Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government which (1) age group, and (2) other demographic groups, left the teaching profession in the greatest numbers in each of the past five years.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
Information on the school workforce in England, including the number and characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, working pattern and post) of teachers joining and leaving service nationally, is published in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical publication, available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.
Leavers are defined as qualified teachers leaving the state funded sector in England, for example due to a change of career or joining other UK education sectors, and those leaving on career breaks such as maternity leave or secondments outside of the school sector. Some of these teachers may rejoin a state funded school in England at a later date.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that (1) teachers, and (2) schools, are supported to enable them to benefit from the provisions of the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The Department is taking action to ensure that both teachers and head teachers are supported to benefit from the provisions of the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023.
The Department has published a collection of flexible working resources on GOV.UK, including non-statutory guidance and case studies. This collection will undergo development and the Department will ensure that resources are updated to provide practical support when the provisions of the Act take effect.
The Department is also funding support for teachers and head teachers. A culture change programme is being delivered, focusing on embedding flexible working in schools and multi-academy trusts. This includes the delivery of supportive webinars targeting both teachers and head teachers. The webinars include content focused on preparing for the legislative changes and on how to make a statutory request for flexible working. As part of this programme, the Department is also funding flexible working ambassador schools and multi-academy trusts to provide bespoke peer support to leaders in education. In June, seven new ambassadors were appointed and are currently in the process of recruiting more, building on the work of a previous cohort of ambassador schools.
The Department continues to work closely with the sector to identify and share examples of best practice and to determine how we can best target future support.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what (1) support, and (2) guidance, they are offering to schools to enable them to maximise teacher retention.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The Department’s reforms are aimed not only at increasing teacher recruitment in key subjects and areas, through an attractive pay offer and financial incentives such as bursaries, but also at ensuring teachers stay and succeed in the profession.
There are now over 468,000 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state funded schools in England, which is an increase of 27,000 (6%) since 2010. This makes it the highest FTE of teachers since the School Workforce Census began in 2010.
The Department accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendations for the 2023/24 pay award for teachers and head teachers, resulting in a pay award of 6.5%. This is the highest for teachers in over thirty years.
To support retention in the first few years of teaching, the Department has rolled out the Early Career Framework nationally, providing the foundations for a successful career in teaching, with over £130 million a year in funding. Beyond these first few years, the Department’s priority is to help all teachers and head teachers to continuously develop their expertise throughout their careers so every child in every classroom in every school has the best start in life.
The Department has therefore launched a new and updated suite of National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) for teachers and head teachers at all levels, from those who want to develop expertise in high quality teaching practice to those leading multiple schools across trusts. Since autumn 2021, eligible teachers and head teachers have been able to access scholarships to undertake fully funded NPQs.
These measures will create a golden thread running from Initial Teacher Training through to school leadership and rooting teacher and head teacher development in the best available evidence.
The Department has also published a range of resources to help address teacher workload and wellbeing, and therefore support retention, including the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, which schools are being encouraged to sign up to as a shared commitment to promote staff wellbeing. Developed in partnership with the education sector and mental health experts, the Charter can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter.
Additionally, a workload reduction toolkit has been developed for schools alongside head teachers and has been published here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit. On 13 July 2023, the Department also announced that it will convene a Workload Reduction Taskforce to explore how it can go further to support trusts and head teachers to minimise workload for teachers and head teachers by building on previous successes.
The Department is also taking action to promote flexible working in schools. The Department has published supportive resources on GOV.UK, including non statutory guidance and case studies: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/flexible-working-resources-for-teachers-and-schools#guidance-for-flexible-working.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government which applications for foundation body status made under the Education (Foundation Body) (England) Regulations 2000 have not resulted in the establishment of a foundation body.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The Department is only aware of one foundation body established under Section 21 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. The Bourne Foundation was established as a body corporate in July 1999 under the Foundation Body Regulations 1999, which were in operation at the time. The Bourne Foundation was subsequently dissolved by Statutory Order, which came into force on 5 January 2017. There have been no applications for foundation body status made under the Education (Foundation Body) (England) Regulations 2000, which replaced the earlier 1999 regulations.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government which foundation bodies established under section 21 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 have now closed.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The Department is only aware of one foundation body established under Section 21 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. The Bourne Foundation was established as a body corporate in July 1999 under the Foundation Body Regulations 1999, which were in operation at the time. The Bourne Foundation was subsequently dissolved by Statutory Order, which came into force on 5 January 2017. There have been no applications for foundation body status made under the Education (Foundation Body) (England) Regulations 2000, which replaced the earlier 1999 regulations.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government which foundation bodies have been established under section 21 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The Department is only aware of one foundation body established under Section 21 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. The Bourne Foundation was established as a body corporate in July 1999 under the Foundation Body Regulations 1999, which were in operation at the time. The Bourne Foundation was subsequently dissolved by Statutory Order, which came into force on 5 January 2017. There have been no applications for foundation body status made under the Education (Foundation Body) (England) Regulations 2000, which replaced the earlier 1999 regulations.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of Achieving for Children, a community interest company created in 2014 by the Royal Borough of Kingston and the London Borough of Richmond to provide their children’s services; and whether they plan to promote this model for use by other local authorities.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
Achieving for Children was jointly established in 2014 by the local authorities (LAs) of Kingston and Richmond and has since been joined by Windsor & Maidenhead in 2017 as a third partner. Since joining the Trust, Richmond have maintained their Good Ofsted judgement (2022) and Kingston are now rated Outstanding (2019), an excellent improvement from their previous Inadequate judgement (2013). Ofsted viewed Achieving for Children’s leadership as strong, which was highlighted in Kingston’s latest focused visit (May 2022).
