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Written Question
Schools: Knives
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of guidance for schools on knife crime.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department does not hold data on how many weapons have been seized in schools.

The statutory ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (KCSIE) guidance advises schools on creating safe environments. KCSIE is clear that all staff should have an awareness of safeguarding issues that can put children at risk of harm. The ‘Searching, Screening and Confiscation’ Guidance was updated in 2022 to emphasise the importance of the school duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of all pupils and staff. Headteachers, and the staff they authorise, have a statutory power to search a pupil or their possessions, where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the pupil may have a prohibited item, such as knives or weapons, and confiscate such items.

The department works across government, and with other partners, on initiatives to prevent serious violence, including knife crime. Over £50 million has been made available to fund specialist support in mainstream and alternative provision schools in the areas where serious violence most affects children and communities. This includes SAFE (‘Support, Attend, Fulfil, Exceed’) taskforces that have been established in ten areas, reaching over 2,100 children as of September 2023. Taskforces are school-led partnerships investing in evidence-based interventions in and around school, such as mentoring and social skills training, that reach children early on, to re-engage them in their education and reduce their involvement in serious violence. To benefit areas outside of the programme, the department has published a supportive guide on school-based interventions, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safe-taskforces.


Written Question
Schools: Offensive Weapons
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many weapons were seized in schools in England in (a) 2018 and (b) 2023.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department does not hold data on how many weapons have been seized in schools.

The statutory ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (KCSIE) guidance advises schools on creating safe environments. KCSIE is clear that all staff should have an awareness of safeguarding issues that can put children at risk of harm. The ‘Searching, Screening and Confiscation’ Guidance was updated in 2022 to emphasise the importance of the school duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of all pupils and staff. Headteachers, and the staff they authorise, have a statutory power to search a pupil or their possessions, where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the pupil may have a prohibited item, such as knives or weapons, and confiscate such items.

The department works across government, and with other partners, on initiatives to prevent serious violence, including knife crime. Over £50 million has been made available to fund specialist support in mainstream and alternative provision schools in the areas where serious violence most affects children and communities. This includes SAFE (‘Support, Attend, Fulfil, Exceed’) taskforces that have been established in ten areas, reaching over 2,100 children as of September 2023. Taskforces are school-led partnerships investing in evidence-based interventions in and around school, such as mentoring and social skills training, that reach children early on, to re-engage them in their education and reduce their involvement in serious violence. To benefit areas outside of the programme, the department has published a supportive guide on school-based interventions, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safe-taskforces.


Written Question
Schools: Knives
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has plans to update guidance for schools on knife crime.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department does not hold data on how many weapons have been seized in schools.

The statutory ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (KCSIE) guidance advises schools on creating safe environments. KCSIE is clear that all staff should have an awareness of safeguarding issues that can put children at risk of harm. The ‘Searching, Screening and Confiscation’ Guidance was updated in 2022 to emphasise the importance of the school duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of all pupils and staff. Headteachers, and the staff they authorise, have a statutory power to search a pupil or their possessions, where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the pupil may have a prohibited item, such as knives or weapons, and confiscate such items.

The department works across government, and with other partners, on initiatives to prevent serious violence, including knife crime. Over £50 million has been made available to fund specialist support in mainstream and alternative provision schools in the areas where serious violence most affects children and communities. This includes SAFE (‘Support, Attend, Fulfil, Exceed’) taskforces that have been established in ten areas, reaching over 2,100 children as of September 2023. Taskforces are school-led partnerships investing in evidence-based interventions in and around school, such as mentoring and social skills training, that reach children early on, to re-engage them in their education and reduce their involvement in serious violence. To benefit areas outside of the programme, the department has published a supportive guide on school-based interventions, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safe-taskforces.


Written Question
Adoption and Guardianship: Finance
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many applications to the adoption and special guardianship support fund were (a) made and (b) successful (i) in total and (b) by local authority area; and what the average amount awarded was for those claims (A) in total and (B) by local authority area in each of the last five years.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The information requested can be found in the attached table.

.


Written Question
Adoption and Guardianship: Finance
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding her Department has provided through the adoption and special guardianship support fund in each of the last five years.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The information requested can be found in the attached table.

.


Written Question
Free Schools: Liverpool
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the delay to the opening of King's Leadership Academy Wavetree.

Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

To open a free school the Secretary of State must be satisfied that there is a suitable and deliverable site for the school. In order to deliver a suitable site for the school, a sequence of planning applications are required. The first of these has been submitted.

Officials are engaging with Liverpool City Council and Local Planning Authority officers to meet their planning requirements for the scheme but despite the best efforts of all parties, it is not possible to implement all of the necessary requirements in time to achieve a September 2024 opening.

While a free school project is in the pre-opening phase, local authorities cannot offer firm places at a school under the co-ordinated admissions process. Therefore, any offers of pupil places for King’s Leadership Academy Wavertree are conditional, to ensure all pupils have a firm and secure start to the school year at another school in the area.

The local authority has confirmed it is able to place secondary school pupils in Liverpool for September 2024 without Kings Leadership Academy Wavertree, and officials continue to work closely with the local authority and planning authority to progress this scheme as swiftly as possible for a future opening of the school.


