Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the campaign to introduce a "nature premium", modelled on the existing sports premium, to support school children’s access to nature.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The department recognises that access to green space has been shown to have a positive impact on the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of young people, but children from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to spend time regularly outside than those from more affluent backgrounds. That is why we are inviting all nurseries, schools and colleges to register with the National Education Nature Park and offering grants to support participation from eligible settings.
Participating in Nature Park activities will support and encourage all children, and young people will benefit from spending time in nature. It will also support teachers to build confidence to deliver effective outdoor learning.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve ventilation and air filtration in early years and school settings, in the light of a recent study which suggests that COVID-19 infection can cause cognitive impairment in children up to 12 months post-infection.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The department supports and works with a wide range of academics to understand research relating to the impact of air quality on school users.
Between January 2022 and April 2023, the department provided over 9,000 air cleaning units to over 1,300 settings that had been identified with poor ventilation. The department has published guidance on how to use CO2 monitors and air cleaning units, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-co-monitors-and-air-cleaning-units-in-education-and-care-settings.
The department also publishes non-statutory guidance on indoor and outdoor air quality in ‘Building Bulletin 101: Guidelines on ventilation, thermal comfort and indoor air quality in schools’ (BB101), which can be found in the attached document and also accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-bulletin-101-ventilation-for-school-buildings.
The responsible body, relevant local authority, academy trust or voluntary-aided body are responsible for ensuring the health, safety and welfare of pupils when in their care.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have for the existing draft PSHE statutory guidance; what steps they are taking to ensure that the final version is evidence-based; and what is the timeline for action on the PSHE statutory guidance.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has been clear that children’s wellbeing must be at the heart of RSHE guidance for schools. Over the autumn, the government will look carefully at the consultation responses, discuss with stakeholders, and consider the relevant evidence, including the published Cass Review. Next steps will then be set out.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have met, or have plans to meet with, the Movement for an Adoption Apology; and whether they have any plans to move for apologising for historic forced adoptions that during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, which affected more than 215,000 women and their children.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The government has not met with the Movement for an Adoption Apology and there is no meeting scheduled.
My hon. Friend, the Minister for Children and Families, shares the deepest sympathy with everyone affected by historic forced adoption. The practice was abhorrent and should never have taken place.
The department will look to learn from the approach of the devolved nations and explore what more can be done to support those impacted.
The department is also currently funding the Adoption England project, Improving Adoption Services for Adults (IASA), which is designed to maintain relationships and provide better access to support for adopted adults.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the relative number of children being taken into care from families from different minoritised communities; and what plans they have to provide support to families and social services to enable children to remain with their families, particularly among communities where levels are high.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The department’s intention is to deliver better life chances for all, including by improving services for the most vulnerable children and families. The 2023 data on children looked after showed that children from black and mixed ethnic groups are more likely to become looked after compared to the general 0-17 population (making up 7% and 10% of the looked after population respectively, compared to 6% and 7% of the general child population).
| Children Look After (2023) | 0-17 year old population (2021 census) |
Other Ethnic Group | 5% | 3% |
Black or Black British | 7% | 6% |
Asian or Asian British | 5% | 12% |
Mixed | 10% | 7% |
White | 71% | 73% |
Unknown | 1% |
The department knows that there is a strong evidence base for early intervention to support families before they reach crisis point. The department is currently testing the impact of multi-disciplinary targeted support provided at the earliest opportunity to help families overcome challenges sooner, so that they can stay together and thrive.
The department is also committed to supporting more children from all backgrounds to remain with family through kinship care and are considering how best to support both kinship carers and the children in their care.
The Family Network Pilot is currently testing the impact of providing flexible funding for extended family networks through Family Network Support Packages (FNSP). The pilot will look at how FNSPs can unlock barriers and enable family networks to play a more active role in providing loving, stable homes for children through financial and other practical means. The pilot aims to help keep families together and children out of care, where this is in the best interests of the child. The pilot launched in four local authority areas, Brighton and Hove, Gateshead, Sunderland and Telford and Wrekin, and recently launched in a further three areas, Hammersmith and Fulham, Hartlepool and Staffordshire. The pilot will end in March 2025.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the reduction in the number of university places for humanities subjects, and what steps they will take to halt this decline.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The government recognises the value that the humanities play both economically and culturally. However, universities are autonomous institutions and are therefore responsible for deciding which courses to offer.
