Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what role the Civil Society Covenant will play in the delivery of the National Year of Reading.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The National Year of Reading is a UK-wide campaign to address the steep decline in reading enjoyment amongst children, young people and adults. It is a department initiative, in collaboration with our delivery partner, the National Literacy Trust, who are leading the delivery of the campaign.
The National Year of Reading is operating as a collective impact campaign, allowing multiple partners from a range of sectors to participate, including schools, libraries, publishers, booksellers, media companies, retailers, and charities. It supports the Civil Society Covenant’s aims to build effective partnerships across the breadth of civil society and government, working together to tackle the deep-seated challenges of our time.
Tackling the long-term decline in reading for pleasure requires cross-sector support across the UK, as encompassed by the Go All In campaign which encourages everyone to get involved. The year includes a major physical and online marketing campaign, as well as exciting events, webinars, resources, and activities in communities, libraries, schools and early years settings across the UK throughout the year.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the additional cost required to extend the fruit and vegetable initiative for schools to nursery schools and other early years settings.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
The School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme is available to pupils in key stage 1 attending fully state‑funded primary schools. The scheme entitles schools to claim a free piece of fruit or vegetable for all children aged 4 to 6 for each school day. The government has no current plans to extend the scheme.
However, we remain committed to deliver on our pledge to provide a free breakfast club in every state-funded school with primary-aged children. This will ensure that every child, regardless of circumstance, has a supportive start to the school day, including access to a healthy breakfast which includes fruit. So far, we have delivered over 5 million breakfasts and, following the success of our early adopter scheme, we are rolling out to an additional 2,000 schools between April 2026 and March 2027. This will benefit around half a million more children.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to extend the fruit and vegetables initiative for schools to nursery schools and other early years settings.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
The School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme is available to pupils in key stage 1 attending fully state‑funded primary schools. The scheme entitles schools to claim a free piece of fruit or vegetable for all children aged 4 to 6 for each school day. The government has no current plans to extend the scheme.
However, we remain committed to deliver on our pledge to provide a free breakfast club in every state-funded school with primary-aged children. This will ensure that every child, regardless of circumstance, has a supportive start to the school day, including access to a healthy breakfast which includes fruit. So far, we have delivered over 5 million breakfasts and, following the success of our early adopter scheme, we are rolling out to an additional 2,000 schools between April 2026 and March 2027. This will benefit around half a million more children.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they plan to publish proposals for the reform of provisions for delivery for special educational needs pupils in England.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As part of our Plan for Change, we are determined to fix the special educational needs and disabilities system and restore the trust of parents. My right hon. friend, the Secretary of State for Education, wrote to the Education Select Committee in October setting out the decision to have a further period of co-creation with families, teachers and experts from across the sector to design and test our proposals further and our full Schools White Paper building on this work will be published shortly.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the total non-capital resource spend on special educational needs pupils in England in (1) 2023–24, and (2) 2024–25, and what is the projected non-capital resource spend in 2025–26.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Mainstream schools are not required to record or report to the department how much they spend specifically on pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), so this information is not available. Local authorities are required, however, to identify a notional budget for each school, intended as a guide to how much they might need to spend on supporting their pupils with SEN, for annual costs up to £6,000 per pupil.
Local authorities allocate high needs funding for SEND support costs in excess of £6,000 and make provision and services available for other children and young people with complex needs. Their actual high needs expenditure is set out in the table below, including a small amount of high needs funding allocated directly by the department to schools and colleges, alongside the notional SEN budget total for mainstream schools. For the financial year 2025/26 we have included a forecast of high needs expenditure that the department provided to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and that was included in their forecasts published at the autumn 2025 Budget.
