Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the cost to her Department of the proposed increase in employer National Insurance contributions for financial year 2025-26.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government will provide support for departments and other public sector employers for additional employer National Insurance contributions costs only. This funding will be allocated to departments in the usual way, in line with the approach taken under the previous government’s Health and Social Care Levy.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how data on suspected victims of grooming gangs in schools is (a) collected and (b) shared with (i) law enforcement and (ii) child protection services.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department can confirm that the statutory safeguarding guidance, ‘Keeping children safe in education’ (KCSIE), provides clear and robust guidance on how schools and colleges must report all safeguarding concerns.
It covers issues such as grooming, sexual abuse, and child sexual exploitation, ensuring that schools and colleges have the tools and guidance needed to manage safeguarding effectively.
KCSIE makes clear that all concerns, discussions, decisions made, and the reasons for those decisions must be documented in writing.
Where staff have concerns about a child, they must follow their school or college’s child protection policy and report concerns to the designated safeguarding lead (DSL) without delay. Ordinarily, it is the DSL who is then responsible for referring these concerns to the relevant local authority children’s social care team and, where appropriate, the police. When such referrals are made into children's social care, and the police, data will be captured and recorded by those agencies.
KCSIE is designed to ensure that all concerns are dealt with swiftly, effectively, and in line with local safeguarding protocols. Schools and colleges must also engage with their local safeguarding partners to ensure these processes are consistently implemented.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what protocols are in place for schools to report suspected grooming gang activities involving students.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department can confirm that the statutory safeguarding guidance, ‘Keeping children safe in education’ (KCSIE), provides clear and robust guidance on how schools and colleges must report all safeguarding concerns.
It covers issues such as grooming, sexual abuse, and child sexual exploitation, ensuring that schools and colleges have the tools and guidance needed to manage safeguarding effectively.
KCSIE makes clear that all concerns, discussions, decisions made, and the reasons for those decisions must be documented in writing.
Where staff have concerns about a child, they must follow their school or college’s child protection policy and report concerns to the designated safeguarding lead (DSL) without delay. Ordinarily, it is the DSL who is then responsible for referring these concerns to the relevant local authority children’s social care team and, where appropriate, the police. When such referrals are made into children's social care, and the police, data will be captured and recorded by those agencies.
KCSIE is designed to ensure that all concerns are dealt with swiftly, effectively, and in line with local safeguarding protocols. Schools and colleges must also engage with their local safeguarding partners to ensure these processes are consistently implemented.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a programme to increase awareness of the signs of rape gang abuse for teachers in primary and secondary schools.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility. Schools and colleges have a critical role to play in protecting children and keeping them safe.
The department has an established robust safeguarding framework in place in the form of ‘Keeping children safe in education’, which is the statutory safeguarding guidance that all schools and colleges must have regard to.
Part 1 of this guidance, which should be read by all staff who work directly with children, not only sets out the different types of abuse and harm but also makes clear that all staff should receive safeguarding training, know how to recognise abuse and know what to do if they have any concerns about a child.
The department keeps the guidance under regular review to see where it needs strengthening and to ensure it is reflective of emerging risks and issues in safeguarding.
Pupils are taught about rape, exploitation and abuse as part of compulsory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE). The RSHE statutory guidance is also clear that schools should provide pupils with the knowledge they need to recognise and report abuse, including emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
The department is currently reviewing the statutory RSHE curriculum to ensure it covers all relevant content relating to sexual violence.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing an awareness programme to protect primary and secondary school children from rape gang abuse.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility. Schools and colleges have a critical role to play in protecting children and keeping them safe.
The department has an established robust safeguarding framework in place in the form of ‘Keeping children safe in education’, which is the statutory safeguarding guidance that all schools and colleges must have regard to.
Part 1 of this guidance, which should be read by all staff who work directly with children, not only sets out the different types of abuse and harm but also makes clear that all staff should receive safeguarding training, know how to recognise abuse and know what to do if they have any concerns about a child.
