Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children are being supported under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 where their parents have no recourse to public funds.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Information on children supported under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 is published in the annual Children in Need Census statistical first release. This data collection does not identify the number of children supported where their parents have no recourse to public funds.
Information in the form requested is therefore not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what criteria her Department applied in selecting the areas for the campaign, Together we can tackle child abuse.
Answered by Edward Timpson
This is the first ever nationwide campaign on this issue promoted by the Government. Its aim is to raise awareness amongst the public about abuse and neglect and how to report suspected instances. This is a nationwide campaign and we have been working with all local authorities to promote it. We have provided a toolkit of materials, which can be used across the country to support the campaign locally.
This year, we ran a pilot, paid-for campaign in 33 local authorities in the West Midlands and Outer London where we have paid for out-of-home, digital and radio advertising. These areas were chosen because of their dense and diverse populations. The overall cost of the campaign has been up to £1m.
Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the cost is of her Department's campaign, Together we can tackle child abuse.
Answered by Edward Timpson
This is the first ever nationwide campaign on this issue promoted by the Government. Its aim is to raise awareness amongst the public about abuse and neglect and how to report suspected instances. This is a nationwide campaign and we have been working with all local authorities to promote it. We have provided a toolkit of materials, which can be used across the country to support the campaign locally.
This year, we ran a pilot, paid-for campaign in 33 local authorities in the West Midlands and Outer London where we have paid for out-of-home, digital and radio advertising. These areas were chosen because of their dense and diverse populations. The overall cost of the campaign has been up to £1m.
Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children are being supported under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 where their parents have no recourse to public funds.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Information on children supported under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 is published in the annual Children in Need Census statistical first release. This data collection does not identify the number of children supported where their parents have no recourse to public funds.
Information in the form requested is therefore not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when the national consultation on the future of children's centres will be launched; what its terms of reference will be; and what the timetable is for responses to be received and the Government to announce its proposals.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
We value the services provided by children’s centres. We intend to consult to see what role children’s centres should play to ensure they are able to have the most impact as part of integrated local services for families. An independent survey carried out by the national children’s charity, 4Children (published October 2015) estimated more than a million children and families are now using children’s centres.
The consultation will offer parents, carers, local authorities and key stakeholders the opportunity to influence and drive what we expect from children’s centre services and where we see them having the greatest impact. We plan to launch the consultation shortly.
Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of each of the recommendations relating to her Department in the report of the Serious Case Review into Child Sexual Exploitation in Oxfordshire; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Edward Timpson
On 3 March, the Minister for Crime and Prevention, the Health Minister and I wrote to the chair of Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board, welcoming the publication of the Serious Case Review and outlining our response. The government has looked carefully at recent cases of child sexual exploitation with many similarities to the accounts of abuse in Oxfordshire. Our response is set out in ‘Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation’, which we published on 3 March. The government will continue to develop and deliver our responses to these serious and devastating crimes, and will consider carefully the lessons from cases as they emerge.
Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of long-term trends in the number of hours of literacy teaching which primary school children receive and how this affects reading and writing attainment.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
We do not collect data on the number of hours of literacy teaching primary school children receive.
We are committed to raising standards of literacy in schools and making sure that every child masters the basics of reading and writing at a young age. The new primary national curriculum for English is explicitly designed to make sure that all children leave primary school fully literate and ready to progress at secondary school.
The new national curriculum sets out very clearly what should be taught to pupils. However, it gives school the flexibility to decide how to teach it, including how much time to spend on teaching literacy, because schools are best placed to determine the needs and abilities of their pupils and how to meet them.