Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she plans to take with Cabinet colleagues to ensure young people in (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) the London Borough of Enfield and (c) London have access to learning in nature settings.
Answered by Nick Gibb
In April 2022, the Department released its Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy. Key initiatives included ‘The National Education Nature Park’ and ‘Climate Action Award’. These programmes will engage children and young people with the natural world and directly involve them in measuring and improving biodiversity in their nursery, school, college or university
In May, as part of this initiative, the Department announced £15 million of funding to help young people in nature depleted areas, which will enable schools, colleges and nurseries to create opportunities for outdoor learning in natural settings.
Young people in Enfield may already be taking advantage of activities run by London’s National Park City Rangers.
By 2025, the Department aims to introduce a natural history GCSE, giving young people a further opportunity to engage with and develop a deeper knowledge and understanding of the natural world. In studying this GCSE, young people will explore organisms and environments in more depth and gain knowledge and practical experience of fieldwork. This new qualification adds to fieldwork opportunities already available in subjects such as geography. As we deliver on our climate change strategy, the Department will continue to work across Government to identify opportunities for young people to access learning in nature settings.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if her Department will take steps with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to help promote low-cost visits and stays in the natural environment for targeted groups with the purpose of supporting individuals' wellbeing.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Within Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Environmental Stewardship (ES), we provide opportunities for school pupils and care farming clients to visit farms and engage with farming and the environment. There are approximately 800 live CS agreements and 500 live ES agreements offering educational access. We will continue to provide funding for educational purposes making it possible for more school pupils and care farming clients to access these nature rich environments.
The Department for Education launched the Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy for Education and Children’s Services in April 2022. The strategy includes the National Education Nature Park which will bring together all the land from across education settings into a virtual nature park enabling children and young people to get involved in taking practical action to improve the biodiversity of their setting. This will start to roll out from Autumn 2023 and is being delivered in partnership with the Natural History Museum, the Royal Horticultural Society and its prestigious partners. The Climate Action Awards will also provide opportunities to recognise the great work that young people and settings do to improve their local environment. A Natural History GCSE will also be introduced in 2025.
The Government is also providing funding to offer the Duke of Edinburgh's Award (DofE) to all mainstream secondary schools in England by 2025, allowing many more young people to benefit from this experience. DofE offers opportunities for young people to spend time in nature, including through an outdoor expedition away from home.
With funding from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund the 16-month Generation Green project connected young people to nature through new jobs, training, volunteering roles, residentials and outdoor and online learning experiences.
A number of England’s National Parks and AONBs are undertaking initiatives to provide opportunities to connect young people with nature.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will hold discussions with the Secretary of State for Education on the potential merits of teaching (a) primary and (b) secondary school children about engagement with the natural environment.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Within Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Environmental Stewardship (ES), we provide opportunities for school pupils and care farming clients to visit farms and engage with farming and the environment. There are approximately 800 live CS agreements and 500 live ES agreements offering educational access. We will continue to provide funding for educational purposes making it possible for more school pupils and care farming clients to access these nature rich environments.
The Department for Education launched the Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy for Education and Children’s Services in April 2022. The strategy includes the National Education Nature Park which will bring together all the land from across education settings into a virtual nature park enabling children and young people to get involved in taking practical action to improve the biodiversity of their setting. This will start to roll out from Autumn 2023 and is being delivered in partnership with the Natural History Museum, the Royal Horticultural Society and its prestigious partners. The Climate Action Awards will also provide opportunities to recognise the great work that young people and settings do to improve their local environment. A Natural History GCSE will also be introduced in 2025.
The Government is also providing funding to offer the Duke of Edinburgh's Award (DofE) to all mainstream secondary schools in England by 2025, allowing many more young people to benefit from this experience. DofE offers opportunities for young people to spend time in nature, including through an outdoor expedition away from home.
With funding from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund the 16-month Generation Green project connected young people to nature through new jobs, training, volunteering roles, residentials and outdoor and online learning experiences.
A number of England’s National Parks and AONBs are undertaking initiatives to provide opportunities to connect young people with nature.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will hold discussions with the Secretary of State for Education on the potential merits of providing funding for (a) residential and (b) other school visits to nature rich environments.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Within Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Environmental Stewardship (ES), we provide opportunities for school pupils and care farming clients to visit farms and engage with farming and the environment. There are approximately 800 live CS agreements and 500 live ES agreements offering educational access. We will continue to provide funding for educational purposes making it possible for more school pupils and care farming clients to access these nature rich environments.
The Department for Education launched the Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy for Education and Children’s Services in April 2022. The strategy includes the National Education Nature Park which will bring together all the land from across education settings into a virtual nature park enabling children and young people to get involved in taking practical action to improve the biodiversity of their setting. This will start to roll out from Autumn 2023 and is being delivered in partnership with the Natural History Museum, the Royal Horticultural Society and its prestigious partners. The Climate Action Awards will also provide opportunities to recognise the great work that young people and settings do to improve their local environment. A Natural History GCSE will also be introduced in 2025.
The Government is also providing funding to offer the Duke of Edinburgh's Award (DofE) to all mainstream secondary schools in England by 2025, allowing many more young people to benefit from this experience. DofE offers opportunities for young people to spend time in nature, including through an outdoor expedition away from home.
With funding from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund the 16-month Generation Green project connected young people to nature through new jobs, training, volunteering roles, residentials and outdoor and online learning experiences.
A number of England’s National Parks and AONBs are undertaking initiatives to provide opportunities to connect young people with nature.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she will take to implement her Environmental Implementation Plan on improving YHA facilities.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 (EIP23) set’s out government’s delivery plan for improving the environment within a generation.