Financial year | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | 2025/26 |
Total amount identified as notional SEN budget for mainstream schools | £4.8 billion | £5.4 billion | £5.8 billion |
Total high needs actual expenditure by local authorities and the separtment | £11.1 billion | £13.1 billion | |
High needs forecast expenditure for financial year 2025/26 | £14.8 billion | ||
Totals (rounded) | £15.9 billion | £18.5 billion | £20.7 billion |
Neither the OBR nor the department have finalised projections of spend over the next three financial years that take into account reforms to the SEND system from 2026/27.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the projected additional non-capital resource spend on special educational needs pupils in England in each of the next three financial years.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Mainstream schools are not required to record or report to the department how much they spend specifically on pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), so this information is not available. Local authorities are required, however, to identify a notional budget for each school, intended as a guide to how much they might need to spend on supporting their pupils with SEN, for annual costs up to £6,000 per pupil.
Local authorities allocate high needs funding for SEND support costs in excess of £6,000 and make provision and services available for other children and young people with complex needs. Their actual high needs expenditure is set out in the table below, including a small amount of high needs funding allocated directly by the department to schools and colleges, alongside the notional SEN budget total for mainstream schools. For the financial year 2025/26 we have included a forecast of high needs expenditure that the department provided to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and that was included in their forecasts published at the autumn 2025 Budget.
Financial year | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | 2025/26 |
Total amount identified as notional SEN budget for mainstream schools | £4.8 billion | £5.4 billion | £5.8 billion |
Total high needs actual expenditure by local authorities and the separtment | £11.1 billion | £13.1 billion | |
High needs forecast expenditure for financial year 2025/26 | £14.8 billion | ||
Totals (rounded) | £15.9 billion | £18.5 billion | £20.7 billion |
Neither the OBR nor the department have finalised projections of spend over the next three financial years that take into account reforms to the SEND system from 2026/27.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking with the devolved administrations to facilitate the sharing of best practice and models of reform of special educational needs provision throughout the UK.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
As part of our Plan for Change, we are determined to fix the special educational needs and disabilities system and restore the trust of parents by ensuring schools have the tools to better identify and support children before issues escalate. We’re continuing to engage closely with children, parents and experts as we develop plans to ensure all children get the outcomes and life chances they deserve.
The department engages the devolved governments at ministerial and official level on a range of areas, which allows a sharing of collective knowledge and experience as well as collaborative working on shared interests and challenges to deliver better outcomes for people across the UK.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the additional cost of special educational needs provision in England in each of the next three years.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
To support specialist provision, in December, the department announced at least £3 billion for high needs capital between 2026/27 and 2029/30. This builds on the £740 million invested in 2025/26, which is on track to create around 10,000 new specialist places.
The department will publish its plans for reform to the special educational needs system in the new year.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will issue guidance to schools, colleges, universities and youth facilities on single-sex changing rooms and facilities, and related issues to comply with the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government.
Schools must always protect single-sex spaces with regard to toilets, showers and changing rooms. The School Premises (England) Regulations 2012 and the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014 impose statutory requirements for both maintained and independent schools to provide sex-separated toilets and suitable changing accommodation and showers for pupils (apart from individual toilets in fully enclosed rooms).
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has also submitted the draft updated Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations to my right hon. Friend, the Minister for Women and Equalities, which the government is considering prior to next steps.
Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much funding they have provided to enable students to obtain International Baccalaureate qualifications in each of the past five years, and how much funding they will provide for that purpose in 2026–27.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Funding is not provided specifically to enable students to obtain International Baccalaureate qualifications. The amounts of total programme funding allocated to institutions for 16 to 19 year olds to undertake T Levels and study programmes, which include the International Baccalaureate over the last 5 years can be found in the table below:
Academic Year | Total Programme Funding for 16 – 19 year old students |
2021 to 2022 | £5.9 billion |
2022 to 2023 | £6.5 billion |
2023 to 2024 | £7.0 billion |
2024 to 2025 | £7.6 billion |
2025 to 2026 | £8.6 billion |
Department for Education funded providers offering the International Baccalaureate will continue to receive 16-19 education funding in the 2026/2027 academic year but the allocations have not yet been made and so the total programme funding figure is not yet available.