The department keeps the guidance under regular review to see where it needs strengthening and to ensure it is reflective of emerging risks and issues in safeguarding.
Pupils are taught about rape, exploitation and abuse as part of compulsory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE). The RSHE statutory guidance is also clear that schools should provide pupils with the knowledge they need to recognise and report abuse, including emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
The department is currently reviewing the statutory RSHE curriculum to ensure it covers all relevant content relating to sexual violence.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of officials in her Department were hired via positive action schemes in the last financial year.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
All Civil Service departments work within the Recruitment Principles, as regulated by the Civil Service Commission, to recruit using a fair and open process and appoint on merit.
Departments will only limit a campaign to a specific group as a form of positive action as a proportionate response to achieve a legitimate aim as defined in section 159 of the Equality Act 2010.
The Civil Service is committed to a diverse workforce and culture of openness and inclusivity, not as ends in themselves but as means of delivering better outcomes to the citizens we serve.
The Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2022 to 2025 promoting fairness and performance, published in February 2022, is positioned as an essential lever to deliver a modern Civil Service, where our values are to serve with integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality; driving our vision to be a skilled, innovative and ambitious Civil Service equipped for the future. This strategy sets out a broader definition of diversity, to include geographical, social and career backgrounds alongside the protected groups. This strategy can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy-2022-to-2025.
As set out in the Civil Service People Plan 2024 to 2027, we are committed to ensuring we attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds, to create a modern Civil Service, now and for the future. This plan can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-people-plan-2024-2027/civil-service-people-plan-2024-2027-html#recruitment-retention--talent.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an estimate of the number of school places in Great Yarmouth constituency (a) available and (b) requested in the next academic year.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
As part of the school capacity survey 2023, Norfolk local authority submitted to the department information on school capacity and forecast demand for school places. Forecasts are made for pupil place planning areas, which are not a standard geography and cannot be linked to parliamentary constituency. However, there is a Great Yarmouth planning area.
Using school capacity survey 2023 data, as well as information on centrally delivered programmes, the department estimated that in the 2025/26 academic year there would be 426 spare primary places and 323 spare secondary places in the Great Yarmouth planning area.
These estimates were made in 2023. These estimated spare places may or may not be available for pupil placements, as this depends on admission policies set by the individual admission authorities covering the Great Yarmouth planning area.
The department does not have information on the number of places requested for the 2025/26 academic year, as the national primary and secondary applications and offers rounds have not yet started.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the proportion of children that started secondary school who are (a) new to and (b) have early acquisition of English in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department does not hold data for children who have learnt English throughout their lifetime. Data for the proportion and number of children who are not known to have English as their first language can be found at school level in the school census publication: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics.
A pupil is recorded to have English as an additional language if they are exposed to a language at home that is known or believed to be other than English. This measure is not a measure of English language proficiency or a good proxy for recent immigration.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, is she will make an estimate of the number of postgraduate students currently studying in UK universities that are (a) UK citizens and (b) non-UK citizens.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department does not hold citizenship data for higher education (HE) students. However, data on the domicile (permanent address) of HE students, is available via the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which can be accessed here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb269/figure-9. In the academic year 2022/23, there were 426,515 UK-domiciled postgraduate students and 455,780 non-UK-domiciled postgraduate students enrolled at UK HE providers. These figures include both postgraduate taught and research students.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children entered (a) primary and (b) secondary school in Great Yarmouth constituency in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department publishes the number of pupils in primary and secondary schools in the Great Yarmouth constituency. This data is available in the ’Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ publication, which is based on the January school census. The most recent figures can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics.
The publication webpage includes a school-level data file, listed under the dropdown heading ‘Additional supporting files’ as ‘School level underlying data - 2023/24 (csv, 22 Mb)’.
This file contains one row per school. The data can be filtered by school phase and constituency. Column GZ provides headcount of pupils.
Data from other academic years is available via the ‘Releases in this series’ on the publication webpage. Data on parliamentary constituencies use boundaries as they were when the statistics were published.