle antisemitism.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
There is no place for antisemitism in our society, and it is essential that Jewish pupils and staff feel safe. Schools are places of protection as well as education, and must provide a safe and supportive environment for all.
The department is taking forward a comprehensive programme to help tackle antisemitism in education. We have committed £7 million to support schools, colleges and universities, including £1 million for an innovation fund, to help young people identify and challenge antisemitism, misinformation and harmful narratives.
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, has commissioned an independent review, led by Sir David Bell, to make practical recommendations so schools and colleges can effectively identify, respond to and prevent antisemitism. The review will conclude in autumn.
The department’s Educate Against Hate website provides free, quality assured resources and guidance to help teachers challenge prejudice and build resilience to harmful narratives and extremism, including antisemitism.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of continued professional development on the ability of teachers to tackle misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories in the classroom.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The initial teacher training and early career framework sets out the foundational core content that defines great teaching. This includes anticipating common misconceptions within particular subjects, which is an important aspect of curricular knowledge. In the context of misinformation, this can help teachers to spot pupil misconceptions that may arise from various sources. Beyond this, providers can design a curriculum which is responsive to participant needs, including additional training where necessary.
In October 2024, Ofcom published its three-year media literacy strategy, which commits to supporting teachers through continuing professional development, evaluation of training outcomes and stronger collaboration with regional partners to share learnings and effective practices.
The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report was published on 5 November 2025 and includes recommendations for reform to the curriculum, which the government has accepted. Vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.
To support schools in the meantime, Oak National Academy provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of initial teacher training on the ability of teachers to tackle misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories in the classroom.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The initial teacher training and early career framework sets out the foundational core content that defines great teaching. This includes anticipating common misconceptions within particular subjects, which is an important aspect of curricular knowledge. In the context of misinformation, this can help teachers to spot pupil misconceptions that may arise from various sources. Beyond this, providers can design a curriculum which is responsive to participant needs, including additional training where necessary.
In October 2024, Ofcom published its three-year media literacy strategy, which commits to supporting teachers through continuing professional development, evaluation of training outcomes and stronger collaboration with regional partners to share learnings and effective practices.
The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report was published on 5 November 2025 and includes recommendations for reform to the curriculum, which the government has accepted. Vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.
To support schools in the meantime, Oak National Academy provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.
Asked by: Patrick Hurley (Labour - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of including (a) misinformation, (b) disinformation and (c) conspiracy theories in the guidance entitled Keeping children safe in education, published on 1 September 2025, on schools; and whether she plans to update the guidance to include information for teachers on tackling this issue.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
In response to stakeholder feedback, an amendment was made to paragraph 135 in the statutory guidance ‘Keeping children safe in education’. This came into force on 1 September 2025, and provided further examples of content risks.
The department recognises the significant risks these issues pose to children’s safety and wellbeing, as they can distort understanding, undermine trust and expose pupils to harmful narratives online.
The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review highlighted the importance of all pupils developing the skills they need to identify and challenge misinformation. In making changes to the curriculum, we will support this by strengthening media literacy content in citizenship and English and making citizenship compulsory in primary school so that all children are introduced to this vital content at an early stage.