Lord Hampton

The kinship allowance pilot will provide financial support to eligible kinship carers with a Special Guardianship Order or a ‘lives with’ Child Arrangement Order where the child would have otherwise been in care. These carers will receive a weekly non-means tested allowance paid at the same rate as the national minimum fostering allowance, if they reside in the pilot local authorities.

The requirements under chapter 2 of the Special Guardianship Regulations 2005 (2005 Regulations) will not apply to the arrangements made under this pilot. Special Guardians receiving financial support under 2005 Regulations are barred from receiving this pilot's allowance to avoid the risk of double public-funding. We believe this will have minimal effect on financial support arrangements under the Special Guardianship Regulations because this pilot is only being run in a select few local authorities and for a specific period of time, so some Special Guardians will continue to prefer receiving financial support under the 2005 Regulations.

Further details of the pilot, including how payments made through the pilot will interact with social security benefits, will be made available when the pilot goes live.

The pilot will be independently evaluated to find out how best to deliver consistent financial support for kinship families. Decisions about future national rollout will be informed by the findings of the evaluation.

The kinship allowance pilot will provide financial support to eligible kinship carers with a Special Guardianship Order or a ‘lives with’ Child Arrangement Order where the child would have otherwise been in care. These carers will receive a weekly non-means tested allowance paid at the same rate as the national minimum fostering allowance, if they reside in the pilot local authorities.

The requirements under chapter 2 of the Special Guardianship Regulations 2005 (2005 Regulations) will not apply to the arrangements made under this pilot. Special Guardians receiving financial support under 2005 Regulations are barred from receiving this pilot's allowance to avoid the risk of double public-funding. We believe this will have minimal effect on financial support arrangements under the Special Guardianship Regulations because this pilot is only being run in a select few local authorities and for a specific period of time, so some Special Guardians will continue to prefer receiving financial support under the 2005 Regulations.

Further details of the pilot, including how payments made through the pilot will interact with social security benefits, will be made available when the pilot goes live.

The pilot will be independently evaluated to find out how best to deliver consistent financial support for kinship families. Decisions about future national rollout will be informed by the findings of the evaluation.

The UK government is committed to safeguarding and advancing children’s rights. We firmly uphold the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which we ratified in 1991. It is important for all children, regardless of race, religion or abilities, to have equal civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. We are dedicated to providing the best possible opportunities for all children.

Teaching about the UNCRC can be taught through the national curriculum for citizenship, which is compulsory at key stages 3 and 4. Citizenship enables pupils to understand their statutory rights, civic duties and responsibilities, as well as developing their understanding of human rights, local, regional and international governance and the UK’s relations with the rest of Europe, the Commonwealth, the United Nations and the wider world. Schools are free to tailor their curriculum to the needs of their pupils and this could include supporting students to send submissions to the UN Human Rights Council working group.

The department wants to ensure that young carers have the best life chances by supporting them in their education. They were first added to the School Census in the 2022/23 academic year. This change has raised both awareness and the profile of young carers in schools. It has, for the first time, provided hard data on both the numbers of young carers in schools and their education.

The department expects the quality of the data returns to continue to improve as the collection becomes established. 72% of schools did not record any young carers in 2024.

The department produces guidance, which is periodically reviewed with the sector, to ensure that our data asks are clear and that schools understand how to record all elements of the School Census, including identification of young carers. Further, the School Census has embedded validation rules to maintain the quality of the data which mean that for all pupils, schools must respond to say whether or not the child has been identified as a young carer. We will continue to work closely with the sector, including organisations that work directly with schools in the support of young carers, to encourage better identification, recording and support for young carers in schools.

The department’s expectations of local authorities and schools, as set out in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, were made statutory on 19 August 2024. The guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance. The ‘support first’ ethos of the attendance guidance is that pupils and families, including young carers, should receive holistic, whole-family support to help them overcome the barriers to attendance they are facing. This includes holding regular meetings with the parents of pupils who the school, and/or local authority, consider to be vulnerable to discuss attendance and engagement at school. Schools are expected to recognise that absence is a symptom and that improving a pupil’s attendance is part of supporting the pupil’s overall welfare.

The daily attendance data collection has been established to ensure consistent recording and monitoring of pupil attendance, support the identification of absence patterns, and help schools and local authorities provide appropriate interventions. We will continue to monitor the quality of school census data on young carers for consideration for future inclusion in the daily collection.

The department wants to ensure that young carers have the best life chances by supporting them in their education. They were first added to the School Census in the 2022/23 academic year. This change has raised both awareness and the profile of young carers in schools. It has, for the first time, provided hard data on both the numbers of young carers in schools and their education.

The department expects the quality of the data returns to continue to improve as the collection becomes established. 72% of schools did not record any young carers in 2024.

The department produces guidance, which is periodically reviewed with the sector, to ensure that our data asks are clear and that schools understand how to record all elements of the School Census, including identification of young carers. Further, the School Census has embedded validation rules to maintain the quality of the data which mean that for all pupils, schools must respond to say whether or not the child has been identified as a young carer. We will continue to work closely with the sector, including organisations that work directly with schools in the support of young carers, to encourage better identification, recording and support for young carers in schools.

The department’s expectations of local authorities and schools, as set out in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, were made statutory on 19 August 2024. The guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance. The ‘support first’ ethos of the attendance guidance is that pupils and families, including young carers, should receive holistic, whole-family support to help them overcome the barriers to attendance they are facing. This includes holding regular meetings with the parents of pupils who the school, and/or local authority, consider to be vulnerable to discuss attendance and engagement at school. Schools are expected to recognise that absence is a symptom and that improving a pupil’s attendance is part of supporting the pupil’s overall welfare.

The daily attendance data collection has been established to ensure consistent recording and monitoring of pupil attendance, support the identification of absence patterns, and help schools and local authorities provide appropriate interventions. We will continue to monitor the quality of school census data on young carers for consideration for future inclusion in the daily collection.

I refer the noble Lord to the answer of 6 January 2025 to Question 20959.

The department recognises there are number of issues that affect girls’ experience of, and engagement with PE lessons, including body image and negative stereotypes. It is for Initial Teacher Training (ITT) providers to design a curriculum for primary teacher training and specialist secondary PE teaching, in line with the ITT core content framework and early career framework, that is relevant to subject or phase they will be teaching and provides the opportunity for all pupils to experience success.

Decisions relating to teachers’ professional development rest with schools, headteachers and teachers themselves, as they are in the best position to judge the development and training that teachers in their schools need to support their pupils. The PE and sport premium can be used by primary schools to make additional and sustainable improvements to their offer including continuing professional development and training where needed as well as support for equal access for boys and girls.

The government is committed to creating the healthiest ever generation of children. Breaking down the barriers to accessing sport and physical activity will be critical to achieving the government’s ambitions.

The department knows from the Active Lives Children and Young People survey results, covering the 2023/24 academic year, that only 45% of girls meet the Chief Medical Officers’ 60 minutes of activity a day recommendation, compared with 51% of boys. The figures for both remaining largely stable over the last two years.

The School Games Mark, funded by the government and managed by the Youth Sport Trust (YST), has introduced mandatory equality criteria for PE, school sport and physical activity participation for the 2024/25 academic year. Schools aiming to achieve or maintain the award’s status and recognition must now meet these criteria. The department is collaborating with the YST to identify and share best practice from the School Games Mark, with all schools on enhancing girls' equal access to PE, school sport, and physical activity.

The PE and sport premium for the 2024/25 academic year helps all eligible primary schools to make additional and sustainable improvements to their offer, and the guidance states that funding can be used to provide or improve equal access for boys and girls.

The department works in tandem with a wide range of sporting bodies to further support equal access to sport and physical activities.

