Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many schools registered to deliver language intervention programmes in (1) 2021, (2) 2022, and (3) 2023, and how many completed the full work programme in each of those years.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The department works with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to support building the evidence base for early language interventions. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme (two thirds of English state primary schools) would continue for the 2024/25 academic year. NELI is the most robustly evidenced early language programme in the UK, helping children who need extra support with their speech and language development to make four months of additional progress and seven months for those on free school meals.
To support early language skills, the department has invested over £20 million in NELI. The department does not hold the exact number of children who have completed NELI since 2020, but an estimate is based on the data included in EEF’s 'NELI Scale-up: Evaluation Report - Year 2', as attached. The programme has screened more than 650,000 children in the last four years and supported more than 210,000 four and five-year-olds since the pandemic. Broken down by academic year, this is:
2020/21: 35,000
2021/22: 59,000
2022/23: 58,000
2023/24: 59,000
The Stronger Practice Hubs, which provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners, have also collaborated with the EEF to fund and make places available on several early language programmes. This is helping to strengthen and add to the evidence base of early years professional development programmes. The department does not hold data on the number of children who have benefitted from these programmes.
The number of new schools who registered to deliver NELI in each academic year since 2020 are as follows:
2020/21: 6,668
2021/22: 4,418
2022/23: 26
2023/24: no new school registration undertaken
For registered schools, the government has continued to fund the intervention so that schools can deliver the programme to new cohorts of reception children, where they are identified with below or well-below average language levels. We do not hold figures on how many of these schools completed the full work programme in each of those years.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many children have completed language intervention programmes each year since such programmes were first funded by the Government in 2021.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The department works with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to support building the evidence base for early language interventions. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme (two thirds of English state primary schools) would continue for the 2024/25 academic year. NELI is the most robustly evidenced early language programme in the UK, helping children who need extra support with their speech and language development to make four months of additional progress and seven months for those on free school meals.
To support early language skills, the department has invested over £20 million in NELI. The department does not hold the exact number of children who have completed NELI since 2020, but an estimate is based on the data included in EEF’s 'NELI Scale-up: Evaluation Report - Year 2', as attached. The programme has screened more than 650,000 children in the last four years and supported more than 210,000 four and five-year-olds since the pandemic. Broken down by academic year, this is:
2020/21: 35,000
2021/22: 59,000
2022/23: 58,000
2023/24: 59,000
The Stronger Practice Hubs, which provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners, have also collaborated with the EEF to fund and make places available on several early language programmes. This is helping to strengthen and add to the evidence base of early years professional development programmes. The department does not hold data on the number of children who have benefitted from these programmes.
The number of new schools who registered to deliver NELI in each academic year since 2020 are as follows:
2020/21: 6,668
2021/22: 4,418
2022/23: 26
2023/24: no new school registration undertaken
For registered schools, the government has continued to fund the intervention so that schools can deliver the programme to new cohorts of reception children, where they are identified with below or well-below average language levels. We do not hold figures on how many of these schools completed the full work programme in each of those years.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government which providers of language intervention programmes for schools they support with funding.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
The department works with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to support building the evidence base for early language interventions. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme (two thirds of English state primary schools) would continue for the 2024/25 academic year. NELI is the most robustly evidenced early language programme in the UK, helping children who need extra support with their speech and language development to make four months of additional progress and seven months for those on free school meals.
To support early language skills, the department has invested over £20 million in NELI. The department does not hold the exact number of children who have completed NELI since 2020, but an estimate is based on the data included in EEF’s 'NELI Scale-up: Evaluation Report - Year 2', as attached. The programme has screened more than 650,000 children in the last four years and supported more than 210,000 four and five-year-olds since the pandemic. Broken down by academic year, this is:
2020/21: 35,000
2021/22: 59,000
2022/23: 58,000
2023/24: 59,000
The Stronger Practice Hubs, which provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners, have also collaborated with the EEF to fund and make places available on several early language programmes. This is helping to strengthen and add to the evidence base of early years professional development programmes. The department does not hold data on the number of children who have benefitted from these programmes.
The number of new schools who registered to deliver NELI in each academic year since 2020 are as follows:
2020/21: 6,668
2021/22: 4,418
2022/23: 26
2023/24: no new school registration undertaken
For registered schools, the government has continued to fund the intervention so that schools can deliver the programme to new cohorts of reception children, where they are identified with below or well-below average language levels. We do not hold figures on how many of these schools completed the full work programme in each of those years.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to reduce stress for children in poverty in schools and other educational settings in order to improve their mental health outcomes, and how they will assess the effectiveness of interventions in this area.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
Child poverty has gone up by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low-income family. This not only harms children’s lives now, but it also damages their future prospects and holds back the economic potential of the country.
My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister announced the appointment of my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education to be the joint leads of a new ministerial taskforce to begin work on a child poverty strategy. The government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, to tackle the root causes and give every child the best start at life.
This government is committed to improving mental health support for all children and young people. This is critical to breaking down barriers to opportunity and learning. The right support should be available to every young person that needs it, which is why the government will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school.
