Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
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 and Walkden)
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
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 and Walkden)
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
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 and Walkden)
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 and Walkden)
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
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.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure the financial stability of early years providers during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Vicky Ford
I refer the hon. Member for Bolton South East to the answer I gave on 20 November 2020 to Question 114782 to my right hon. Friend, the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate his Department has made of the change in the level of demand for (a) children’s social care and (b) children and adolescent mental health services since schools returned for the 2020 autumn term.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The department has been working closely with local authorities to assess the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on children’s services, including any increases in demand, setting up dedicated regional teams that are in frequent contact.
We are monitoring referrals to children’s services via our regional teams and via the Vulnerable Children and Young People survey, which collects data fortnightly from local authorities in England. The latest release is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vulnerable-children-and-young-people-survey.
The most recent data collection (19-21 October) shows that the total number of children looked after was 7% higher than the same time in 2018 and the total number of children on a child protection plan was 1% higher.
Overall, the total number of referrals to children’s social care services was 6% lower than the 3 year average of the same week across 2016 to 2018.
NHS Digital publish data on referrals to mental health services here: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-tools-and-services/data-services/mental-health-data-hub/mental-health-services-monthly-statistics.
Referrals to mental health services since the beginning of the autumn term will be published in due course.
The government has provided £4.6 billion of additional funding to support local authorities in meeting COVID-19 related pressures, including in children’s services.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South and Walkden)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that additional pupil premium funding is targeted at long-term disadvantaged pupils in the North of England.
Answered by Vicky Ford
We are committed to levelling up opportunities to make sure everyone has a fair chance to realise their potential and no one is left behind. The pupil premium furthers this objective by helping schools improve the academic attainment and wider outcomes of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Since the pupil premium was introduced in 2011, it has provided more than £18 billion of additional funding for schools and has played an important role in contributing to the narrowing of the disadvantaged attainment gaps at age 11 and 16. Areas with high proportions of students from disadvantaged backgrounds will continue to receive the highest levels of funding, and the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has narrowed considerably in both primary and secondary schools since 2011.
Through the national funding formula, we provide further funding targeted at schools with higher numbers of pupils with additional needs, including deprivation, worth £6.3 billion this financial year. On top of that, the pupil premium, worth £2.4 billion this financial year, provides additional support for disadvantaged pupils – those currently or formerly claiming free school meals and currently or formerly looked after – to tackle educational inequality.
Pupil premium allocations for the 2020-21 financial year were published in June, and the first quarterly instalments were paid out in June and July. Announcements on pupil premium funding for the 2021-22 financial year will follow later in the year. Announcements for future years will be made in due course.