For those LAs who are not failing in their delivery of children’s social care (CSC) services, it is a decision for the leadership team as to whether they would like to voluntarily create or join a trust. The department does not specifically promote the community interest company model being used in this space as any decision on this would sit with the LA and be dependent on their own local context and needs. If, however, a LA is found to be persistently or systemically failing by Ofsted then the department will follow its intervention protocol and appoint a commissioner to assess whether services should be removed from the council. One possible outcome of this assessment is the recommendation that a trust be set up to manage services on the LAs behalf.
There are currently nine Children’s Services Trusts in operation across England. Achieving for Children is different to the other eight in that it was not set up in response to a failure in CSC service delivery. The other eight Trusts are in Bradford, Birmingham, Northamptonshire (covering North and West), Reading, Sandwell, Slough, Sunderland and Worcestershire.
The introduction of Children’s Services Trusts has worked well in helping failing LAs turn their services around such as in Birmingham which has improved to Good and in Sunderland where services went from ‘Inadequate’ to ‘Outstanding’ in a single inspection cycle.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in relation to the recent advertisement for the post of Chair of Social Work England, what assessment they have made of the extent to which the requirement to "respond proactively to the current and future direction of Government policy and strategy" is consistent with the requirement to maintain Social Work England's "reputation as a trusted, knowledgeable and independent regulator".
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
As an independent regulator, overseen by the Professional Standards Authority, Social Work England carries out its regulatory functions, as set out in legislation. This includes holding a register of social workers and carrying out fitness to practise processes. In the context of significant reform of both children’s and adult’s social care, Social Work England is also helping to shape the future direction of government policy with respect to its areas of responsibility, including legislative frameworks for social workers. As a central government organisation, it is entirely consistent that an independent professional regulator should work with government to shape policy and strategy in this way. Further information about Social Work England can be found at: https://www.socialworkengland.org.uk/about/our-role-and-legislation/.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by the Minister of State for Schools on 30 June (190680) stating that schools will be expected to manage the upcoming teacher pay award from within existing funding, how many schools they estimate have surpluses which would enable them to do so without affecting current spending commitments.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendations for 2023/24 teacher pay awards in full. This means that teachers and headteachers in maintained schools will receive an award of 6.5%, the highest STRB award in three decades. The department will be providing an additional £525 million to schools this year, to support schools with the teachers’ pay award, and £900 million in financial year 2024/25, and as the unions have agreed, this means that the award is properly funded.
This is on top of funding totals previously announced, meaning that school funding is rising by over £3.9 billion in the 2023/24 financial year alone, on top of a £4 billion cash increase last year. Combined, that represents a 16% increase in just two years. Next year, school funding will be over £59.6 billion, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil.
This additional funding will enable headteachers to continue to invest in the areas that positively impact educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the children who need it most, as well as help schools to manage higher costs, including teacher pay awards.
Each year the department publishes an assessment of schools’ costs and funding, which informs what pay award we judge to be affordable for schools from within this existing funding. In March 2023, the department set out a calculation that schools, on average, could afford a pay award of 4% from within existing funding.
The department decided to fund the 2023 pay award from a lower affordability figure than that calculation, funding the costs of the pay award above 3.5%, on average, rather than above our 4% national affordability calculation. This is a more generous funding offer than in March.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the research by Rebecca Simpson-Hargreaves Starting a new chapter – childhood literacy education, published on 25 May; and in particular, the conclusion that the focus on phonics creates a non-balanced approach to literacy and the related finding by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) that only 29 per cent of English children say that they enjoy reading.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
By ensuring high quality systematic synthetic phonics teaching, the government wants to improve literacy levels to give all children a solid base upon which to build as they progress through school and help children to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has carried out a comprehensive review of robust studies on the impact of phonics. It found that phonics is more effective on average than other approaches for early reading, when embedded in a rich literacy environment.
Evidence has also shown that phonics is an important component in the development of early reading skills, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The reading framework, published on 11 July 2023, is unequivocal in its support for reading for pleasure and provides guidance on how the best schools build on their strong phonics teaching to create a strong reading culture.
Those reaching the expected standard in the phonics screening check (PSC) are substantially more likely to subsequently reach the expected standard in Key Stage 2 reading. In 2022, 85% of those meeting PSC expectations in Year 1 subsequently met Key Stage 2 reading expectations, compared to 18% of those who had not met PSC expectations in Years 1 or 2. Additionally, the strongest predictor of Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) performance was the Year 1 phonics check mark, for which a 1-point increase was associated with nearly a 4-point gain in PIRLS 2021 overall reading performance.
In PIRLS 2021, 76% of surveyed pupils in England reported that they ‘very much like’ or ‘somewhat like’ reading.