Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps, if any, they plan to take following reports that some private care providers are charging local authorities up to £10,000 a week to look after one child in care.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring there are sufficient places to meet the needs of looked after children in their area, including commissioning places from private or voluntary sector providers as required. They are responsible for agreeing prices with providers accordingly.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a market study that will examine the lack of availability and increasing costs in children’s social care provision. The CMA is examining concerns around high prices paid by local authorities, specifically prices charged by providers and variation between prices paid for similar types of placements.
The government has also committed to undertaking a widescale review of children’s social care, taking a fundamental look at the needs, experiences and outcomes of the children it supports, and what is needed to make a real difference. The review will be bold, broad, and independently led, taking a fundamental look across children’s social care, with the aim of better supporting, protecting, and improving the outcomes of vulnerable children and young people. The review will be evidenced based and bring together a broad range of expertise.
The government will study the findings and recommendations of both reviews carefully when they report next year.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of children in England being educated at home; whether they are taking steps they to reduce that number; if not, why not; and what additional support they intend to provide to local authority children services to assist with the costs of home education.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
The information you requested is not held centrally by this department. The department does not currently collect data on numbers of home educated children.
Parents are not required to register if they are home educating their children and, therefore, there is not a robust basis on which the department can reliably collect statistics on home education.
In relation to the COVID-19 outbreak, the department is working closely with local authorities to encourage a return to full attendance in school and is monitoring the situation. Initial conversations with local authorities indicate that the majority have noticed an increase in enquiries from parents about home education. Where parents are anxious about the safety of their children returning to school, local authorities and school leaders are reinforcing that it is in the best interests of pupils to return to school.
Over March and April 2020, the government provided £3.2 billion of emergency grant funding and over £5 billion of cashflow support to assist local authorities through the COVID-19 outbreak.
On 22 October 2020, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, announced allocations of a further £919 million of un-ringfenced funding to respond to spending pressures. This is part of a package of further support for councils, worth over £1 billion.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the availability of childcare provision; and what steps they propose to take to mitigate that impact on service providers and those dependent on such provision.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
In order to control the spread of COVID-19, early years settings were asked to only open for children of critical workers and vulnerable children from 20 March. An Ipsos MORI survey showed that three-quarters of critical workers with young children could access childcare during the coronavirus lockdown. The survey is available at:
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/parents-0-4-year-olds-and-childcare-1st-june-2020.
To ensure provision was available for all who needed it, local authorities have been able to redistribute free early years entitlement funding in exceptional cases to ensure childcare places are available for vulnerable and critical worker children.
Early years providers have been able to open to all children from 1 June. The latest attendance data shows that on 30 July, an estimated 285,000 children were attending an early years setting. The latest data, published on 4 August, is available at:
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak/2020-week-31.
Since 20 July, early years settings have been able to return to their normal group sizes, paving the way for more children to transition back to their early education and supporting parents to return to work.
On 20 July, we announced our commitment to continue paying local authorities for the childcare places they usually fund throughout the autumn term. This means that even if providers are open but caring for fewer children, they can continue to be funded as if the COVID-19 outbreak were not happening.
Local authorities should also continue to fund providers which have been advised to close, or left with no option but to close, for public health reasons. That gives another term of secure income to nurseries and childminders who are open for the children who need them. Until the start of the 2020 autumn term, it remains the case that free early years entitlement funding can be used differently and redistributed in exceptional cases to ensure childcare places are available for vulnerable and critical worker children.
The childcare sector has also been able to access a wider package of government support in the form of a business rates holiday, business interruption loans and the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Full details of the support available is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures#funding.
For school-aged children, holiday clubs and other out-of-school settings have been able to open since 4 July, helping parents to meet their childcare needs during the school summer holidays.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the rents levied by developers of student accommodation.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
Higher education providers are autonomous bodies, independent from the government. The department plays no direct role in the provision of student residential accommodation.
The department assesses student accommodation rent levels through the Student Income and Expenditure Surveys that have been undertaken at regular intervals since the mid-1980s. Information on student rents is also reported in the Accommodation Costs Surveys published jointly by the National Union of Students and the student housing charity, Unipol.
