Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the availability of (a) SEND and (b) alternative provision placements.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Local authorities are responsible for providing enough school places for children in their area.
The department supports local authorities to provide sufficient school places through capital funding and has published over £1.5 billion of High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. This funding is allocated to local authorities to support them to deliver new places and improve their existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) as well as those who require alternative provision (AP). This funding forms part of the department’s transformational investment of £2.6 billion in new high needs provision between 2022 and 2025 and is on top of its ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools.
Last summer, the department began collecting data from local authorities on available capacity in special schools, SEND units and resourced provision, along with corresponding forecasts of demand for these places. This data will help the department to more effectively support local authorities to fulfil their statutory duty to provide sufficient specialist places.
High needs funding to help local authorities with the ongoing costs of provision for children and young people with complex SEND and those in AP is increasing to over £10.5 billion next year, which is an increase of over 60% from the 2019/20 allocations.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Fourth Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of Session 2022-23 on Rural Mental Health, HC248, published on 9 May 2023, what progress his Department has made on implementing the recommendations in the section entitled Rural mental health service provision, policy and strategy development.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We remain committed to supporting thriving rural communities, as set out in our report Unleashing Rural Opportunity, published in June 2023.
Since the launch of the EFRA Committee’s inquiry in 2021, considerable progress has been made to help ensure access to mental health services in rural areas. The Government published its Response to the EFRA Committee Report on Rural Mental Health in October 2023.
The response recognised that people living and working in rural areas may face specific challenges in accessing the mental health services that they need and set out the various actions being taken forward to address mental health needs.
Key actions include:
To help improve the service and support on offer to farmers we will make up to £500,000 available to deliver projects that support mental health in the farming sector. This will build on the support already on offer through the Farming Resilience Fund, which has benefitted over 19,000 farmers to date.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the maximum capacity in medical schools for students for 2024/25.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) published by NHS England on 30 June 2023 sets out the aim of doubling the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 a year by 2031/32, and to work towards this expansion by increasing places by a third, to 10,000 a year, by 2028/29.
In October 2023, the Office for Students (OfS) was asked by myself and the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education to increase the number of home student places for the 2024/25 academic year by 205. This accelerated delivery of the LTWP.
The OfS was asked to engage with the Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care, as well as NHS England and the General Medical Council, as it made decisions about how to allocate the funding for these places.
This process included consideration of the capacity of medical schools to take additional students in 2024/25. We are in the final stage of allocating 350 additional medical schools places for the 2025/26 academic year. We will set out plans for future years in due course.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Streatham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will provide additional funding to organisations that increase awareness of how people can protect themselves from air pollution.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The grant has been running since 1997 and regularly funds projects aimed at increasing the awareness of the impacts of air pollution. Around £53 million has been awarded across almost 500 projects through the Air Quality Grant scheme since 2010. Projects have included anti-idling campaigns around schools, raising awareness about the impacts of domestic burning, and measures to encourage active travel.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the annual budget was for the cadet expansion programme in each year since 2010.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
Phase One of the Cadet Expansion Programme (CEP) was launched in June 2012 with a budget of £10.85M allocated jointly by the Department for Education (DfE) and the Ministry of Defence (MOD), each providing £8.35million and £2.5million respectively. Phase Two (CEP 500) commenced in July 2015, with the Government committing an extra £50million from LIBOR fines.
Phase Three began in 2020. The Secretary of State for Defence set an ambition to grow to 60,000 cadets in schools by 2024. This equated to an increase of approximately 4,000 more cadets over and above the levels of growth in numbers that had been forecast in CEP 500 applications from schools. DfE has contributed up to £1.1 million annually to CEP in England only. Ministry of Defence annual funding contributions are shown in the below table, and cover CEP across the UK.
Financial Year (FY) 2021/22 | FY 2022/23 | FY 2023/24 | FY 2024/25 |
£1.4million | £2.1million | £2.8million | £3.6million |
Data is only available from the start of the CEP in 2012.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
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 primary and secondary school places in Nottingham.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 places a statutory duty on local authorities for providing enough school places for children in their area.
The department knows that local authorities have to create more school places, which is why the department provides capital funding through the Basic Need grant to support local authorities to provide school places, based on their own pupil forecasts and school capacity data. This Basic Need investment supports the government’s priority to ensure that every child has the opportunity of a place at a good school, whatever their background.
In addition, the free schools programme remains an important part of the government’s plan to level up standards and respond where there is need for more school places. The programme has delivered hundreds of new schools and provided thousands of good school places across the country.
