Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help improve the digital skills of older people.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
The government recognises that digital skills are important for adults of all ages, and the department is committed to improving their level of digital skills to support active participation in society.
From August 2020, the department introduced a digital entitlement for adults with no or low digital skills to undertake specified digital qualifications free of charge. The new entitlement mirrors the existing legal entitlements for English and mathematics. This puts essential digital skills on an equal footing in the adult education system, as the third essential skill adults need for work, life and further learning.
The department introduced new Essential Digital Skills qualifications (EDSQs) at entry level and level 1 from August 2020, funded under the digital entitlement. EDSQs are based on the national standards for essential digital skills and are designed to meet the diverse needs of adults with no or low digital skills, reflecting different learning needs, motivations and starting points.
To further enhance the essential digital skills offer for adults, from August 2023, the department introduced new digital Functional Skills qualifications (FSQs), which have replaced FSQs in Information and Communication Technology. Digital FSQs have standardised content and assessment, providing a benchmark of digital skills for employers. These are based on subject content for digital FSQs the department published in October 2021.
The government recognises that formal qualifications are not necessary for everyone. That is why the department also fund community learning and other non-regulated learning, such as building confidence in essential digital skills, through the Adult Education Budget. Many local authorities and other further education providers are already delivering these courses that help equip adults with the essential digital skills they need for work, life and further learning.
Of course, older people may also be looking to progress beyond essential digital skills, potentially through a desire to retrain or upskill. Through the department’s wider skills reforms, the department is continuing to ensure learners, whatever their age, can train, retrain and upskill towards better jobs, better wellbeing and better options for the future.
More information about essential digital skills and other government funded training opportunities can be found here: https://www.skillsforcareers.education.gov.uk/pages/skills-for-life.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the role that academy trusts in improving (a) educational standards and (b) school facilities.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
High quality academy trusts have been a key vehicle in improving educational standards. They have facilitated better collaboration, directed resources to where they are needed most, and enabled the best leaders to support a greater number of schools. As of 1 April, over 50% of all state-funded schools are academies.
As of December 2023, 90% of schools were rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, compared to 68% in 2010. There is also evidence that high quality trusts have improved underperforming schools via the sponsored academies programme. Departmental analysis has demonstrated that, on average, sponsored schools improve more quickly than equivalent local authority maintained schools. More than seven out of ten sponsored academies which were found to be underperforming as a local authority maintained school in their previous inspection now have a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rating.
Academy trusts work with their school’s day to day to meet their responsibilities to keep buildings safe, well maintained and compliant with relevant regulations. The department supports them by providing significant capital funding, rebuilding programmes and support and guidance.
The department has allocated £17 billion to improve the condition of the school estate since 2015, including £1.8 billion for the 2024/25 financial year. This is informed by consistent data on the condition of the school estate. In addition, the School Rebuilding Programme is transforming buildings at over 500 schools across England.
The department also provides extensive guidance to help academy trusts and other responsible bodies to maintain their estates safely and effectively, such as through Good Estate Management for Schools. The department has also published a new estate management competency framework, which sets out the skills and knowledge needed in different roles to manage school estates.
Where there are serious issues with buildings that cannot be managed independently by responsible bodies, the department provides additional advice and support on a case by case basis.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the reasons for trends in the number of new children’s residential homes that have been established in Lancashire.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
It is the decision of children’s homes providers to decide on the location and type of building that they wish to use to accommodate children in care. As part of Ofsted’s registration process, children’s homes providers are required to undertake a location assessment, which must show the steps that have been taken to ensure the location is safe and promotes positive opportunities for children. The department recognises the need to ensure there are the right children’s homes in the right places.
As announced in the Spring Budget 2023, the department is continuing to invest in the children’s homes market to provide high quality, safe homes for some of the most vulnerable children and young people in all nine regions of England.
In addition to taking forward the recommendations made by the Care Review and the Competition and Markets Authority, the department is also developing proposals on what more can be done to combat profiteering, bring down costs and create a more sustainable market for residential placements.
The department is developing options regarding the planning of children’s homes and thanks Fylde Council colleagues for their continued engagement in this process.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that (a) schools with a large intake of military families are adequately provisioned and (b) school roll audits are carried out termly rather than annually in those schools.
Answered by Robin Walker
State-funded schools in England that are attended by children and young people from military families (known as service children) receive additional funding in the form of the service pupil premium (SPP). This funding is currently worth £320 per annum for each pupil who is recorded as a service child at the time of the autumn school census, or who has had service child status at any point in the last six years.
Schools have flexibility over how they use the SPP to support the pastoral and academic needs that service children may have as a result of growing up in a military household. These can include needs relating to the impact of moving schools frequently during their primary and secondary education.
Schools are required in each termly school census to record information about the number of service children on roll. However, allocations of SPP funding for each financial year only draw on data from the autumn school census return. This ’lagged’ approach to funding gives schools certainty over their budgets, as they know the number of pupils for which they will receive funding in the year. Therefore, when pupil numbers fall, schools have time to respond before this starts to impact their budgets.
