Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support nurseries in Bolton to reduce transmission of covid-19; and what assessment he has made of the potential merits of prioritising nursery staff in the covid-19 vaccination rollout.
Answered by Vicky Ford
We are grateful to early years staff as they continue to provide support to children and families during the period of national lockdown.
The department continues to work closely with other government departments throughout its response to the COVID-19 outbreak, including Public Health England (PHE) and the Department of Health and Social Care, as well as stakeholders across the sector, to ensure that our policy is based on the latest scientific and medical advice, to continue to develop comprehensive guidance based on the PHE-endorsed ‘system of controls’, and to understand the impact and effectiveness of these measures on staff, children and parents.
As new evidence or data emerges, the department updates its advice accordingly to ensure that all our settings have the right safety measures in place. The latest guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures.
The ‘system of controls’ measures outlined in our guidance create an environment for children and staff where the risk of transmission of infection is substantially reduced. Settings therefore need to continue to implement these controls to the fullest extent possible, including the new advice that face coverings are recommended in early years settings for staff and adult visitors in situations where social distancing between adults is not possible, for example, when moving around in corridors and communal areas.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are the independent experts who advise the government on which vaccine/s the UK should use and provide advice on who should be offered them. The JCVI will provide advice on the next phase of the vaccine rollout. The government is committed to offering every adult a dose of the vaccine by 31 July 2021.
We continue to work with the early years sector to understand how they can best be supported to ensure that sufficient safe, appropriate and affordable childcare is available for those who need it now, and for all families who need it in the longer term.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department plans to allocate funding additional to existing funding arrangements, known as the minimum growth award, to colleges that are facing increased pressure on their bursary budgets as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
Each year, we revisit the method used for awarding growth and the thresholds at which individual institutions become eligible for a growth award, with the key considerations being the levels of growth in the sector and affordability.
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we have amended the method for calculating growth awards for this year. This allows for more colleges that have seen an increase in student numbers for the 2020/21 academic year to receive extra funding to help them with the cost of supporting these additional students.
As well as providing additional programme funding, an increased student number allocation resulting from this process may also result in increased 16-19 bursary funds and further education free meals allocations to institutions. In addition, we are releasing additional bursary funding outside the main growth process where analysis of the data suggested that an increased student number could put an institution’s bursary allocation under considerable pressure.
We are contacting the institutions eligible for additional extra funding directly.
We continue to keep the Bursary Fund situation under review, including gathering evidence, with a view to considering what more we can do to support students and providers through this difficult time.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much Official Development Assistance his Department was allocated in the financial years (a) 2019-20 and (b) 2020-21; and what estimate his Department has made of the amount of Official Development Assistance his Department will be allocated for the financial year 2021-22.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department for Education’s estimates of spending on Official Development Assistance (ODA) primarily relate to the provision of education to child and unaccompanied child asylum seekers in the 12 months after they make an asylum claim in the UK. The Department does not have a separate funding stream for educating asylum seeker children and is not allocated an ODA budget. Instead, to calculate ODA spending we estimate how much of the wider core schools funding for England is allocated due to having these children on schools’ rolls.
The Department’s estimated spending on ODA in each calendar year from 2015 to 2019 is given below:
| 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
Department for Education spend classified as ODA (£ million) | 22 | 28 | 24 | 20 | 21 |
The level of spending in future years will be dependent on the number of asylum seeker children that arrive in the country.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the 16-19 Bursary Fund for the 2020-21 school year (a) nationally and (b) in areas particularly financially affected by the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
We are very grateful for all the work 16-19 providers are doing to support students through the COVID-19 outbreak. We are also keenly aware of the pressures being faced by those providers and the financial difficulties that some students have.
Last year we enabled providers to apply for additional Bursary Fund to help them meet the cost of devices and connectivity, and this year we have announced that 16-19 providers can apply for an allocation of devices from our Get Help with Technology scheme.
We continue to keep the Bursary Fund situation under review, including gathering evidence, with a view to considering what more we can do to support students and providers through this difficult time.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will bring forward proposals to make emergency 16-19 bursary funding available to providers who have depleted their allocations and are unable to continue supporting their low-income students due to levels of demand during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
We are very grateful for all the work 16-19 providers are doing to support students through the COVID-19 outbreak. We are also keenly aware of the pressures being faced by those providers and the financial difficulties that some students have.
Last year we enabled providers to apply for additional Bursary Fund to help them meet the cost of devices and connectivity, and this year we have announced that 16-19 providers can apply for an allocation of devices from our Get Help with Technology scheme.
