Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of home to school transport for pupils with SEND in Gloucester constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to make sure no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local authorities must arrange free home-to-school travel for eligible children. This includes children of compulsory school age who attend their nearest school and would not be able to walk there because of their special educational needs, disability or mobility problem.
We know that challenges in the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system are creating pressures on home-to-school travel. We have committed to reform the SEND system to enable more children to thrive in local mainstream settings. These reforms will be set out in the upcoming Schools White Paper.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the provision of secondary school places in Gloucester.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The Curriculum and Assessment Review considered the extent to which the curriculum and the assessment system in England is fit for purpose and meeting the needs of children and young people. The government’s response set out key reforms to the national curriculum that we will be taking forward.
Schools are expected to organise the school day and school week in the best interests of their pupils, to provide them both with a full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude and ability, and to incorporate time for play and other activities.
The department is working to make sure that all children and young people have access to a variety of enrichment opportunities at school as an important part of our mission to break down barriers to opportunity. For some schools, these opportunities may be used to encourage children and young people to play.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will make an assessment of the adequacy of the availability of educational psychologists in Gloucester constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Educational psychologists play a critical role in the support available to children and young people, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). This is why the department has already invested more than £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists over two cohorts, starting their studies in 2024 and 2025. This is in addition to the £10 million invested in training more than 200 educational psychologists who began their training in September 2023.
As these trainees complete their studies, they will join the workforce to support local authority educational psychology services for a minimum period of three years.
Following a Joint Area SEND inspection in Gloucestershire in December 2023, leaders in the local area have developed a local strategy to improve access to educational psychologists, including a virtual service. Officials and SEND advisors from both the department and NHS England meet regularly with Gloucestershire local area leaders to monitor progress.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on establishing Young Futures Hubs in Gloucester.
Answered by Janet Daby
Officials from across a range of departments are working jointly to make progress, using evidence of what works to start to shape the Young Futures Hubs model. As part of this we are engaging with local areas, communities, statutory partners, charities, and other key stakeholders to support the design of the Young Futures Hubs and explore options for their delivery, including considering how best to engage with those young people who would benefit most from support.
To roll-out Young Futures Hubs, building on the success of existing infrastructure and provision, the government will establish a number of early adopter hubs, the locations of which will be determined by where they will have the most impact. These early adopters and work in local areas and will inform the longer-term development of the programme, including how quickly we move to a greater number of hubs and where they may be located.
The government will set out more details in due course.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help support kinship carers in Gloucester constituency.
Answered by Janet Daby
The government recognises the important role that kinship carers play in caring for some of the most vulnerable children. Kinship carers often take on this role at a time when they were least expecting to raise a family, and the department recognises the challenges they face.
The government is extending the delivery of over 140 peer support groups across England, available for all kinship carers to access, where they can come together to share stories, exchange advice and support each other.
Following on from the progress and positive impact from the peer-to-peer support groups have made, the department is also delivering a package of training and support that all kinship carers across England can access if they wish to.
In October 2024, the department published new Kinship Care statutory guidance for local authorities, which sets out the support and services local authorities should provide to kinship families, including reaffirming the requirement to publish their local offer of support in a clear, accessible way.
Through the Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced £40 million to trial a new Kinship Allowance in some local authorities in England. We will test whether paying an allowance to cover the additional costs of caring for a child can help increase the number of children taken in by family members and friends. We will share further details and the process for selecting local authorities in due course.
The department understands the unique challenges kinship carers face and is committed to providing the necessary support.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking with local authorities to help (a) recruit and (b) retain foster carers in Gloucester constituency.
Answered by Janet Daby
The government is committed to working in partnership with local authorities to recruit and retain foster carers.
This currently includes delivering 10 regional fostering recruitment and retention hubs, covering 64% of local authorities in England, including Gloucester. The hubs will transform the way people who are interested in fostering are supported, and will rollout a retention programme, Mockingbird, which offers peer-support to foster carers and the children in their care.
An additional £15 million was announced in the Autumn Budget 2024 to move towards national roll out in the 2025/26 financial year. In Gloucester, this is being delivered as part of the ‘Fostering South West’ Recruitment Hub, which launched in 2024 and comprises of 15 neighbouring local authorities including Bath and North East Somerset, Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole Council, Bristol City Council, Cornwall Council, Devon County Council, Dorset Council, Gloucestershire County Council, Council of the Isles of Scilly, North Somerset Council, Plymouth City Council, Somerset Council, South Gloucestershire Council, Swindon Borough Council, Torbay Council and Wiltshire Council.
The government is also committed to ensuring that every child in care grows up with the love, care and support they need to achieve and thrive. All foster carers receive the National Minimum Allowance to cover the costs of looking after the children in their care. In the 2025/26 financial year, this is being uplifted by 3.55%.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking with local authorities to identify children who are educated outside of school in Gloucester constituency.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Children Not in School measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will place a duty on local authorities, including Gloucester, to maintain compulsory registers of all children not in school in their areas, and accompanying duties on parents and out-of-school education providers to provide information for these registers. This will support local authorities to identify all children not in school in their areas, including children who are home educated, and to take action if they are not receiving a safe or suitable education.
The department is also continuing to work with local authorities to collect information from existing voluntary registers of children not in school. The department’s termly elective home education data collection is now mandatory for local authorities to submit a return, ensuring a more accurate national picture of home educated children. The department’s ‘Elective home education’ guidance for local authorities and parents includes advice for how local authorities should identify children not in school in their areas.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of young people out of work, education and training in (a) Gloucester and (b) Gloucestershire in the last five years.
