Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure children in the foster care system are able to access suitable foster carers in their local area.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring that children can access suitable foster placements close to home. Our fostering reforms will expand national capacity and strengthen regional collaboration, improve recruitment and matching processes, and assist local authorities to maintain stable local options.
In the East Midlands specifically, the Foster for East Midlands regional fostering hub is helping increase recruitment by providing a single, streamlined point of entry for enquiries across Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The hub offers clear information, specialist advice and consistent, high quality support to prospective carers, and has already generated strong interest since launch. It also incorporates initiatives such as Mockingbird constellations, which demonstrate the supportive networks available to carers and help increase the appeal of fostering by reducing isolation and enabling a strong community ethos.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her department is taking to increase the number of approved foster carers in Nottinghamshire.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring that children can access suitable foster placements close to home. Our fostering reforms will expand national capacity and strengthen regional collaboration, improve recruitment and matching processes, and assist local authorities to maintain stable local options.
In the East Midlands specifically, the Foster for East Midlands regional fostering hub is helping increase recruitment by providing a single, streamlined point of entry for enquiries across Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The hub offers clear information, specialist advice and consistent, high quality support to prospective carers, and has already generated strong interest since launch. It also incorporates initiatives such as Mockingbird constellations, which demonstrate the supportive networks available to carers and help increase the appeal of fostering by reducing isolation and enabling a strong community ethos.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase reading for fun in South Shropshire constituency.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The National Year of Reading is a UK-wide campaign to address long-term declines in reading enjoyment through engaging new audiences, reshaping public attitudes and building the systems needed to embed lasting, meaningful change, during 2026 and beyond. It includes a major physical and online marketing campaign, as well as exciting events, webinars, resources, and activities in communities, libraries, schools and early years settings throughout the year.
We are raising awareness of the National Year of Reading through a range of methods, such as via departmental communication channels, the National Year of Reading mailing list and social media, communications from the National Literacy Trust, and promotion via the English Hubs network.
The Reading Agency are also providing public libraries with resources, toolkits and print and digital materials to activate the National Year of Reading. Schools and Early Years settings in South Shropshire and across the UK can access a range of engaging online webinars, resources and activities throughout the year. More information can be found at: https://goallin.org.uk/get-involved/schools/.
This government is also providing £5 million of funding for secondary schools to purchase books to encourage reading for pleasure, as well as committing over £10 million in funding to guarantee a library for every primary school by the end of this Parliament.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure foster carers receive adequate (a) financial and (b) mental support.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is taking wide‑ranging action to strengthen foster care and ensure that children receive the support they need to thrive.
We have launched an ambitious fostering reform programme that aims to create 10,000 additional foster placements during this Parliament. These reforms are designed to reverse the long‑term decline in fostering capacity, expand the number of suitable homes, and rebuild the system so children can grow up in loving, local family settings with carers who feel trusted and valued. To achieve this, we are improving regional coordination so local authorities can work more effectively together, and we are re-writing the rule book to prioritise stable, trusted relationships.
Foster carers must be thoroughly assessed before approval. All prospective carers undergo rigorous checks and training, and our updated standards will help services ensure assessments are robust, consistent, and focused on the skills needed to provide high quality care.
To support long‑term retention, our reforms will ensure stronger wraparound support, so foster carers receive the practical and emotional help they need. This includes use of carers’ wider support networks, peer support and training. These measures aim to improve the experience of current carers and to encourage more people to come forward.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that new foster carers are adequately vetted.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is taking wide‑ranging action to strengthen foster care and ensure that children receive the support they need to thrive.
We have launched an ambitious fostering reform programme that aims to create 10,000 additional foster placements during this Parliament. These reforms are designed to reverse the long‑term decline in fostering capacity, expand the number of suitable homes, and rebuild the system so children can grow up in loving, local family settings with carers who feel trusted and valued. To achieve this, we are improving regional coordination so local authorities can work more effectively together, and we are re-writing the rule book to prioritise stable, trusted relationships.
