Asked by: Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it her policy to put in place high-quality three year apprenticeships in (a) bricklaying, (b) plastering and (c) other essential construction trades.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The current apprenticeships programme has a clear emphasis on improving quality.
There are apprenticeship standards in development for both plastering and bricklaying, and both are intended to be three years in duration. We have a further 25 construction apprenticeship standards in development. We are working with the construction sector to ensure that these apprenticeships are relevant, robust, high-quality and are of sufficient duration for the apprentice to be competent in their chosen occupation.
Asked by: Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the number of skilled construction apprenticeships required to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to build new homes.
Answered by Robert Halfon
It is for individual businesses to determine how they meet the skills challenges arising from the Government’s ambitious home building programme.
Our reforms to apprenticeships will be a key tool to enable employers to meet their skills needs and the construction sector is currently developing a range of apprenticeship standards as part of the reform process.
Asked by: Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to introduce monitoring mechanisms to ensure that increased numbers of construction industry apprenticeships do not have an effect on the quality of apprenticeship training.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The training that is delivered for apprentices is monitored by Ofsted and the Skills Funding Agency, which set minimum standards for achievement rates. Both organisations have intervention regimes in place if training falls short of minimum requirements.
Asked by: Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the recent reduction in the number of school nurses does not affect the standard of sex and relationship education in schools.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The government believes that all children should have the opportunity to receive a high quality and appropriate sex and relationship education (SRE). SRE is compulsory in all maintained secondary schools, and many primary schools also teach it in an age-appropriate way. Academies do not have to teach SRE but many choose to do so as part of their statutory duty to provide a broad and balanced curriculum.
Schools and teachers should decide what to teach based on their pupils’ needs, and taking account of pupil and parent views. Teachers are encouraged to develop their practice with the support of specialist organisations and expert professionals, as they deem appropriate, and schools work with a number of partners to deliver SRE in schools.
Since April 2013, Local Authorities have been responsible for public health locally, including school nursing, and decisions should be based around local needs. According to NHS Digital there are 1,100 qualified school nurses (Specialist Community Public Health Nurses) in England and the workforce numbers have remained relatively stable over the last few years. More information can be found at: http://digital.nhs.uk/searchcatalogue?productid=21584&topics=0%2fWorkforce&sort=Relevance&size=10&page=1#top