The report published by the independent panel supporting the Post-18 Review of Education and Funding recommends that the Office for Students:
examines the costs of student accommodation; and
works with students and providers to improve data about costs, rents, profits and quality.
The department has not yet taken decisions on these recommendations but will consider the panel’s proposals in due course.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of any estimated overspend of council funding special needs education; and what steps they are taking to provide financial support to protect the service.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We have asked local authorities with a cumulative deficit on their Dedicated Schools Grant of more than 1% to submit recovery plans to the department. We are now reviewing those plans and will be discussing these with local authorities in due course.
For 2020-21, we have announced more than £700 million of additional high needs funding, which funds children with more complex special educational needs. This represents an increase of 11% compared to 2019-20, leading to a total of over £7 billion. Every local authority will receive a minimum increase of 8% per head of population aged 2-18. We will provide local authorities with provisional allocations in October. This will help local authorities to manage the pressures that they will face next year.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how the £24 million of additional funding for maintained nursery schools will be distributed; and what estimate they have made of the amount per capita.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Since 2017, we have been providing around £60 million per year of supplementary funding to local authorities so that they could maintain funding levels for maintained nursery schools (MNS). We listened to concerns about the timing of the 2019 Spending Review and announced that we would provide some local authorities with further supplementary funding, of around £24 million, to enable them to continue the same levels of funding for their MNS for the whole of the 2019/20 academic year. That additional funding will be distributed on the same basis as the current supplementary funding. Full details of current arrangements can to found in the attached technical note and at the following link:
All early years’ entitlement funding is allocated on the basis of number of hours delivered, using data from the annual Early Years and Childcare Providers census. No estimate has been made of the funding on a per capita basis.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to require local authorities seeking to place looked-after children outside their own area to consult the local authority where a placement is being sought.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The Children’s Homes and Looked After Children (Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) Regulations 2013 placed additional duties on local authorities seeking to place children out of the authority’s area.
Under the amended regulations, any decision to place a child outside of the local authority’s area must be approved by a nominated officer, or, if that placement is a distant one, by the Director of Children’s Services. The regulations further require that when considering making a distant placement, the responsible authority consults with the host authority, and shares information including the child’s care plan.
It should also be noted that local authorities do place looked-after children in boarding schools from time to time, where it is considered in the child’s best interests. Boarding schools, by their nature, can be outside the responsible local authority’s geographic area.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which underspending on free school meals occasioned by absence or other reason is being retained as profit by the supplier; and whether they have any plans to tackle any such practice.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We have not made an assessment. Schools have a duty to provide free school meals to all pupils who are eligible for them and to pay for free school meals from the funding provided by the government, which includes additional funding for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. While the costs of providing meals each day may vary with factors such as absence, the vast majority of costs will be based on the number of pupils eligible.
We trust schools to manage their own budgets and it is for them to decide how to use their funding to provide free school meals, including whether to use a supplier.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the average salary for (1) head teachers, and (2) other teaching staff, in (a) private schools, (b) academies, and (c) local education authority schools, at (i) primary, and (ii) secondary level.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The information requested is published in the statistical first release ‘School Workforce in England, November 2016’ available at the following web link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-workforce.
The average salary for full and part-time head teachers in service at primary and secondary academies and local council maintained schools is published in table 9d, copy attached.
Tables 9a, Table 9b and Table 9c, copy attached, show the average salaries for those employed full and part-time, in service at primary and secondary academies and local council maintained schools. This includes:
Teachers (including heads, deputy heads, assistant heads, advisory teachers, classroom teachers and leading practitioners);
Classroom teachers (including classroom and leading practitioners); and
Leadership teachers (including heads, deputy, assistant heads and advisory teachers).
Salary information for teachers in private schools is not collected by the department.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of foster children in England who are excluded from the entitlement to 15 additional hours of free childcare per week.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
As of March 2017, there were 3,030 three and four year olds looked after in foster care and subsequently excluded from receiving the 15 additional hours of free childcare. However, we do not know how many children in foster care would access the additional hours if the eligibility criteria were applied to fostering households. No estimate has therefore been made.