Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of extending the HGV Skills bootcamp programme beyond 2023, to alleviate the shortage of HGV drivers.
Answered by Robert Halfon
Skills Bootcamps in HGV driving provide more opportunities for people to train as a HGV driver, gain their HGV driving licence and launch new careers in the sector, helping to alleviate the HGV driver shortage. Since the launch in December 2021, the suppliers contracted to deliver Skills Bootcamps in HGV driving have seen high demand for places.
The department is investing up to £34 million to create up to 11,000 HGV driver training places for people that are new, returning to, or looking to upskill as an HGV driver. We have listened to HGV driver training companies and have confirmed that the new drivers can be trained between December 2021 and end of March 2023.
The department is currently reviewing HGV delivery, and more detail on the future availability of Skills Bootcamps in HGV driving will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase attendance in post-16 education for students with anxiety.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The mental health and wellbeing of young people is a priority for this government, and we know post-16 providers can play a critical role in this. Colleges that take an effective whole-college approach are best placed to promote and support learners’ mental health and wellbeing, which can in turn can improve attendance.
The department has coordinated several programmes that are available to colleges to support the mental health of post-16 learners, including those with anxiety. This has included the opportunity for all colleges in England to access senior mental health leads training by 2025, and a £79 million boost to young people mental health support, including expanding Mental Health Support Teams, to bring colleges closer with mental health professionals in their local area.
Colleges funded through the £5.4 million College Collaboration Fund developed new creative ways to support learner mental health and wellbeing, with resources available to all Further Education (FE) providers online, while the Challenge Competition Fund has delivered project funding which has involved FE colleges, such as the University of Keele’s project to integrate a ‘whole community’ approach to mental health, including both FE and higher education providers in the region.
As part of our commitment to a long-term education recovery plan, the department is investing over £800 million across the next three academic years to fund an average of 40 additional learning hours for band 5 and T Level students in 16 to 19 education. The additional hours can be used to support areas where there are barriers for learners to effectively access and engage with teaching and learning, which can include their mental health.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department plans to increase the level of hardships funds for students.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department recognises the additional cost of living pressures that have arisen this year and that have impacted students. Many higher education providers have hardship funds that students can apply to for assistance.
There is £261 million of student premium funding available this academic year to support disadvantaged students who need additional help. The department has worked with the Office for Students (OfS) to ensure that universities support students in hardship using both hardship funds and the student premium.
In addition, all households will save on their energy bills through the Energy Price Guarantee and the £400 Energy Bills Support Scheme discount. Students who buy their energy from a domestic supplier are eligible for the energy bills discount. The Energy Prices Bill introduced on 12 October 2022 includes the provision to require landlords to pass benefits they receive from energy price support, as appropriate, onto end users. Further details of the requirements under this legislation will be set out in regulations. A Treasury-led review will be launched to consider how to support households and businesses with energy bills after April 2023.
As part of the package of support for rising energy bills, the government is also giving a council tax rebate payment of £150 to households that were living in a property in council tax bands A to D as their main home on 1 April 2022. This includes full-time students that do not live in student halls or in property that is not considered a House in Multiple Occupation for council tax purposes.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the number of SEND places available in schools in Canterbury.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places, including places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), sits with local authorities. Therefore, the department has not collected central data on the capacity of special schools or of the availability of SEND places more broadly. However, starting from summer 2023, we plan to collect data from local authorities on the physical capacity of special schools and SEND units and resourced provision in mainstream schools, as well as corresponding forecasts of demand for specialist places. We expect this to be an annual data collection, forming part of the existing School Capacity Survey.
To support local authorities fulfil their statutory duties, the department is investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to help deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision (AP). This represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. It will support local authorities to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings, and will also be used to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings.
As part of this commitment, in March 2022 the department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment, focused on academic years 2023/24 and 2024/25. In June 2022, we announced that we will build up to 60 new centrally delivered special and AP free schools. The application process for special free schools will close on 21 October 2022.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the number of primary school places in Canterbury.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places sits with local authorities. The department provides capital funding through the basic need grant to support local authorities to provide school places, based on their own forecast data. They can use this funding to provide places in new schools, or through the expansion of existing schools and can work with any school in their local area, including academies and free schools.
