Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Nash on 9 December (HL3996), what assessment is being made of the impact on the provision of child and adolescent mental health services, broader special needs support and psychological services, of reductions announced in the Autumn Statement to the provision for areas of education spending in England that are not ring-fenced.
Answered by Lord Nash
As set out in the response to the previous question from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett (HL3996), the £600 million reduction to the Education Services Grant, announced in the Spending Review and Autumn Statement, should have no direct impact on the provision of child and adolescent mental health services, broader special needs support, or psychological services.
Support for special educational needs is funded from the core schools budget, which we are protecting in real terms.
The government has made children and young people’s mental health support a priority and we are investing an additional £1.4 billion in children and young people’s perinatal mental health services over the next five years. Each Clinical Commissioning Group has put in place a local transformation plan for children and young people’s mental health to set out how services will be improved. These have been drawn up in partnership with local authorities, schools and colleges to ensure they cover the full spectrum of interventions, from prevention to support and care for existing or emerging mental health problems, transitions between services, and addressing the needs of the most vulnerable.
Local authorities have statutory duties to provide services and support for children and young people with SEND, including providing educational psychologist expertise. Local authorities are best placed to judge local priorities and to make local funding decisions, and it is therefore for them, in consultation with local people and having regard to the range of statutory responsibilities placed on them, to determine the exact nature of provision in their areas, including how best to allocate resources and how to fulfil their obligations.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on support services provided through the Education Services Grant to local authorities of the £600 million funding reduction announced in the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015 for (1) special needs provision, (2) psychological services, and (3) child and adolescent mental health provision.
Answered by Lord Nash
We are protecting the core schools budget in real terms, enabling a per pupil protection for the dedicated schools grant (DSG) and the pupil premium. The DSG protection includes funding for special needs provision and funding for the education of children and young people in child and adolescent mental health services units.
The Education Services Grant is not intended to fund special needs provision, psychological services, or child and adolescent mental health provision. The £600 million reduction to the Education Services Grant, announced in the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015, should therefore have no direct impact on the provision of these support services.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which reports commissioned by her Department from external bodies between 1 September 2010 and 31 December 2014 have not yet been published; when each such report was commissioned; what the nature of the research so commissioned was; from which individual or body each such report was commissioned; what the value was of each report so commissioned; on what date each such report was received by her Department; for what reasons the research has not yet been published; and when she plans to publish each such report.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Research commissioned between 1 September 2010 and 31 December 2014 that has been completed is published on GOV.UK.
The Government Social Research Service recommends it is best practice to publish within 12 weeks of having a final agreed report. All of our reports commissioned between 1 September 2010 and 31 December 2014 adhere to this protocol.
The Department for Education have four reports that are yet to be published that were commissioned between 1 September 2010 and 31 December 2014. All four comply with the Research Publication Protocol, in accordance with Government Social Research (GSR) best practice.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to ensure that recent findings of the Local Government Ombudsman relating to grandparents and their grandchildren following family breakup are acted on by local authorities.
Answered by Edward Timpson
We issued ‘Family and Friends Care: Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities’ in 2011. This guidance is clear that children and young people unable to live with their parents who are brought up by family and friends should receive the support they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare, whether or not they are looked after.
The guidance requires local authorities to develop and publish clear, easily accessible policies to explain how they will provide assessment and support to children in the care of family and friends. In July 2013 I wrote to all local authorities to remind them of this requirement and to request they notify the Department of their policy. To date, 144 of 152 (94%) of local authorities have sent us links to their policies.
To aid transparency, we have agreed that the Family Rights Group (FRG), one of the leading voluntary organisations supporting family and friends carers, will publish the links to these policies on its website. FRG are now reviewing the content and quality of these policies and we are planning to provide feedback to local authorities on findings from this work.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 11 February 2015 to Question 223692, if she will extend all bursaries to all students focusing on core curriculum on the Initial Teacher Training programme.
Answered by David Laws
The Government provides bursaries in order to incentivise application to initial teacher training (ITT) courses from the best graduates. As such, bursary rates are set based on recruitment performance over recent years by phase and subject. Generally, higher bursaries are provided where a phase or subject has struggled to attract sufficient applicants in recent years. We review the financial incentives for ITT each year in order to respond to recruitment patterns across these phases, subjects and routes. Therefore, we have no current plans to extend bursary eligibility, but we will review this again before announcing bursaries for those starting ITT in 2016/17.
The bursaries for those starting ITT in 2015/16 are published online at:
www.gov.uk/funding-initial-teacher-training-itt-academic-year-2015-to-16
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many entrants there were into initial teacher education in England in the academic years (a) 2010-11, (b) 2011-12, (c) 2012-13, (d) 2013-14 and (e) 2014-15; and what the level of recruitment of such entrants for the forthcoming academic year was at 1 February 2015.
