Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to encourage schools to celebrate (a) Easter and (b) other Christian holidays.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Easter and other Christian holidays provide good opportunities for schools to celebrate the traditions of our country, and the department supports schools taking those opportunities with their pupils.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help encourage young people to learn to play a musical instrument.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
This government believes that music is an essential part of the well-rounded and enriching education that every child deserves. That is why music is included in the national curriculum for all students aged 5 to 14 who attend maintained schools.
To support the delivery of music education, the government provides annual funding of £79 million for the Music Hubs programme. Music Hubs offer a range of services, including musical instrument tuition, instrument loaning, and whole-class ensemble teaching.
To widen access to musical instruments, the government has invested £25 million in capital funding for musical instruments, equipment and technology. This funding enables Music Hubs to better cater to the needs of the children and young people they work with.
Additionally, the government has invested £2 million to support the Music Opportunities Pilot. This pilot programme aims to help disadvantaged children and young people, as well as those with special eductional needs and disabilities, learn how to play an instrument of their choice or learn to sing to a high standard.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools left the breakfast club early adopters scheme due to funding constraints in Fylde constituency prior to 24 February 2025.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government is clear on the impact that breakfast clubs can have to support children to arrive at school ready to learn. That is why we committed to introducing free breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary aged pupils.
The early adopter scheme has not yet started. We were delighted that over 3,000 schools applied to be early adopters. The list of the 750 schools selected was published on 24 February.
Early adopters will start delivering from the summer term, meaning we are bringing change now for pupils and parents in every corner of the country.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to reduce pupil absenteeism in Fylde constituency.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Tackling absence is at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity in all areas. If children are not in school, it does not matter how effective or well-supported teaching and learning is, they will not benefit. Thanks to the hard work of parents and teachers there has been progress, but levels of absenteeism remain higher than they were prior to the pandemic.
The department has set out clear expectations of all local authorities and schools in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which was made statutory in August 2024. This guidance can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66bf300da44f1c4c23e5bd1b/Working_together_to_improve_school_attendance_-_August_2024.pdf.
The guidance promotes a 'support first' approach and sets out clear expectations on how schools, trusts, local authorities and wider services should work together and with families to address attendance barriers and provide the right support, including where a pupil is not attending due to special educational needs.
The department has also established 31 attendance hubs that offer their support to around 2000 schools, including secondaries. Hubs are established and led by senior leaders in schools with strong attendance practice. The meetings led by these hubs are intended to give senior leaders in other schools a forum to discuss and share effective attendance practice. Whilst we do not hold numbers at a constituency level, 23 schools in Blackpool, Lancashire and surrounding areas have been offered the support of an attendance hub.
Last year, the department published an attendance toolkit, bringing together effective practice from across the hubs. This toolkit gives schools practical advice on how to diagnose and target their attendance problem and how to effectively implement great practice.
We are also strengthening our tools for faster and more effective school improvement by launching the new regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) teams. Supported by over £20 million, these teams will offer both mandatory targeted intervention for schools identified by Ofsted as needing to improve and a universal service, acting as a catalyst for a self-improving system for all schools. The RISE teams are now beginning work with the first group of schools eligible for the targeted, bespoke service, including support for attendance as necessary. Improving school attendance is a national priority for RISE teams.
Alongside hub lead schools and RISE advisers, the department is delivering a programme of regional attendance conferences across England, giving secondary school leaders and senior attendance champions the chance to hear directly from hubs and other practitioners on improving attendance. The conference in the North West will be held on 24 March.
Every state school in England, including in Fylde constituency, is required to share their attendance data with the department. Schools can access this data through a secure, interactive dashboard, allowing them to target attendance interventions more effectively.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure the safety of teachers and pupils in schools in Fylde constituency.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Violent incidents in schools are rare, but all schools should be places of safety and learning. Education settings are designed to be secure environments with robust safeguarding frameworks. They should have policies on security measures, supported by clear guidance to develop plans for deterring attacks, keeping learners safe and implementing lockdowns when necessary.
The department has a tested incident response mechanism that allows us to support the education sector if impacted directly or indirectly by a major incident. Our primary goal is to safeguard the health and safety of children, young people and staff while minimising disruptions to education. In addition, the department has published comprehensive guidance and high-quality resources to help teachers and learners prepare for and respond to counter terrorism incidents and attacks. These resources can be found here: https://www.protectuk.police.uk/catalogue/EducationLearningandGuidance.