In March 2022, the department announced Kent will receive just below £43 million to support the provision of new school places needed for 2024 and just over £5 million for 2025. This takes their total funding allocated between 2011 and 2025 to just below £422 million.
The department also engages with councils on a regular basis to review their plans for creating additional places and to consider alternatives where necessary. When local authorities are experiencing difficulties, the department supports them to find solutions as quickly as possible.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding has been distributed through the National Tutoring Programme in Canterbury in each month since that programme was launched.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Department does not hold information on Tuition Partners or Academic Mentors in the required format at constituency level.
School-led tutoring grant allocations by school and local authority for the academic year 2021 to 2022 have been published at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1071234/School_Led_Funding_Publication_File_flat_values_v1.ods
Payment information relating to School-Led Tutoring for the academic year 2021 to 2022 will be published by the ESFA once the reconciliation process has been completed for that period.
School-led tutoring grant allocations for the academic year 2022 to 2023 have been published at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-tutoring-programme-ntp-allocations-for-2022-to-2023-academic-year.
Between November 2020 and June 2022, over 2 million tuition courses were started. The Government has committed more than £1 billion to support tutoring over academic years 2020 to 2023/24, during which we aim to offer up to six million tutoring courses.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many year nine places are available in Canterbury as of 11 October 2022.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
The Department does not collect or hold real-time data on school capacity or pupil numbers on roll, which would be needed to calculate how many year 9 places are available on any given date. The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places sits with local authorities. Kent local authority will have further information on school places in the Canterbury area.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on fulfilling the core objectives of the national curriculum physical education programme for primary school children.
Answered by Will Quince
The department recognises that the extended school closures have had a substantial impact on children and young people’s education.
While we do not collect detailed data on PE outcomes, we have been monitoring the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on education. The department’s school snapshot panel survey in December 2020 provided insights into the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on PE provision, showing a mixed picture. 73% of schools had changed their delivery of PE in some way, for 90% the change was around delivering different or modified activities. 19% of all schools reported increased PE time, for example due to pupils attending school in PE kit reducing changing time, and 15% of all schools reported reduced time for PE often due to the lack of appropriate inside space. The school recovery report of January 2022 shows that whilst some schools report increased hours for PE, 56% of primary schools have reported reducing hours for some subjects, such as PE.
The department’s COVID-19 guidance has supported schools to continue to provide PE, sport and physical activity through COVID-19 restrictions, and online PE lessons have been available through Oak National Academy.
PE will play an important role in supporting recovery. We are continuing to support schools to provide high quality PE. Primary schools continue to receive the £320 million PE and sport premium, which is supporting improvements to the quality of the PE, sport and physical activity which they offer. In October 2021 the government also announced nearly £30 million a year will go towards improving the teaching of PE at primary school, as well as to improving and opening up school sport facilities in England.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of available nursery places in (a) Canterbury constituency, (b) Canterbury district, during the (i) 2021-22 and (ii) 2022-23 school year.
Answered by Will Quince
Department for Education officials monitor the sufficiency of childcare places in England through a combination of regular surveys, telephone calls and email contact with local authority early years teams. We have not seen councils reporting any substantial place supply issues, and we have not seen a substantial number of parents unable to secure a childcare place this term or since early years settings re-opened fully on 1 June 2020. Kent County Council, which holds the statutory duty to secure sufficient childcare places in Canterbury, is not reporting any issues with childcare places at present.
According to Ofsted data published on 30 November, the number of places offered by non-domestic providers on the Early Years Register in the Kent County Council area has remained broadly stable between August 2015 and August 2021, as is true across England.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Prime Minister's announcement of 10 May 2020, whether primary school children returning to a school setting on 1 June 2020 will return on a full-time basis where possible until the end of the summer term.
Answered by Nick Gibb
From the week commencing 1 June, at the earliest, we will be asking primary schools to welcome back children in nursery, reception, year 1 and year 6 on a full-time basis, alongside priority groups. We will only do this provided that the five key tests set by the Government justify the changes at the time. We are asking schools to plan on this basis, ahead of confirmation that the tests are met.
Guidance for schools and childcare settings to prepare for wider opening from 1 June 2020 can be found here: