Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps her Department has taken to support the work of (a) emergency and (b) short term foster carers in Royal Sutton Coldfield.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department recognises the incredible work and commitment of emergency and short-term foster carers in providing stability and support for children.
Foster carers play an essential role in children’s lives, and the department remains committed to strengthening support for them.
To achieve this, the department has launched a consultation on updated national standards and guidance for fostering. These standards apply across all fostering arrangements, including emergency, short-term, long-term, short-break and parent-and-child placements.
The standards set clearer expectations for fostering services to provide foster carers with high-quality training, support, multidisciplinary expertise and early intervention, helping to prevent placement breakdown and improve carer retention. They reinforce these expectations for short-break care, emphasising effective information-sharing and supporting relationships between carers, children and families to provide continuity across repeated stays.
Alongside this, the department is investing in the Mockingbird Family Model to expand access to enhanced support and peer networks for foster carers.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions her Department has had with (a) Swim England and (b) the Royal Life Saving Society UK on the potential merits of including additional water safety lessons in the PE national curriculum.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Following the Curriculum and Assessment Review, the government committed to reviewing the swimming and water safety content within the PE national curriculum to support more consistent, high-quality provision across schools. The department works closely with sector organisations, including Swim England, the Royal Life Saving Society UK and the National Water Safety Education Working Group, to support schools through high-quality resources, teacher training and curriculum development.
Through both the revised PE curriculum and the updated statutory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) curriculum, pupils will be taught how to stay safe around water, supporting the development of a vital life skill from primary school onwards. Together, the PE and RSHE curricula will help ensure that all pupils have the opportunity to develop the practical competence and safety knowledge needed to be safer in different water environments. Stakeholders will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the draft PE curriculum during the public consultation later this year.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of non-staffing costs on the sustainability of schools in Sutton Coldfield constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department has published the Schools’ Costs Technical Note, outlining its national-level affordability forecasts and including data on non-staff expenditure, such as energy. This year’s publication and historical editions are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-costs-technical-note.
Schools can access government support with their non-staff costs through the Maximising Value for Pupils programme, which provides tangible support such as the department’s Energy for Schools service and our free Banking Comparison Tool.
Energy is one of schools’ largest non-staff costs. Through the Energy for Schools service, our benchmarking report shows that a typical primary school could save around £2,500 on electricity and £2,400 on gas each year. For secondary schools, those figures rise to around £12,600 on electricity and £10,600 on gas.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many primary schools in Royal Sutton Coldfield have access to mental health support teams.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department is providing access to specialist mental health professionals in every school by expanding Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs). Rollout is delivered with the NHS through Integrated Care Systems, prioritising areas based on need, disadvantage and inequalities.
Six out of seven state-funded secondary schools in the Sutton Coldfield constituency were supported by an MHST in March 2025. We are going to be rolling out the programme to the 25 state-funded primary schools as part of the programme’s ongoing expansion across all schools and colleges in England by 2029/30.
Further data for 2024/25 can be found at:
Latest coverage data as at end 2025/26 will be published in due course, projected to be 60% of pupils and learners nationally.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, is she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the absence of Pupil Premium equivalent funding to support the attainment of disadvantaged students during their last two years of compulsory participation in education and training on those pupils.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Pupil Premium is not payable for students in post-16 education but there is funding to help institutions support disadvantaged students available in 16-19 funding. The department has made significant increases to the average funding per student since the 2024 /25 academic year to the 2026/27 academic year, an expected per student increase of 10.5%. We expect the average per student funding in 2026/27 will stand at £6,874, compared to £6,219 in the 2024/25 academic year. This includes increases to disadvantaged funding which allows institutions to provide extra support to students who need it. However, it does not include the extra funding from the new Inclusive Mainstream Fund, announced on 25 March as part of our special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms. This will make available over £500 million per financial year, for the duration of the three-year spending period, and is split between early years, schools, and post-16. £83 million per year is additional funding for mainstream settings delivering 16 to 19 provision. This will help to boost capacity in mainstream settings to meet a greater proportion of SEND needs.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support schools to recruit qualified physics teachers in the West Midlands.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department’s Plan for Change commits us to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across secondary and special schools and our colleges over the course of this Parliament.