The department has also launched an independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, which will seek to deliver a broader curriculum so that children and young people do not miss out on subjects such as music, art, PE and drama, as well as vocational subjects.

The government is committed to creating the healthiest ever generation of children. Breaking down the barriers to accessing sport and physical activity will be critical to achieving the government’s ambitions.

The department knows from the Active Lives Children and Young People survey results, covering the 2023/24 academic year, that only 45% of girls meet the Chief Medical Officers’ 60 minutes of activity a day recommendation, compared with 51% of boys. The figures for both remaining largely stable over the last two years.

The School Games Mark, funded by the government and managed by the Youth Sport Trust (YST), has introduced mandatory equality criteria for PE, school sport and physical activity participation for the 2024/25 academic year. Schools aiming to achieve or maintain the award’s status and recognition must now meet these criteria. The department is collaborating with the YST to identify and share best practice from the School Games Mark, with all schools on enhancing girls' equal access to PE, school sport, and physical activity.

The PE and sport premium for the 2024/25 academic year helps all eligible primary schools to make additional and sustainable improvements to their offer, and the guidance states that funding can be used to provide or improve equal access for boys and girls.

The department works in tandem with a wide range of sporting bodies to further support equal access to sport and physical activities.

The department has also launched an independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, which will seek to deliver a broader curriculum so that children and young people do not miss out on subjects such as music, art, PE and drama, as well as vocational subjects.

The government recognises that education needs to play a greater role in local safeguarding arrangements. This reflects the part schools, colleges, early years and other education settings play in the lives of children and families, and their safeguarding responsibilities.

In 2023, the department consulted on and strengthened its statutory guidance, titled ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’, which clarified the roles and responsibilities of education settings, both strategically and operationally, in local safeguarding arrangements.

As outlined in ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, the department is exploring how it can increase the role of education in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

The government recognises the pivotal role teachers and education settings play in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of vulnerable children and families.

The department’s 2023 updated statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ confirms that staff working in education settings play an important role in building relationships, identifying concerns and providing direct support to children.

At the last Spending Review, the department announced over £1 billion for programmes to improve early help services from birth to adulthood, including delivering on Family Hubs and helping families facing multiple disadvantages through the Supporting Families Programme and the holiday activities and food programme. Local authorities working with their partners can decide to use this funding to employ family liaison officers or other professionals to support families within education settings.

The department’s ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love: strategy and consultation’, announced plans to build on the strengths of these vital early help services through the implementation of family help. In the Families First for Children Pathfinder, the department is testing how it can increase the role of education in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and how local areas can provide targeted support to help children and families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity. The Pathfinder is running in ten local authority areas across two ‘waves’: Dorset, Lincolnshire and Wolverhampton (wave one announced July 2023) and Lewisham, Luton, Redbridge, Walsall, Warrington, Warwickshire and Wirral (wave two announced April 2024).

The department is also making the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance statutory from September 2024. This sets out how schools, local authorities and other services need to work together to support pupils at risk of poor attendance and ensure support provided to these families is consistent across the country.

The department’s package of wide-ranging reforms designed to support schools to improve attendance means that there were 440,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending in 2022/23 compared to 2021/22.

Milk is an excellent food for children’s growth and development. This is why, as part of the School Food Standards, schools are already required to ensure milk is available to all pupils who want it during school hours. The National School Milk Subsidy Scheme can be used by primary schools to reduce the cost of milk for all their pupils.

Thanks to Universal Infant Free School Meals, pupils under seven years old are already eligible for free milk when it is offered as part of their school lunch. Older pupils entitled to benefits related free school meals are also eligible for free milk when made available during the school day. This is in addition to the free milk provided for children under five-years-old thanks to the Nursery Milk Scheme.

As with free school meals, the department believes it is important to support those most in need and to ensure policy remains affordable and deliverable for schools. The department does not have plans to change the current eligibility conditions for the scheme.