We continue to keep the Bursary Fund situation under review, including gathering evidence, with a view to considering what more we can do to support students and providers through this difficult time.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason colleges are neither eligible to access the £15-a-week national voucher scheme, nor the £15 weekly payment available to schools for the provision of locally-arranged food vouchers for Free School Meals students during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Vicky Ford
Further education (FE) institutions should continue to provide support for students who are eligible for free meals, whether they are attending or studying remotely due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Institutions should continue to provide support in the most appropriate way based on their local circumstances, and FE providers can use their FE Free Meals allocation flexibly with their discretionary 16-19 Bursary Fund allocation. The Education and Skills Funding Agency expects that a meal, voucher or credit will be provided to eligible students. However, this may not be practical in some situations and institutions are permitted to make cash payments to students in exceptional circumstances.
As was the case over Christmas, vulnerable families will continue to receive meals and other essentials over February half term via councils through the £170 million Covid Winter Grant Scheme launched last year.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support he is providing to international students at UK universities during the global pandemic.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The government has worked closely with the higher education sector to ensure existing rules and processes are as flexible as possible, so that international students wanting to study at UK universities remotely and/or in person, where appropriate under the current circumstances, can do so and are appropriately supported. This includes the ability to engage via distance/blended learning for the duration of the 2020/21 academic year, provided students intend to transition to face-to-face learning as soon as circumstances allow.
The government has already worked closely with the Office for Students (OfS) to help clarify that providers can draw upon existing funding to increase hardship funds and support disadvantaged students impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Providers can use the funding, worth around £256 million for the 2020/21 academic year, towards student hardship funds, including the purchase of IT equipment, and mental health support, as well as to support providers’ access and participation plans. We are also currently making available up to £20 million of hardship funding to support those that need it most, particularly disadvantaged students.
We have also worked with the OfS to provide Student Space, which has been funded up to £3 million by the OfS. Student Space is a mental health and wellbeing platform that aims to bridge any gaps in support for students - including international - arising from this unprecedented situation and is designed to work alongside existing services.
The UK was one of the first countries to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak by introducing comprehensive immigration flexibility for international students and staff, and the government has implemented several concessions to assist visa holders in the UK who have been impacted by global travel and health restrictions. This has included offering extensions of visas for those whose leave expired and relaxing the rules on visa switching in the UK, as well as confirming that existing international students who have been studying by distance/blended learning will remain eligible to apply for the new Graduate route, provided they are in the UK by 6 April 2021 and meet the other requirements of the route. In December, the government also confirmed that students commencing a one-year Master’s programme in January 2021 will remain eligible for the Graduate route, even if they are studying remotely, provided they enter the UK before 27 September 2021 and complete the final semester of their studies in the UK.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the UK remains a partner country of the Erasmus Mundus+ masters degree scheme.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Partner country status under Erasmus+ provides varying levels of access to the programme depending on the region in which a third country is placed. The assignment of partner country regions is a unilateral matter for the European Union and, to date, no announcement has been made on this matter in relation to the United Kingdom.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent progress his Department has made on ensuring that all pupils learning at home as a result of self-isolation or class closures have access to (a) digital devices and (b) adequate broadband provision.
Answered by Nick Gibb
As part of over £195 million invested to support access to remote education and online social care, we are making over 340,000 additional laptops and tablets available this term to support disadvantaged children in Years 3 to 11 whose face to face education may be disrupted. Since September, over 100,000 of these have already been delivered to schools.
This supplements over 220,000 laptops and tablets, which have already been delivered during the summer term. This represents an injection of over half a million devices by the end of the year.
We have also distributed over 51,000 4G wireless routers, which are provided with free data for the rest of the 2020/21 academic year. Routers can be distributed by the local authorities, academy trusts and schools who own them to any disadvantaged children and young people.
In partnership with mobile network operators, we are providing access to free additional data for the academic year, offering families flexibility to access the resources that they need the most.
Schools can request free mobile data uplifts for families who lack sufficient internet access, via the Get Help with Technology service, when they experience disruption to face to face education or for clinically extremely vulnerable children.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps is he taking to help ensure the safe return and arrival of (a) students and (b) international students to university in January 2021.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Following the end of term break, our priority for January will be the welfare of students, staff, and the communities around higher education (HE) providers. We are looking to utilise mass testing to make the return to HE as safe as possible and will provide further guidance in due course, considering future developments and the relevant scientific advice.
To keep transmission of COVID-19 in the UK as low as possible, with regards to students arriving from outside the UK, all international arrivals will be required to complete a passenger locator form on arrival, and passengers travelling from a country not on the exemption list will need to self-isolate in their accommodation for fourteen days. The government will review these measures regularly to ensure they are in line with the latest scientific evidence and remain effective and necessary.
We are working with the HE sector to ensure that students are welcomed to the UK and are supported on arrival by their chosen university. Further guidance on these measures is available here: www.gov.uk/uk-border-control.
Universities UK have published guidance for the sector to help providers support students fully and properly throughout this period. We would encourage them to have regard for this guidance when planning for the arrival of international students. This can be found at: www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2020/self-isolation-guidance.pdf.