The department’s Pupil Place Planning Advisers engage with local authorities on a regular basis to review a local authority’s plans for creating additional places. The Pupil Place Planning advisor for the East Midlands region is engaging with Nottingham local authority on their statutory duty and providing them with the offer of support and advice.
Asked by: Baroness Garden of Frognal (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address the gender divide amongst science and maths teachers in order to provide more positive role models for girls in the classroom.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is offering a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 after tax annually for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including in Education Investment Areas. For 2024/25 and 2025/26, the department will be doubling the rates of the Levelling Up Premium to up to £6,000 after tax. These payments will incentivise the recruitment and retention of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teachers within the schools where they are needed most.
The department has put in place a range of measures, including bursaries worth £28,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £30,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainee teachers to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing. This is alongside delivering a £30,000 starting salary for school teachers in all regions of the country, with a pay award of up to 7.1% for new teachers outside London.
This academic year, physics trainees from overseas are also eligible for bursaries and scholarships, and for a one-off payment of £10,000 as part of the international relocation payment pilot.
To encourage engineering graduates and career changers with an engineering background to consider a career as a physics teacher, the department has also launched the ‘Engineers teach physics’ Initial Teacher Training course. Following a pilot in 2022, the department has now rolled this out nationally.
The department is also taking action to support all teachers to stay in the profession and thrive and has published a range of resources to help address teacher workload and wellbeing and to support schools to introduce flexible working practices.
On the subject of diverse teacher role models in science and mathematics, there remains a larger proportion of female teachers than male teachers in state-funded schools overall (76%).
The department aims to support the diversity of the workforce through our communications campaigns, workforce programmes that support all teachers to develop across their careers, and policies to support the workforce, such as flexible working. For example, the Get Into Teaching marketing campaign supports diverse recruitment into the profession through inclusive recruitment campaigns and marketing materials, which strive to reflect the diversity of our target audiences who want reassurance that teaching is for people like them. The campaign regularly showcases STEM teachers from diverse backgrounds.
The department supports a range of work to improve diversity and inclusion in STEM education in schools, including funding a Stimulating Physics Network to improve the quality of physics teaching and improve progression to A level physics, particularly for girls.
More widely, the government supports girls and pupils from other underrepresented groups into STEM education through programmes such as the CyberFirst Girls competition which aims to promote cybersecurity careers to girls aged between 12 and 14.
The government also funds the STEM Ambassadors programme, a nationwide network of over 30,000 registered volunteers representing thousands of employers, who engage with young people to increase their interest in STEM subjects and to raise awareness of the range of careers that STEM qualifications offer. Approximately 48% of Ambassadors are women and 17% are from minority ethnic backgrounds, providing young people with a variety of role models.
Asked by: Baroness Garden of Frognal (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to (1) recruit, and (2) retain, more science and maths teachers in schools serving the most disadvantaged communities.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is offering a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 after tax annually for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including in Education Investment Areas. For 2024/25 and 2025/26, the department will be doubling the rates of the Levelling Up Premium to up to £6,000 after tax. These payments will incentivise the recruitment and retention of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teachers within the schools where they are needed most.
The department has put in place a range of measures, including bursaries worth £28,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £30,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainee teachers to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing. This is alongside delivering a £30,000 starting salary for school teachers in all regions of the country, with a pay award of up to 7.1% for new teachers outside London.
This academic year, physics trainees from overseas are also eligible for bursaries and scholarships, and for a one-off payment of £10,000 as part of the international relocation payment pilot.
To encourage engineering graduates and career changers with an engineering background to consider a career as a physics teacher, the department has also launched the ‘Engineers teach physics’ Initial Teacher Training course. Following a pilot in 2022, the department has now rolled this out nationally.
The department is also taking action to support all teachers to stay in the profession and thrive and has published a range of resources to help address teacher workload and wellbeing and to support schools to introduce flexible working practices.
On the subject of diverse teacher role models in science and mathematics, there remains a larger proportion of female teachers than male teachers in state-funded schools overall (76%).
The department aims to support the diversity of the workforce through our communications campaigns, workforce programmes that support all teachers to develop across their careers, and policies to support the workforce, such as flexible working. For example, the Get Into Teaching marketing campaign supports diverse recruitment into the profession through inclusive recruitment campaigns and marketing materials, which strive to reflect the diversity of our target audiences who want reassurance that teaching is for people like them. The campaign regularly showcases STEM teachers from diverse backgrounds.
The department supports a range of work to improve diversity and inclusion in STEM education in schools, including funding a Stimulating Physics Network to improve the quality of physics teaching and improve progression to A level physics, particularly for girls.
More widely, the government supports girls and pupils from other underrepresented groups into STEM education through programmes such as the CyberFirst Girls competition which aims to promote cybersecurity careers to girls aged between 12 and 14.