We also currently provide specialist pupil support in serious violence hotspots in England. Support, attend, fulfil, exceed taskforces are school-led partnerships that develop a targeted, local response to serious violence in ten areas. Interventions delivered include mentoring, social skills training and cognitive behavioural approaches. In alternative provision (AP) settings, alternative provision specialist taskforces are joined up, multi-disciplinary teams, which include youth workers, family workers and careers workers, embedded within the largest AP schools in 22 areas.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the use of mobile phones in schools on recent trends in the levels of pupil attainment in Fylde constituency.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Schools should prohibit the use of mobile phones and other smart technology with similar functionality to mobile phones throughout the school day, including during lessons, the time between lessons, breaktimes and lunchtime, as set out in the ‘Mobile phones in schools’ guidance 2024.
We expect all schools to take steps in line with this guidance to ensure mobile phones do not disrupt pupils’ learning.
The department does not centrally collect behaviour data from schools or individual constituencies. The latest results of the annual National Behaviour Survey is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6628dd9bdb4b9f0448a7e584/National_behaviour_survey_academic_year_2022_to_2023.pdf.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department has taken to increase access to books for young people.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
High and rising school standards, with excellent foundations in reading, writing and mathematics, are at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life.
The national curriculum states that teachers are expected to encourage pupils to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information. It emphasises the importance of pupils listening to, discussing and – as their fluency increases – reading for themselves a wide range of stories, poems, plays and information books.
School libraries complement public libraries in giving pupils access to a range of books and other kinds of texts, both in and out of school. It is for individual schools to decide how best to provide, maintain and fund a library service for their pupils. Headteachers have autonomy to decide how best to spend their core schools funding. The Autumn Budget 2024 announced an additional £2.3 billion for schools for the 2025/26 financial year, compared to 2024/25, bringing the total core schools budget to almost £63.9 billion in 2025/26.
On 5 February 2025, the government announced a £2 million investment to drive high and rising standards in reading and writing. Building on the success of phonics, teachers will receive additional training to help children progress from the early stages of phonics in reception and year 1 through to reading fluently by the time they leave primary school. This will be delivered through the English Hubs programme.
In secondary school, teachers will be offered new training and resources this year to help them support readers at all levels, and next year the department will commission further training that will be focused specifically on struggling readers in secondary school who are at risk of falling behind.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to support the uptake of apprenticeships and technical education.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department wants apprenticeships and technical education to be part of career conversations in every school so that young people can access the opportunities they deserve.
We have set clear requirements through strengthened legislation and statutory guidance, backed by over £30 million of investment in 2024/25 to support schools and colleges to improve careers provision for young people.
Since January 2023, schools have been required to offer at least six opportunities for pupils to meet providers of technical education or apprenticeships, during years 8 to 13.
We promote apprenticeships in schools and colleges through our Apprenticeships Support and Knowledge Programme (ASK). During the 2023/24 academic year, ASK engaged with 2,366 schools and colleges. The ASK sessions, spanning awareness assemblies, mock assessment centres and interview workshops, reached over 575,000 students, as well as almost 37,000 parents and carers.
Young people aged 13 to 18 can discover their career options via the National Careers Service website, which can be accessed at https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/ and includes around 800 job profiles. Young people can access information and advice via webchat and a telephone helpline which is supported by local community-based career advisers. This is supported by the Skills for Life campaign, ‘It all starts with skills’, which promotes a range of priority skills programmes to young people, including apprenticeships, T Levels and Higher Technical Qualifications. We have collaborated with UCAS so that pupils can now explore apprenticeship vacancies alongside university courses on the service. We are confident this is responding to demand, with the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) reporting that nearly three in five young people in years 9-12 are considering apprenticeships.
These interventions are part of a national careers system that is driving improvements in careers advice and work experience for young people. 93% of secondary schools and colleges are in a Careers Hub, linking with networks of employers and apprenticeship providers.
Through Careers Hubs, we are using data and front-line insight to support conversations about what is preventing the take-up of technical and vocational pathways at the local level, enabling solutions to be devised by local partners.