The department has allocated £246 million in growth and falling rolls funding to local authorities in the 2022/23 financial year. This is an increase of £12 million over the amount allocated for 2021/22. Growth funding can be used by local authorities to support schools with managing a significant growth in pupil numbers or a short-term decrease in pupil numbers, where those places are forecast to be required in future years.
The responsibility for how growth and falling rolls funding is allocated rests with local authorities. If an academy or maintained school takes on significant numbers of additional pupils because of a growing population in the area, then local authorities can provide funding from the growth pot they hold locally.
Furthermore, schools in which more than 6% of pupils joined at a non-typical date through the school year at any point in the last three years also attract funding through the mobility factor in the national funding formula. For years 1 to 11, this means the first census when the pupil was in the school was a Spring or Summer census. For the reception year, the first census is the Summer census. This year, the department allocated £44 million to local authorities through this factor. Local authorities allocate the funding they receive to schools through their local funding formula.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has issued guidance to local authorities on placements at independent schools for refugees who have arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department is currently working at pace to develop the methodology and mechanism for the allocation of funding for the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme. This education funding for children and young people will be distributed to local authorities. If the funding is used for a school place, it will be for state-funded schools only.
In general, there’s nothing that would stop a local authority from providing funding to an independent school, but this would be a decision for the individual local authority to make.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities issued guidance in March this year advising families how to apply for a school place in England. The Department for Education shared this via The Education Hub blog in April.
The Boarding Schools Association and the Independent Schools Council speak regularly to the Department for Education and the Home Office on matters relating to Ukraine and Russia.
We are grateful to those independent schools that have come forward to offer places and encourage independent schools to contact local authorities that are seeking to place children.
As school places are co-ordinated locally, schools should inform their local authorities that they are willing to offer places to Ukrainian students. It is for independent schools to determine their own criteria for creating scholarship schemes and putting local arrangements for administration in place.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will issue guidance to local authorities on how they can partly or wholly fund independent school places for student refugees who have arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme using the same per capita funding that would be spent if they were to be educated in the state sector.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department is currently working at pace to develop the methodology and mechanism for the allocation of funding for the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme. This education funding for children and young people will be distributed to local authorities. If the funding is used for a school place, it will be for state-funded schools only.
In general, there’s nothing that would stop a local authority from providing funding to an independent school, but this would be a decision for the individual local authority to make.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities issued guidance in March this year advising families how to apply for a school place in England. The Department for Education shared this via The Education Hub blog in April.
The Boarding Schools Association and the Independent Schools Council speak regularly to the Department for Education and the Home Office on matters relating to Ukraine and Russia.
We are grateful to those independent schools that have come forward to offer places and encourage independent schools to contact local authorities that are seeking to place children.
As school places are co-ordinated locally, schools should inform their local authorities that they are willing to offer places to Ukrainian students. It is for independent schools to determine their own criteria for creating scholarship schemes and putting local arrangements for administration in place.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the projected annual budget is for schools in the (a) 2019-20, (b) 2020-21, (c) 2021-22 and (d) 2022-23 academic years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The attached table shows the total value of the core schools budget each year.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of children are registered as attending an independent school in each (a) local authority area and (b) constituency in the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The department publishes figures on the number of independent schools and pupils attending them in the annual ‘Schools, Pupils and Characteristics’ release, by national totals and by local authority in tables 1a, 1b, and 1c, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.
The underlying data file includes figures for individual schools including school name, school type, parliamentary constituency and location. Full addresses can be found at the Get Information About Schools website, available here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.
The Oxford Analytics October 2018 report, 'The Impact of Independent Schools on the UK Economy' estimated that independent schools provide an annualised taxpayer cost saving of £3.5 billion, compared to the cost of educating all pupils in the state sector.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many independent schools there are in each (a) local authority and (b) parliamentary constituency; how many children there are at each of those schools; and what the names and addresses are of each of those schools.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The department publishes figures on the number of independent schools and pupils attending them in the annual ‘Schools, Pupils and Characteristics’ release, by national totals and by local authority in tables 1a, 1b, and 1c, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.
The underlying data file includes figures for individual schools including school name, school type, parliamentary constituency and location. Full addresses can be found at the Get Information About Schools website, available here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.
The Oxford Analytics October 2018 report, 'The Impact of Independent Schools on the UK Economy' estimated that independent schools provide an annualised taxpayer cost saving of £3.5 billion, compared to the cost of educating all pupils in the state sector.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many independent special schools there are in each (a) local authority and (b) parliamentary constituency.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The department publishes figures on the number of independent schools and pupils attending them in the annual ‘Schools, Pupils and Characteristics’ release, by national totals and by local authority in tables 1a, 1b, and 1c, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.
The underlying data file includes figures for individual schools including school name, school type, parliamentary constituency and location. Full addresses can be found at the Get Information About Schools website, available here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.
The Oxford Analytics October 2018 report, 'The Impact of Independent Schools on the UK Economy' estimated that independent schools provide an annualised taxpayer cost saving of £3.5 billion, compared to the cost of educating all pupils in the state sector.