There has been a slight decrease (1,170 or -0.3%) in the number of students studying arts and humanities courses between 2019/20 and 2021/22. For the 2024/25 financial year, the Office for Students (OfS) has maintained funding for world-leading small and specialist providers at £58 million. This funding was increased by £5 million in the 2022/23 financial year, and earlier, by £10 million in the 2021/22 financial year. Details of providers’ allocations for the 2024/25 academic year will be announced by the OfS in the summer.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that Chinese students in UK universities, particularly those who are linked to China's military, are properly vetted and do not pose a threat to activists and people from Hong Kong based in UK universities who are campaigning against the actions of China and the Chinese Communist Party.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
Higher education (HE) in the UK is recognised as world class and attracting the brightest students from around the world is good for UK universities. However, the government takes seriously any concerns about overseas interference in the UK’s HE sector. The department continually assesses potential threats, and takes the protection of individuals’ rights, freedoms and safety in the UK very seriously.
Any attempt by a foreign power to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated. The National Security Act (2023) brings together vital new measures to protect the UK’s national security. The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) has been created to tackle covert influence in the UK.
The Defending Democracy Taskforce is reviewing the UK’s approach to transnational repression to ensure that there is a robust and joined up response across government and law enforcement.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 will ensure that universities in England have the tools they need to deal with interference with, and threats to, freedom of speech and academic freedom wherever they originate.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of any risk to the UK's status as a location for research presented by the planned closure of the anthropology department of the University of Kent, particularly with regard to ethnobotany; and what broader assessment they have made of any risk posed by the closure of significant numbers of departments and faculties at universities.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
Higher education providers are independent, autonomous institutions and are best placed to make decisions about the future focus of their research and their institutional strategy. Where it is necessary to reshape their activities, it is important that universities carefully consider the impact of job losses on staff and students, and the overall sustainability of teaching and research in this country.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will be providing funding to schools which identified safety issues relating to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and which began or finished the relevant repair work before July to fully cover the cost of such work.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
It is the responsibility of those who run schools - academy trusts, local authorities and voluntary-aided school bodies - to manage the safety and maintenance of their schools and to alert the department if there is a serious concern with a building. It has always been the case that where the department is made aware a building may pose an immediate risk, immediate action is taken.
The department will spend what it takes to keep children safe. The department will fund emergency mitigation work needed to make buildings safe, including installing alternative classroom space where necessary.
The department will fund refurbishment projects, or rebuilding projects where these are needed, to remove RAAC from the school estate. Schools and colleges will either be offered capital grants or rebuilding projects where these are needed, including through the School Rebuilding Programme. The department will set out further details for affected schools and colleges in due course.
The department will carefully consider claims submitted by responsible bodies for essential RAAC related works, taking into account the particular circumstances of each case.
The department recognises that some responsible bodies will already have carried out emergency mitigation works, where RAAC was deemed ‘critical,’ based on the advice of the department’s surveys or from other qualified professionals, and in most cases we will reimburse these costs.
Prior to 31 August 2023, the point at which the department’s advice on the risks of RAAC changed, some responsible bodies or schools may also have chosen to take action on RAAC in their buildings where it wasn’t deemed critical, and others may have chosen to go further and removed RAAC entirely. In these cases, as with any other capital works, the responsible bodies will have taken decisions as part of their own estate strategy, based on their assessment of any professional advice they'd received and the affordability of the project.
This work would typically have been funded through annual capital funding provided by the department to the sector, or from other sources of funding, such as a responsible body’s reserves. In these cases, the department is not providing additional funding to the funding the responsible bodies will have used to pay for the work.
In addition to the department’s support on RAAC, the department has committed £1.8 billion of capital funding for the 2023/24 financial year to improve the condition of school buildings, as part of over £15 billion allocated since 2015. Alongside this, the department will transform poor condition buildings at 500 schools and sixth form colleges over the coming decade through the School Rebuilding Programme.
The department will always put the safety and wellbeing of children and staff in schools and colleges at the heart of its policy decisions. The government has taken more proactive action to identify and mitigate RAAC in education settings than the devolved administrations in the UK, or indeed, governments overseas.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the minimum expected lifespan of new schools currently being constructed.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
All new educational buildings delivered by the department are designed to a robust specification that includes minimum expected lifespan of all components of the building, both externally and internally, based on current construction industry standards.
The current specification requires the minimum building life expectancy to be 50 years for the key structural components. Most buildings however last much longer with regular maintenance and proper oversight. The school estate has many excellent functioning buildings performing well as education settings from the last 150 years.