Answered by Janet Daby
The department publishes statistics on those not in education, employment or training (NEET) for England from the labour force survey for young people aged 16-24. This is available at the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/neet-statistics-annual-brief. The number of 16 to 24-year-olds estimated as NEET in England for the last five years can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/d9b4d0bf-3a58-4907-5a37-08dd3479441b.
However, these estimates are only published at national level due to limitations with sample sizes for lower-level geographies. Therefore, NEET rates for young people aged 16-24 in Gloucester and Gloucestershire cannot be provided.
However, local authorities are required to encourage, enable or assist young people’s participation in education or training and return management information for young people aged 16 and 17. This data is published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures. The data shows that of the young people aged 16 and 17-years-old who were known to Gloucestershire local authority in the link below for the last five years: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/fb35cd74-1667-4de1-ab38-08dd34489990.
These statistics are published as transparency data so some caution should be taken if using these figures.
In addition, 16-18 destination measures are published. These official statistics show the percentage of pupils not continuing to a sustained education, apprenticeship or employment destination in the year after completing 16-18 study, that is 6 months of continual activity. This can be used as a proxy for the number of young people out of work, education and training at age 18. The latest publication includes destinations in 2022/23 by Parliamentary constituency boundaries at that time. Data can be found here for Gloucester parliamentary constituency for the last five years here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/365fe966-b823-4406-ab39-08dd34489990.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help increase the availability of childcare in Gloucester.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Giving children the best start in life is key to the government’s Opportunity Mission. Good parenting and high-quality early education provide the foundation for children to achieve and thrive. This government is determined to ensure that parents have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and childcare.
The department is rolling out more government-funded childcare entitlements to help millions of families, working hand in hand with the early years sector to build a system that works for them, parents and above all, children. This includes delivering 3,000 new and expanded school-based nurseries to make high-quality childcare accessible and available. As a first step, primary schools have been able to apply for up to £150,000 of a total £15 million capital funding, with the first stage of the plan set to support up to 300 new or expanded nurseries across England. High-quality, school-based nursery provision is popular with parents, especially families with multiple children. It can help schools upgrade spare space whilst also providing early support to children and families, supporting their transition into primary school. School-based nursery settings have proportionally higher qualified staff and see lower staff turnover, providing more consistency of care for children. Proportionally, school-based nurseries also look after more children with special educational needs and disabilities and offer a higher proportion of places in the most deprived areas.
In the 2024/25 financial year, early years providers are set to benefit from over £2 billion extra investment compared to last year, to support the rollout of 30 hours of government-funded early education from next September, rising in 2027/28 to over £4.1 billion. As announced in the Autumn Budget 2024, the department expects to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements in 2025/26, which is around a 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as we continue to deliver the expansion to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months.
The department has confirmed funding rates for 2024/25 and has also announced a new £75 million expansion grant to support nurseries, childminders and other providers to deliver the 35,000 additional staff and 70,000 places required to meet demand for next September. The government will also deliver the largest ever uplift to the early years pupil premium, increasing rates by over 45% to up to £570 per eligible child per year. This unprecedented increase is an investment in quality early education for those children who need it most, in the areas that need it most, to give them the support they need to be school ready at age five and go on to have the best life chances.
Department hourly funding rates for Gloucester have been confirmed at, £5.47 for 3-4-year-olds, £7.60 for 2-year-olds and £10.33 for under 2s.
This government is committed to delivering the expansion to 30 hours government funded childcare for eligible working families from September 2025 but there will be challenges including providers securing enough staff and places to meet demand, with the capacity needed varying across the country. The department is supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders to join the workforce by creating conditions for improved recruitment. We are urging the public to ‘do something BIG’ and start a career working with small children through our national recruitment campaign. Our dedicated website also helps people find out more about gaining qualifications and search for existing job vacancies. Skills Bootcamps for the early years are available and lead to an accelerated apprenticeship, and we are funding Early Years Initial Teacher Training as a route for new and existing staff to gain Early Years Teacher Status. To support childminders to join and stay in the profession, we have implemented new flexibilities to work with more people and spend more time working from non-domestic premises.
The department is working closely with local areas and the early years sector to do everything we can to ensure there are enough places and the sector has the workforce needed to provide those places and to bridge local gaps ahead of September 2025.
Asked by: Alex McIntyre (Labour - Gloucester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help improve children's oracy in Gloucester.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
High and rising school standards are at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best life chances.
The government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review will seek to deliver a cutting-edge curriculum that ensures children and young people leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work, building the knowledge, skills and attributes young people need to thrive.
The department agrees that children’s oracy is very important. The Education Endowment Foundation has found that the average impact of oral language interventions is approximately an additional six months’ progress over the course of a year. Approaches that focus on speaking, listening and a combination of the two all show positive impacts on attainment, most notably on reading outcomes. Impact in early years (seven months additional progress) and primary schools (six months additional progress) tends to be higher than in secondary schools (six months additional progress).
In the early years, developing language skills is vital to enable children to thrive.
The department has also invested over £20 million in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI), improving the language skills of reception age children needing extra support with their speech and language development. More than 170 primary schools in Gloucestershire have benefited from this support.
The English Hubs Programme is dedicated to improving the teaching of reading, with a focus on phonics, early language development and reading for pleasure. The English Hub for schools in Gloucester is Mangotsfield English Hub. Further information can be found here: https://www.mpenglishhub.co.uk/.