EIP23 references the Green Recovery Challenge Fund’s Generation Green programme. This programme was led by YHA England and Wales, working with a consortium of fifteen outdoor education providers. Generation Green successfully provided more than 100,000 opportunities to connect young people to nature; and facilitated 659 skilled volunteer roles in the outdoor sector.
The Green Recovery Challenge Fund funding of almost £80m has now been awarded.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she plans to take with Cabinet colleagues to ensure young people have access to learning in nature settings.
Answered by Nick Gibb
In April 2022, the Department released its Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy. Key initiatives of this strategy include the National Education Nature Park and Climate Action Award. These programmes will engage children and young people with the natural world, and directly involve them in measuring and improving biodiversity in their nursery, school, college or university.
The Department has announced that £15 million will be provided, enabling schools, colleges, and nurseries to create opportunities for outdoor education in natural settings.
By 2025, the Department will aim to introduce a natural history GCSE, giving young people an opportunity to engage with and develop a deeper knowledge and understanding of the natural world. In studying this GCSE, young people will explore organisms and environments in more depth and gain knowledge and practical experience of fieldwork. This new opportunity for education adds to fieldwork opportunities already available in subjects such as geography. As the Department delivers on the climate change strategy, the Department will continue to work across Government to identify opportunities for young people to access education in nature settings.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential need for HEPA filters in early years educational settings.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Good ventilation is associated with improved alertness and concentration. Letting fresh air into indoor spaces can also help remove air that contains virus particles and other airborne contaminants, and is important in reducing the spread of airborne infections, including COVID-19 and flu.
Over the last two years, the Department has provided CO2 monitors to every state funded school and childcare provider, including early years providers, in England to help identify poorly ventilated spaces across their estates and help manage the need for ventilation and thermal comfort. Feedback from these suggests that, in most schools and childcare providers, existing ventilation measures are sufficient.
For the very few schools and childcare providers where maintaining good ventilation is not possible, the Department has supplied High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) air cleaning units. All state funded early years providers were eligible, including private, voluntary and independent providers, and childminders who work together in groups of four or more and are registered as operating childcare on domestic premises. All eligible applications received during the previous roll out have been fulfilled and the Department is currently working through this year’s applications. Air cleaning units are not a substitute for ventilation and are not necessary in spaces that are adequately ventilated.
This approach is in keeping with SAGE’s Environmental Modelling Group advice. This states that air cleaning devices, including HEPA Filtration and ultraviolet technology have limited benefit in spaces that are already adequately ventilated and should only be considered where the ventilation is inadequate and cannot be easily improved.
Both the Health and Safety Executive and the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers use a CO2 threshold of 1500ppm to indicate poor ventilation. This is the threshold the Department has used as criteria for the supply of air cleaning units.
The Department has published guidance in the Building Bulletin 101 (BB101), which provides guidelines on indoor and outdoor air quality in new and refurbished schools, this also provides helpful guidance to early years providers: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-bulletin-101-ventilation-for-school-buildings. BB101 guidance promotes best practice in controlling pollutants and setting maximum standards for levels of pollutants indoors.
Asked by: Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 6 February 2023 to Question 136680 on Smoking: Health education, for what reason (a) the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and (b) his Department is unable to provide information on Public Health England.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
Following the dissolution of Public Health England, the Office for Health Information and Disparities or the Department no longer have access to the detailed financial data to enable us to provide information in the format that was requested. Public Health England operated on an annual budgetary cycle which ran from April until March the following year. From the data available, the following table shows the figures on anti-smoking campaigns by the Department and its agencies in the following financial years.
Financial year | Total expenditure |
2020/21 | £1.32 million |
2021/22 | £1.45 million |
Note:
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of installing ventilation, filtration and sterilisation systems in schools to help reduce the transmission of airborne pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Helping schools have healthy school environments with good ventilation is a priority for the Department. Letting fresh air into indoor spaces can help remove air that contains virus particles and other airborne contaminants and is important in reducing the spread of airborne infections, including COVID-19 and flu. Good ventilation is also associated with improved alertness and concentration.
Over the last two years, the Department has provided CO2 monitors to every state-funded school in England to help identify poorly ventilated spaces across their estates and help manage the need for ventilation and thermal comfort. Feedback suggests that, in most settings, existing ventilation measures are sufficient. For the very few teaching spaces where maintaining good ventilation is not possible, the Department has supplied HEPA air cleaning units. All eligible applications received during the previous roll out have been fulfilled and we are current working through this year’s applications. Air cleaning units are not a substitute for ventilation and are not necessary in spaces that are adequately ventilated.
The Department has published guidance in the Building Bulletin 101 (BB101), which provides guidelines on indoor and outdoor air quality in new and refurbished schools: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-bulletin-101-ventilation-for-school-buildings. BB101 guidance promotes best practice in controlling pollutants and setting maximum standards for levels of pollutants in indoors.
Asked by: Matt Western (Labour - Warwick and Leamington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the contribution of playing fields to the health and fitness of school pupils; and whether she plans to introduce minimum size requirements for school playing fields.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The provision of school playing fields for sport, as well as for informal and social use, is widely accepted to contribute to the health and fitness of school pupils. This is why playing fields are protected under Section 77 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Similarly, under the School Premises Regulations and Independent School Standards, all schools must have suitable outdoor space to enable physical education and for pupils to play outside.
The Department’s guidance documents, Building Bulletins 103 and 104, provide non-statutory guidelines for the minimum recommended size of playing fields for any school. The minimum size of the playing field depends on the size and age range of the school.