Foster carers must be thoroughly assessed before approval. All prospective carers undergo rigorous checks and training, and our updated standards will help services ensure assessments are robust, consistent, and focused on the skills needed to provide high quality care.
To support long‑term retention, our reforms will ensure stronger wraparound support, so foster carers receive the practical and emotional help they need. This includes use of carers’ wider support networks, peer support and training. These measures aim to improve the experience of current carers and to encourage more people to come forward.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase long term retention rates for foster carers.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is taking wide‑ranging action to strengthen foster care and ensure that children receive the support they need to thrive.
We have launched an ambitious fostering reform programme that aims to create 10,000 additional foster placements during this Parliament. These reforms are designed to reverse the long‑term decline in fostering capacity, expand the number of suitable homes, and rebuild the system so children can grow up in loving, local family settings with carers who feel trusted and valued. To achieve this, we are improving regional coordination so local authorities can work more effectively together, and we are re-writing the rule book to prioritise stable, trusted relationships.
Foster carers must be thoroughly assessed before approval. All prospective carers undergo rigorous checks and training, and our updated standards will help services ensure assessments are robust, consistent, and focused on the skills needed to provide high quality care.
To support long‑term retention, our reforms will ensure stronger wraparound support, so foster carers receive the practical and emotional help they need. This includes use of carers’ wider support networks, peer support and training. These measures aim to improve the experience of current carers and to encourage more people to come forward.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what (a) methodology and (b) data the Department uses to (i) calculate and (ii) compare the average cost of maintained special school placements and independent school placements.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
For maintained special schools and special academies, the department uses local authorities’ actual expenditure on high needs top-up funding, to which is added the £10,000 per place funding using pupil numbers from the January school census, divided by those pupil numbers to produce an average placement cost.
For independent special schools (ISS), the department cannot disaggregate this expenditure from that including non-maintained special schools (NMSS), so creates a combined average placement cost by adding spending on ISS fees, top up funding for NMSS and the total £10,000 per place funding for NMSS (using the number of pupils with education, health and care (EHC) plans at NMSS), and dividing by the number of pupils with EHC plans at both ISS and NMSS.
Asked by: Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the write-off of 90 per cent of the High Needs block debts of English councils on the amount of SEND funding to be absorbed into her Department's Resource Departmental Expenditure Limits from 2028-29 .
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The High Needs Stability Grant is concerned with historic spending and will have no impact on pressures in 2028/29. From the 2028/29 financial year, the government has confirmed that special educational needs and disabilities pressure will be absorbed within the overall government departmental expenditure limits budget such that the government would not expect local authorities to need to fund future special educational needs costs from general funds. Budgets from 2028/29 onwards, including the core schools budget, will be confirmed at the 2027 Spending Review.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress has been made in appointing a delivery partner for the PE and School Sport Partnerships Network; and whether her Department plans to provide funding for the School Games Organisers Network after the 2025-26 academic year.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department has carried out market engagement with the sector, and we are using feedback from this to inform our invitation to tender. We will launch procurement for a national delivery partner to run the Partnerships Network shortly.
The government has confirmed funding for the School Games organisers until the end of the 2025/26 academic year.
Asked by: Calum Miller (Liberal Democrat - Bicester and Woodstock)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the impact on local authority finances of accumulated high needs Dedicated Schools Grant deficits ahead of the statutory override ending in 2027-28.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department has set out plans for a reformed special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system in the recent Schools White Paper. The department's assessment of future SEND spending will be updated following the SEND consultation.
We have set out plans to address high needs deficits up to the end of 2025/26, providing grants to cover 90% of each council’s deficit once they have produced and received approval for a strong plan to drive sustained and energetic action in accordance with our new system set out in the Schools White Paper, which will begin to improve outcomes for children and bring costs under control through effective early intervention stopping needs from escalating.
For deficits that arise in 2026/27 and 2027/28, local authorities can expect that we will continue to take an appropriate and proportionate approach, though it will not be unlimited.
From 2028/29, SEND spending will be covered by the overall government DEL budget, meaning local authorities are not expected to fund future SEND costs from general funds, once the Statutory Override ends at the end of 2027/28.