The government will also be putting in place new Young Futures hubs, including access to mental health support workers, and will recruit an additional 8,500 new mental health staff to speed-up access to treatment for children and adults.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the current level of training on autism that teachers receive; and what consideration they have given to introducing whole school staff training on autism.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
I refer the noble Lord to the answer of 22 February 2024 to Question 14564.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to introducing national guidance on how to adapt school environments to support the needs of autistic pupils.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
I refer the noble Lord to the answer of 12 February 2024 to Question 11638.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the National Autistic Society's Cullum Centres; and what consideration they have given to rolling out the Cullum model in mainstream schools across the country.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The department works closely with the National Autistic Society (NAS) and is aware of the Cullum Centres and the evaluation currently being undertaken by Goldsmiths, University of London, but has made no assessments of the Centres to date. The department engages regularly with NAS and other autism stakeholders to understand the issues faced by autistic children and young people and to understand possible solutions.
The department supports local authorities to provide sufficient school places for all children, including autistic children, through capital funding. The department has published over £1.5 billion of High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. This funding is allocated to local authorities to support them to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those with autism, or who require alternative provision (AP). This funding forms part of the department's transformational investment of £2.6 billion in new high needs provision between 2022 and 2025 and is on top of the department’s ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools.
Reaching over 70% of schools and further education (FE) colleges, the Universal Services programme helps the school and FE workforce to identify and meet the needs of children and young people with SEND earlier and more effectively. The programme will also help the schools to successfully prepare children and young people for adulthood, including employment. Universal offers online training, professional development groups, bespoke school and college improvement projects, sector-led research, autism awareness training and an embedded focus on preparation for adulthood, including employer-led webinars for college staff. The programme commenced in May 2022 and runs until Spring 2025, with a budget of nearly £12 million.
The department has begun collecting data from local authorities on available capacity in special schools, SEND units and resourced provision, along with corresponding forecasts of demand for these places. This data will help the department to effectively support local authorities to fulfil their statutory duty to provide sufficient specialist places.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what specialist support they offer to unaccompanied migrant children who have been arrested, including those who have been trafficked, to enable them to rebuild their lives.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The department takes the welfare of unaccompanied migrant children extremely seriously and we are committed to ensuring they are safe and secure. Local authorities have a duty to provide services to all children in need in their area. Under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989, those under the age of 18 arriving as unaccompanied asylum-seekers should enter the care of the local authority in which area they first present.
All unaccompanied children, including those who have been arrested or trafficked, should be safeguarded and have their welfare promoted in the same way as any other looked-after child. Social Workers and other practitioners including police, health, education and youth offender services practitioners, and those who care for looked-after children, are encouraged to consider the full range of support available to looked after children in their areas, including that from community and other organisations.
The provisions under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 ensure that if there is uncertainty over whether a potential victim of trafficking is a child or an adult, then that person is presumed to be a child and receives the appropriate support without delay. If practitioners have concerns that a child may be a potential victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, then a referral should be made to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) as soon as possible. Guidance on making a referral can be found in the attached document. The NRM acts as a formal framework for first responders to identify potential victims of trafficking and assists with the provision of victim support. Like any other child in need, a trafficked child referred through the NRM should be safeguarded by the local authority on which the referral is made. Where it is evident that the child faces a significant risk of harm from the trafficker, appropriate arrangements will need to be put in place to keep the child safe from harm, and the child’s care plan should include such measures.
In addition, the Home Office has rolled out Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTGs) to two thirds of local authorities in England and Wales. In June 2023, the Minister for Safeguarding agreed to extend the current grant agreement to 31 March 2025, alongside working to deliver ICTG national rollout covering all of England and Wales. ICTGs are an additional source of advice and support for potentially trafficked children, and somebody who can advocate on their behalf to ensure their best interests are reflected in the decision-making processes undertaken by the public authorities who are involved in the child’s care. The support they provided is in addition to the statutory support provided to children by local authorities. Statutory guidance on roles and responsibilities of ICTGs is attached.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether section 20 of the Children Act 1989 allows local authorities to delegate their duties under that section for child protection to other public bodies.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
Local authorities have a duty to provide services to all children in need in their area. Under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989, local authorities are under a statutory obligation to provide accommodation to children when the criteria in Section 20(1) is met.
It is the responsibility of the local authority to ensure that the duty to accommodate is met. Whilst the local authority can make arrangements with other persons to act on their behalf by providing certain services, including the provision of accommodation, the local authority is still responsible for meeting the duty under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989, and for anything that flows from a child being accommodated by the local authority.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to review their support for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The United Kingdom remains fully committed to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and is dedicated to protecting and promoting children’s rights in all aspects of society.
The department is fully engaged with the UNCRC reporting process. We submitted our UK State Party report in June 2022 and are preparing for the Constructive Dialogue with the UN Committee in May 2023.
Through the use of Children’s Rights Impact Assessments, the government has sought to embed the consideration of children’s rights and compatibility with the Convention at the heart of policy making.
Strengthening children’s rights is a continuous process and we look forward to receiving the Concluding Observations from the UN Committee in June 2023, so we can continue to look for new and better ways of promoting the best interests of children.