Written Question
Childcare: Greater London
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent progress her Department has made on increasing the provision of school-aged childcare facilities for parents with young children in London.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The government is investing £289 million in a new wraparound childcare programme. This programme is to support local authorities in London and throughout England to work with primary schools and private providers to set up and deliver more wraparound childcare before and after school in the term time. The government’s ambition is for all parents of primary school children who need it to be able to access childcare in their local area from 8am to 6pm by September 2026.

In October 2023, the department published guidance for local authorities on their role to support the expansion of wrapround childcare along with local authority funding allocations. In February 2024, the department also published guidance for schools and trust setting out expectations of schools in the delivery of wraparound provision.

From April 2024, Bi-borough, consisting of the local authorities of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, will be rolling out expanded wraparound provision, five months ahead of the national programme launch in September, meaning that some parents in London will have access to childcare sooner. Along with three other local authority areas, Cambridgeshire, Central Bedfordshire and Norfolk, these early adopters form part of a test and learn phase to strengthen the delivery of the full rollout.

This year, the department has again provided over £200 million for the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, with all local authorities in England delivering in the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays. The HAF programme provides heathy meals, enriching activities and free childcare places to children from low-income families, benefiting their health, wellbeing and learning. Since 2022, the HAF programme has provided 10.7 million HAF days to children and young people in this country. The expansion of the programme year on year has meant a total of 5.4 million HAF days provided between Christmas 2022 and Easter and summer 2023.

The department is working to ensure that the creation of new or expanded wraparound childcare provision can also help to support the delivery of sustainable holiday childcare provision, wherever possible.


Written Question
Foster Care: Lincolnshire
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of foster care placements in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Lincolnshire County Council is participating in the £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder, which came out of the department’s children’s social care implementation strategy Stable Homes, Built on Love. The pathfinder aims to rebalance children’s social care away from costly crisis intervention to more meaningful and effective early support.

As part of the pathfinder, the department is working with a select number of local areas to test significant changes to how local areas help children and young people. This includes increasing support at the earlier end of the system, with the aim of keeping children with birth parents or wider family where safe to do so. This will help to reduce the number of children looked after and therefore drive down demand for foster care or other placements.

There is support available from the department where children are unable to stay with their birth families and foster care placements are sought. Lincolnshire County Council are being supported by the Fosterlink support service. Fosterlink provides support for local authorities to improve the way they recruit foster carers by reviewing current processes to identify areas for service and practice improvements, as well as creating a national network in which to share best practice.

More broadly, the department is investing over £36 million this parliament to deliver a fostering recruitment and retention programme, so foster care is available for more children who need it. This will boost approvals of foster carers, as well as taking steps to retain the foster carers we have.

Greater financial support for foster carers will help improve the experiences of all children in care. For the second year running, the department is uplifting the National Minimum Allowance (NMA) above the rate of inflation. For 2024/2025, the NMA will increase by 6.88%. This is on top of a 12.43% NMA increase in 2023/24.

In addition, the department estimates that changes to tax and benefit allowances will give the average foster carer an additional £450 per year as well as simplifying the process for self-assessment returns for most foster carers.

The department will also build on this investment since 2014 of over £8 million to help embed the Mockingbird programme, an innovative model of peer support for foster parents and the children in their care where children benefit from an extended family environment.


Written Question
Schools: Mental Health Services
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of using the Boxall profile measurement tool to help measure the social emotional mental health and wellbeing of school pupils.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department is committed to ensuring schools are safe, calm and supportive environments, which promote and support mental health and wellbeing.

Measuring pupil wellbeing can help schools to identify need and monitor the impact of policies and interventions, which is one of the core principles of the whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing recommended by the department. The department is offering every school and college a grant to train a senior mental health lead who can oversee this approach and has recently commissioned a Mental health lead resource hub which has a variety of relevant measurement tools, including the Boxall profile. More information can be found at: https://mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/whole-school-or-college-resources/.

As set out in the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, the department is also developing practitioner standards for frontline education staff, setting out the best available evidence of what works for identifying and supporting the needs of children and young people with special educational needs, including social, emotional and mental health, across early years, schools and post-16 education.


Written Question
Schools: Knives
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the incidence of knife crime on school premises.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department does not hold data on how many weapons have been seized in schools.

The statutory ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (KCSIE) guidance advises schools on creating safe environments. KCSIE is clear that all staff should have an awareness of safeguarding issues that can put children at risk of harm. The ‘Searching, Screening and Confiscation’ Guidance was updated in 2022 to emphasise the importance of the school duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of all pupils and staff. Headteachers, and the staff they authorise, have a statutory power to search a pupil or their possessions, where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the pupil may have a prohibited item, such as knives or weapons, and confiscate such items.

The department works across government, and with other partners, on initiatives to prevent serious violence, including knife crime. Over £50 million has been made available to fund specialist support in mainstream and alternative provision schools in the areas where serious violence most affects children and communities. This includes SAFE (‘Support, Attend, Fulfil, Exceed’) taskforces that have been established in ten areas, reaching over 2,100 children as of September 2023. Taskforces are school-led partnerships investing in evidence-based interventions in and around school, such as mentoring and social skills training, that reach children early on, to re-engage them in their education and reduce their involvement in serious violence. To benefit areas outside of the programme, the department has published a supportive guide on school-based interventions, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safe-taskforces.