Answered by David Laws
Initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment information for the 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14 and 2014/15 academic years is provided in the following table. This information is published in the annual ITT census. Information for the 2015/16 academic year will be available when we publish the next census at the end of November 2015.
UCAS publish within cycle recruitment reports, the latest of which can be found at:
www.ucas.com/corporate/data-and-analysis/ucas-teacher-training-statistical-releases
Initial teacher training new entrants, 2010/11 to 2014/15 | |||||
New entrants to Primary programmes | New entrants to Secondary programmes | Total new entrants | |||
2010/11 | 18,360 | 19,440 | 37,800 | ||
2011/12 | 19,870 | 15,850 | 35,720 | ||
2012/13 | 20,480 | 14,815 | 34,880 | ||
2013/14 | 19,445 | 13,334 | 32,779 | ||
2014/15 | 19,213 | 12,943 | 32,543 | ||
Source: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2014-to-2015
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Notes | |||||
1) Figures for 2014/15 are provisional and are subject to change. Figures for 2013/14 have been revised. | |||||
2) Teach First and Troops to Teachers are excluded. | |||||
3) Data refers to the number of new entrants on 8 October 2014 and was extracted on 10 November 2014. | |||||
4) Total includes forecast registrations in 2014/15. | |||||
This year we have recruited 32,156 trainees with a further 387 projected to start later in the academic year. This is slightly less than the number recruited in 2013, however, this will not result in a teacher shortage since not all trainees progress into teaching immediately after training, and schools can recruit teachers from other avenues.
The Department for Education is taking a number of steps to drive up recruitment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects for 2015/16, including increasing bursaries and scholarships for postgraduate ITT recruitment up to £25,000; paying a £5,000 bonus to maths, physics and computing trainees on our salaried scheme; and continuing to promote the subject knowledge enhancement programme.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she plans to take, and on what timetable, to respond to the report from Ofsted entitled Overcoming barriers: ensuring that Roma children are fully engaged and achieving in education, published on 16 December 2014.
Answered by David Laws
Ofsted’s report recommends that the Department for Education considers how the allocation of existing school funding can be more reactive to in-year changes in pupil numbers. Local authorities currently have discretion to top up a school’s funding to take account of high numbers of pupils arriving at unusual times of the year. The Department is considering whether there could be ways to make the funding system even more responsive to in-year changes as part of work on funding reform beyond 2015-16.
Ofsted also recommends that the Department takes steps to encourage more accurate recording of pupil ethnicity. From January 2016, schools will be able to record separate data on Gypsy and Roma pupils, instead of the current joint category. It is anticipated that this change will encourage Roma parents to declare their child’s ethnicity accurately, which in turn will help schools to tailor their support for these pupils.
In addition, the Department will work with the its Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Education Stakeholder Group to disseminate the effective practice identified in Ofsted’s report and encourage local areas to consider what action they can take to improve outcomes for Roma pupils, in line with Ofsted’s recommendations to schools and local authorities.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Gateway to Growth: CBI/Pearson Education and Skills Survey 2014, what steps she is taking to ensure teachers are supported to deliver the five skills called for by Young Enterprise.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The new school curriculum gives teachers more freedom and flexibility to develop their pupils’ skills and readiness for work. All state schools must offer a curriculum that is balanced, broad and which prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
Decisions relating to teachers’ professional development rightly rest with schools, individual teachers and heads, as they are in the best position to make judgements about their requirements.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Written Statement of 27 March 2014, Official Report, columns 35-6WS, on primary and 16-to-19 assessment and accountability, how the progress of pupils with severe educational needs will be taken into account in his Department's accountability reform programme.
Answered by David Laws
We plan to continue to publish information on attainment and progress of pupils with special educational needs at national and local authority level. A new web portal, which is under development, will improve access to 16-18 performance data, including the core demographic information such as special educational needs that is currently available for primary and secondary schools.
Any pupils not able to access the relevant end of key stage test will continue to have their attainment assessed by teachers, and we will retain P scales for reporting teachers' judgements.
Asked by: Lord Blunkett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Written Statement of 27 March 2014, Official Report, columns 35-6WS, on primary and 16-to-19 assessment and accountability, what account will be taken of the progress made by children who have entered the school beyond the baseline reception assessment procedure, but who do not warrant exemption under the final two years prior to Key Stage 2 exams.
Answered by David Laws
Schools will continue to be expected to assess all of their pupils upon entering school and track their progress. Ofsted will expect to see evidence that pupils are making appropriate progress, with inspections informed by the school's data on pupil progress. Assessment at key stage 1 will remain a statutory requirement.