Ofsted’s review of careers, published in 2023, found that most providers are making good progress towards improving students’ access to options such as apprenticeships and technical qualifications. In addition, the latest data from a survey of the career readiness of 230,000 students shows that they are more than twice as likely to understand apprenticeships by the time they take their GCSEs, compared to students in year 7. Awareness of year 11 students is 80% and almost on a par with A Levels at 84%.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve teacher (a) recruitment and (b) retention in (i) Lancashire and (ii) Fylde constituency.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The within school factor that makes the biggest difference to a young person’s educational outcome is high quality teaching. Recruiting and retaining more qualified, expert teachers is therefore critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost the life chances for every child.
This government has inherited a system with critical shortages of teachers, with numbers not keeping pace with demographic changes. That is why the government has set out the ambition to recruit 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament, including targeting shortage subjects.
The department has made good early progress towards this key pledge by ensuring teaching is once again an attractive and respected profession, key to which is ensuring teachers receive the pay they deserve. We accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools for 2024/25. Alongside teacher pay, we have made £233 million available from the 2025/26 recruitment cycle to support teacher trainees with tax-free bursaries of up to £29,000 and scholarships of up to £31,000 in shortage subjects. The department has also expanded its school teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’, and the further education teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Share your Skills’.
A successful recruitment strategy starts with a strong retention strategy, and new teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing will now receive a targeted retention incentive of up to £6,000, after-tax, if working in disadvantaged schools, in the first five years of their careers. There are three schools in Fylde that are eligible for targeted retention incentives.
The department is also working closely with teachers and school leaders to improve the experience of teaching. This includes introducing a new school report card in place of Ofsted’s single headline grades, to provide a clearer picture of schools’ strengths and weaknesses for parents and more proportionate accountability for staff. It also includes promoting flexible working, such as allowing planning, preparation and assessment time to be taken from home, and making key resources to support wellbeing, developed with school leaders, available to teachers.
The department is also funding bespoke support provided by flexible working ambassador schools and multi-academy trusts, to ensure schools are able to capture the benefits of flexible working whilst protecting pupils’ face-to-face teacher time. Schools can be matched with an appropriate ambassador via the national delivery provider to receive tailored peer support.
High quality continuous professional development is also key to ensuring we have and retain an effective teaching workforce. The department has established Teaching School Hubs across the country, which provide approved high quality professional development to teachers at all stages of their careers. These Hubs play a significant role in delivering initial teacher training, the early career framework, national professional qualifications and appropriate body services. Embrace Teaching School Hub is a centre of excellence supporting teacher training and development across Chorley, Fylde, South Ribble and West Lancashire. Star Teaching School Hub North West Lancashire is a centre of excellence supporting teacher training and development across Blackpool, Lancaster, Preston and Wyre.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children are in a residential children's home over 20 miles from their family home.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The number of children looked after who were placed in secure homes and children’s homes over 20 miles from their family home on 31 March 2024 was 4,220.
This is published in Table A4 of the ‘Children looked after including adoptions’ statistical release, which is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/03be7f62-cb0e-4000-2555-08dd1b6649db.
The needs of the child are paramount when deciding the right care placement. Though the department wants to reduce out of area placements, they will always be part of the care landscape, as sometimes circumstances make it the right decision for a child to be placed elsewhere, for example when they are at risk from domestic abuse or sexual exploitation, trafficking or gang violence.
The department knows that children placed away from home can experience disruption to their lives and they can make it harder to maintain important relationships, such as with their birth family, education setting or wider community. This is why moving a child away is not a decision to be taken lightly and there are legislative safeguards around this. Regulations are clear that the decision to place a child outside of the local authority should have the child’s interest at heart and the child, family and independent reviewing officer’s views should be considered. It should be signed off by the director of children’s services, and all relevant parties should be notified, including the receiving local authority and safeguarding partners.
This government’s proposed reforms will mean less need for distance placements. Proposals on planning permissions and process will enable providers to more easily set up homes where they are most needed. Regional care cooperatives will improve local authorities’ ability to shape the local market, and the kinship local offer requirement will encourage more kinship arrangements. We are also investing £86 million in capital funding to create up to 200 additional children’s homes beds which will help ensure more of the right provision in the right places.