Maintained Schools: Term Dates
Lord Carrington Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Lord Carrington
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to allow maintained schools to set the number of days on which they are open during a school year, in the same way as for academy schools.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have no plans to change the current regulations. Academies generally tend to follow the same structure as local authority-maintained schools, and we encourage local areas to work collaboratively to minimise any disruption to parents. Schools and local authorities should design their term structure first and foremost to benefit pupils’ education. Variable term dates can cause difficulties for parents, and allowing greater divergence would exacerbate that.
Lord Carrington (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and declare my interest as a trustee of a community-maintained school in High Wycombe. My Question is to highlight the current difficulties experienced by maintained schools in the recruitment of teachers when the number of days they are required to open to students is fewer than that required of academies. There is a growing pattern of two-week half terms being offered by academies in the middle of the autumn term, but not by maintained schools. It is in the interests of childcare and parents, when they have children attending a range of schools, that holiday and term dates coincide. Do the Government intend to extend the flexibility to offering extended holidays to maintained schools, or at least to level up the required number of days that all schools should be open for children?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Under regulations, schools are expected to be open for 190 days, or 380 sessions, each year. As I suggested in my initial Answer, it is also important that there is local co-ordination around holiday dates in order to support parents and to ensure consistency, in the way the noble Lord described.
I think the noble Lord started by saying that this makes it more difficult to recruit teachers. Of course, while it is important that children have a fixed week and a specified number of days, it is of course possible, as has been the case, to develop more flexible ways in which teachers can work. The department is keen to promote that by, for example, funding a programme focused on embedding flexible working in schools. I hope that will be one of the things that will enable us to improve teacher recruitment.
Teacher Shortages
Lord Carrington Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
First, I do not accept that it is a crisis. Secondly, if the noble Lord looks at the long-term numbers on this, in subjects such as mathematics, which is raised frequently in the House, in 2014-15 we had 75.8% specialist teachers. That is now 78.6%. There are subjects like physics where it has gone down slightly, but this has been a long-term issue, and I thank our teachers and leaders for the work they do to make our schools as good as they are.
Lord Carrington (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register as a trustee of a large state secondary school in High Wycombe. What consideration is being given to extending the area covered by the London fringe allowance, given the increasing challenges of teacher recruitment in urban areas outside of London, particularly areas like High Wycombe?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am very happy to take the noble Lord’s point back to the department. I am aware that teacher mobility is much greater in London than in some other parts of the country. I appreciate that that represents challenges for schools, but I will take his specific point back.