Asked by: Thelma Walker (Labour - Colne Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department has taken to reduce its use of single-use plastics.
Answered by Anne Milton
In our 25 Year Environment plan the government outlined a range of measures on how we will reduce the amount of plastic in circulation through reducing demand for single-use plastic. This included a commitment to removing all consumer single use plastics from the central government estate offices.
At the Department for Education, in our London headquarters, we have already replaced all single-use plastic coffee cups and food containers from our catering services, with compostable alternatives. We have also replaced plastic water cups with compostable versions.
We will continue to work with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and our suppliers to remove single-use plastics from our office estate.
Asked by: Thelma Walker (Labour - Colne Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he plans to publish the Government’s response to the reports on foster care in England from the (a) Education Committee and (b) Independent Review on foster care by Sir Martin Narey and Mark Owers.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The government response to both the independent review ‘Foster Care in England’ and the Education Select Committee’s report on fostering will be published within the next three months.
Asked by: Thelma Walker (Labour - Colne Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of providing sanitary products to girls in receipt of free school meals.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Our current Sex and Relationships Education guidance encourages schools to make adequate and sensitive arrangements to help girls cope with menstruation. Schools have discretion over how they use their funding and can make sanitary products available to pupils if they identify this as a barrier to attainment or attendance. We support schools in addressing the needs of disadvantaged pupils through the provision of the Pupil Premium, equivalent to almost £2.5 billion of additional funding this year alone.
We are committed to ensuring that any action to support disadvantaged pupils is based on robust evidence. We have sought to establish whether there has been any rigorous national assessment of the prevalence of period poverty or its impact on attendance, however none appears available. We reached out to school stakeholders in July 2017 through the Association of School and College Leaders forum asking for contributions on the issue and received a very limited response. As promised in the House, we have reviewed our absence statistics and our recently published analysis shows no evidence that period poverty has a significant nation-wide impact on school attendance. We do want to find out more; this is why we intend to place questions on these issues in the department’s 2018 surveys for pupils and senior school leaders.
Asked by: Thelma Walker (Labour - Colne Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary for Education, what plans his Department has to introduce a counselling service in all (a) schools and (b) colleges.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government recognises the value of school-based counselling but schools are best placed to make decisions on the most appropriate support to provide for their pupils, including school-based counselling. 61 per cent of schools and colleges already provide access to counselling services, including 84 per cent of secondary schools. To support more schools to do so the Government has published a blueprint for school counselling services. This provides practical, evidence-based advice on how to deliver high quality school-based counselling to all pupils. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/counselling-in-schools.
The Government is consulting on the green paper Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services. It includes proposals to introduce new Mental Health Support Teams to complement existing mental health provision, including school-based counselling.
Asked by: Thelma Walker (Labour - Colne Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 25 January 2018 to Question 123365 on Office for Students, whether the selection criteria for the Office for Student’s student panel included a specific requirement in to appoint a disabled student.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
Decisions regarding the appointments to the Student Panel are the responsibility of the Office for Students.