In 2023/24, just 17% of the postgraduate initial teacher training target for physics trainees was met. In 2025/26, this increased to 78%, with 1,095 new entrants, reaching the highest number for physics since comparable statistics began in 2014/2015.
Additionally, full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state-funded schools in the West Midlands increased by 353 to 52,658 per the latest census, and across the country the workforce has grown by 2,346 FTE in secondary and special schools, which are the schools where they are needed most.
We are continuing to support physics teacher recruitment with bursaries worth £29,000 and tax free scholarships worth £31,000. We are also supporting retention alongside increased recruitment, with a targeted retention incentive, worth up to £6,000 after tax, for teachers in years 1-5 of their career who choose to work in the most disadvantaged schools.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support schools to recruit qualified modern languages teachers in the West Midlands.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
High quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcomes. This is why the government’s Plan for Change is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across secondary and special schools, and our colleges, over the course of this Parliament.
The department is offering £20,000 tax-free bursaries for modern foreign language (MFL) trainees, including international as well as domestic trainees. In addition, we are continuing to offer a prestigious scholarship worth £22,000 tax-free for French, German and Spanish trainees.
Our future school teacher pipeline is growing. Although this government inherited a system with critical shortages of MFL teachers, with the department achieving only 32% of its postgraduate initial teacher training target in 2023/24, this year we have achieved 94% of the target with 1,378 new trainees beginning their postgraduate training in MFL.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to provide further (a) financial and (b) other support to the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership in the West Midlands.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department continues to work closely with The Arthur Terry Learning Partnership to ensure rapid and sustained improvement across its schools. This includes weekly meetings focused on stabilising learning and supporting both staff and pupils across the trust. Leadership and governance at the trust have been significantly strengthened, with changes to both its executive team and board, helping to ensure the capability and capacity to drive the necessary improvements. The department will continue to monitor progress closely and provide support to secure financial sustainability and high‑quality education for all pupils within the trust. The government is delivering on its manifesto commitment by legislating to introduce Ofsted inspection of academy trusts, and related intervention powers for the department. Trust inspection will help drive better outcomes for children and provide greater confidence for parents.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of nursery availability on parents' ability to return to work in Sutton Coldfield constituency.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
It is our ambition that all families have access to high quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change. In 2025/26, we plan to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements, which is an additional £2 billion compared to 2024/25, saving eligible families who use their full entitlement £7,500 a year on average.
The government will provide an additional £1.6 billion per year by 2028/29, compared to 2025/26, to continue the expansion of government-funded childcare for working parents.
We have announced over £400 million of funding to create tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries to help ensure more children can access the quality early education where it is needed and get the best start in life. The first phase of the programme is creating up to 6,000 new nursery places, with schools reporting over 5,000 have been made available in September 2025.
The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, we discuss what action they are taking to address those issues and, where needed, support the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help support the retention of (a) primary and (b) secondary school teachers in Sutton Coldfield constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
This government is committed to re-establishing teaching as an attractive profession, which is why the department announced a 4% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools from September 2025, on top of a 5.5% pay award for 2024/25, resulting in a near 10% pay award since this government came to power.
The department also announced targeted retention payments worth up to £6,000, with eligible teachers of chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics in The Royal Sutton School in Sutton Coldfield constituency qualifying for these.
To further boost retention, the department worked with the sector to develop the ‘Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff’ service, which contains a range of supportive resources for schools to review and reduce workload, and improve staff wellbeing.
The education staff wellbeing charter, which sets out commitments from government, schools and colleges to improve staff wellbeing and workload, has over 4,200 signatories, including two schools in Sutton Coldfield.