The government also funds the STEM Ambassadors programme, a nationwide network of over 30,000 registered volunteers representing thousands of employers, who engage with young people to increase their interest in STEM subjects and to raise awareness of the range of careers that STEM qualifications offer. Approximately 48% of Ambassadors are women and 17% are from minority ethnic backgrounds, providing young people with a variety of role models.
Asked by: Baroness Garden of Frognal (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address the confidence gap between girls and boys studying STEM subjects at school.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department supports a range of work to improve the uptake and attainment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects to give everyone, regardless of their background or where they live, the opportunity to pursue an education and career in STEM. To support this, the department has committed substantial funding to programmes designed to help facilitate this.
As part of the department’s significant investment in the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE), the ‘I Belong’ programme is available to secondary schools. Focused on Key Stage 3, ‘I Belong’ aims to improve schools’ awareness of the barriers to girls’ engagement with computing and it is designed to support them to improve the take up of computer science qualifications within their school. This is in addition to the wider work of the NCCE to improve the quality of the teaching of computing across all key stages, through the provision of free teaching resources and high-quality continuing professional development.
The department also funds the Isaac Physics programme, an online platform of GCSE and A level physics materials developed by Cambridge University designed to increase the numbers of students, particularly from typically underrepresented backgrounds, studying physics in higher education.
Additionally, Maths Hubs deliver the department's Teaching for Mastery programme, which is bringing teaching practice from high performing East Asian jurisdictions to primary and secondary schools across England. The programme aims to reach 75% of primary schools and 65% of secondary schools by 2025. Mastery teaching is characterised by whole-class teaching, where all pupils are given equal access to the curriculum and they are encouraged with the belief that by working hard they can succeed.
The Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP) provides support for all teachers and students in England as well as additional, targeted support in areas of low social mobility so that, whatever their location, background or gender, students can choose their best post-16 mathematics pathway and access high-quality teaching. The AMSP has a particular focus on supporting girls into mathematics and runs a variety of enrichment and engagement sessions specifically for girls.
The department also supports the STEM Ambassadors programme which is a nationwide network of 30,000 registered volunteers from over 7,000 STEM and related employers. Last year, STEM Ambassadors spent 250,000 hours in primary and secondary schools across the UK raising awareness of the diverse range of STEM careers and enabling young people to explore and develop their skills and interest in STEM. Approximately 48% of Ambassadors are women and 17% are from minority ethnic backgrounds, providing young people with a variety of role models.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to provide COVID-19 catch-up learning for most disadvantaged pupils following the cessation of the National Tutoring Programme in August.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department acted swiftly in helping all children to recover from the impact of the pandemic and made available almost £5 billion for its ambitious multi-year programmes to support education recovery. These programmes were principally targeted at disadvantaged pupils, supporting the narrowing of the disadvantage gap to pre-pandemic levels as quickly as possible. Crucially, they were also designed to have a legacy beyond the multi-year period of exceptional and additional support.
Over £1 billion has been invested in tutoring over four years through the National Tutoring Programme (NTP). This has seen nearly 5 million tutoring courses commence since the programme started in November 2020, including over 2 million in each of the last two academic years. In the current academic year, 346,000 courses have started up to 5 October 2023.
The department anticipates that tutoring will continue to be a staple offer from schools, with schools using core budgets and pupil premium funding to provide targeted support for those children who will benefit.
Raising attainment for pupils is at the heart of this government’s agenda. The department knows that disadvantaged children have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and are committed to narrowing the attainment gap.
The department is continuing to support pupils’ needs by investing an extra £2 billion into core schools funding both this year and next year, over and above what it had already announced at the 2021 Spending Review. The department has also announced an additional £525 million this year to support schools with the teachers’ pay award, with a further £900 million in 2024/25. This means that by next year, school funding will be more than £59.6 billion, which is the highest ever level in real terms per pupil.
Schools receive the pupil premium to enable them to provide extra support to improve disadvantaged pupils’ academic and personal achievements. Pupil premium funding will rise to over £2.9 billion in 2024/25, which is an increase of £80 million from 2023/24. This represents a 10% increase in per pupil rates from 2021/22 to 2024/25.
Additionally, the department is investing in 55 Education Investment Areas, where outcomes in literacy and numeracy are the poorest, including £86 million in trust capacity funding to help strong trusts to expand into areas most in need of improvement.
Furthermore, students in 16-19 education during the 2024/25 academic year will continue to receive the additional 40 learning hours that the department is funding to help them catch up on the vital teaching and learning they need to progress. It is estimated that the additional hours will support the recovery of approximately one month of lost learning per academic year.