The department currently has no plans to alter the established publication timings for ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’. The department publishes a near final version of the guidance in late spring or early summer.

Schools and colleges are familiar with the department’s approach which ensures that schools and colleges have sufficient time to digest revisions and to plan any necessary training, ahead of implementation in the next school year.

It is rare for material changes to be made between the ‘for information’ version and the final publication in September. Where this does occur, changes are strictly limited to reflect vital information in response to unexpected or emerging issues and are made to support schools and colleges to better safeguard children.

The department’s guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), is updated annually in the summer term, for information to enable schools and colleges to plan for the commencement of the guidance in September.

For 2023, KCSIE was published for information on 6 June 2023, with a final version with only minor changes published on 1 September 2023.

Core academic subjects are defined as those that are included within the English Baccalaureate (EBacc). The EBacc is made up of English language and literature, mathematics, the sciences, including computer science, either history or geography, and a modern or ancient language.

The department is encouraged by the increased uptake in these core academic subjects because they are essential for many degrees, and they provide a sound basis for a variety of careers beyond the age of 16. In particular, they can enable pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to follow a curriculum which will give them similar post-16 options as their non-disadvantaged peers, fostering greater social mobility.

The EBacc’s core academic subjects provide a strong foundation for all pupils regardless of whether that want to take an academic, technical, or vocational route post-16.

In February 2023, the department updated the Data Protection in Schools guidance, which provides advice covering Subject Access Requests (SARs). The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/data-protection-in-schools.

The department is developing the Education Privacy Assurance Scheme, which will provide targeted training, guidance, and templates on a range of data protection subjects. The department is prioritising responding to SARs as the first release in the next 12 months. This will help provide a consistent approach that is adopted by schools across the sector.

Ofqual is the independent regulator of qualifications and assessments for England and is accountable to Parliament and not to Ministers. Ofqual has statutory objectives to maintain standards and promote public confidence in qualifications.

As part of this remit, we know Ofqual is working closely with awarding organisations to consider the implications of pupils’ use of artificial intelligence (AI), including the opportunities and risks it may bring. We will continue to work closely with them on this going forward.

The International Baccalaureate Organisation has confirmed it will not allow pupils to pass off AI-generated work as their own in their assessments. Ofqual’s rules, to which they are subject, require that grades must accurately reflect pupils’ attainment.

The Department has piloted two schemes in recent years which were designed to attract and retain teachers by repaying their student loans. The Repayment of Teachers’ Loans (RTL) scheme was trialled in the mid-2000s and an evaluation was completed by University of Durham in 2004. This indicated that RTL influenced 11% of participating teachers’ decisions to stay in teaching.

In 2017, the Department introduced the Teacher Student Loan Reimbursement (TSLR) scheme for science and languages teachers in 26 Local Authorities, which allows these teachers to claim back the student loan repayments they have made. The evaluation by CFE Research was published in January 2023, and found that TSLR exerts some influence on both retaining teachers and the areas where they choose to teach.

Both the RTL and TSLR evaluations found that offering bursaries for trainee teachers exerts the strongest influence on teacher recruitment. This is why the Department is offering increased bursaries worth £27,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £29,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing.

Ofqual has confirmed that exam boards are aware of the opportunities and challenges presented by artificial intelligence (AI) to qualifications, and work is ongoing in this area, including with the devolved regulators.

There are already strict rules in place, set by exam boards, to ensure pupils’ work, including non-exam assessment, is their own. Sanctions for cheating are serious and include being disqualified from a qualification, if necessary.

The Department for Transport has not had any such discussions. Vehicle access restrictions used to create a Local Traffic Neighbourhoods are implemented and enforced using existing prescribed traffic signs. These are enforceable in the same way and with the same penalties as when used on any other part of the road network.

The use of any surplus revenue is strictly ring-fenced in legislation towards covering enforcement costs, specified local authority-funded local transport schemes, or road improvement and environmental measures.