Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average response time from his Department is to local authorities that have requested powers to compel schools to take on pupils who are out of school.
Answered by Robin Walker
All children are entitled to an efficient full-time education which is suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs they may have.
Local authorities have a duty to make arrangements to establish the identities of children in their area who are of compulsory school age but are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.
If it appears to the local authority that a child of compulsory school age is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, then they have the power to begin procedures for issuing a school attendance order. The order will name a school at which the parent is required to register their child.
Where a pupil is not regularly attending school, local authorities and schools have a range of measures they can put in place to support school attendance.
In the 2020/21 academic year, local authorities made three requests for my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, to issue a direction to comply with a school attendance order for academy schools. None of these requests resulted in a direction to admit. The time taken to issue a decision on these cases ranged from 4 days to 63 days, owing to the complexity of the individual cases.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many times he has been received representations from local authorities requesting powers to compel schools to take on pupils who are out of school.
Answered by Robin Walker
All children are entitled to an efficient full-time education which is suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs they may have.
Local authorities have a duty to make arrangements to establish the identities of children in their area who are of compulsory school age but are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.
If it appears to the local authority that a child of compulsory school age is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, then they have the power to begin procedures for issuing a school attendance order. The order will name a school at which the parent is required to register their child.
Where a pupil is not regularly attending school, local authorities and schools have a range of measures they can put in place to support school attendance.
In the 2020/21 academic year, local authorities made three requests for my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, to issue a direction to comply with a school attendance order for academy schools. None of these requests resulted in a direction to admit. The time taken to issue a decision on these cases ranged from 4 days to 63 days, owing to the complexity of the individual cases.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people have (a) started and (b) completed courses available in The Skills Toolkit online learning platform since it was launched on 28 April 2020.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
As of 27 December 2020, there have been an estimated 138,000 course registrations and 25,000 course completions. These are experimental statistics and further information can be found in the official statistical release of 28 January 2021 in the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/apprenticeships-and-traineeships/2020-21.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the (a) effectiveness of The Skills Toolkit and (b) potential effect of that toolkit on improving the (i) employability, (ii) digital skills and (iii) maths skills of learners.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The digital, numeracy and work readiness skills we have chosen to focus on are the skills that everyone needs to thrive in the 21st Century and ones that evidence suggests are increasingly in demand across almost all sectors and occupations. In deciding which specific courses to offer we have spoken to a range of employers.[1]
We have prioritised high-quality short courses that are free for learners to access online. The digital and numeracy skills we have chosen to focus on are the skills that everyone needs to thrive in the 21st Century and ones that evidence suggests are increasingly in demand across almost all sectors and occupations.[1]
[1] The Employer Skills Survey 2016 found a third of employers identifying digital skills lacking among applications. Research commissioned by DCMS in June 2019 identified 75% of job openings at each level request digital skills. This is backed up by a report conducted for the Industrial Strategy Council last year, which identified at the current rate there will be 5 million people with an acute basic digital skills need by 2030.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much money from the public purse has been allocated to The Skills Toolkit online learning platform in each year since its inception.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The cost allocated to The Skills Toolkit since it was announced in April 2020 is £952,000. This is all within this financial year.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department collects data on the protected characteristics of those who have completed courses via The Skills Toolkit online learning platform; and if he will place a copy of an aggregate, non-disclosive summary of this data in the House of Commons Library.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The department does not collect data on the protected characteristics of those who have completed courses via The Skills Toolkit online learning platform.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much money from the public purse has been spent on The Skills Toolkit online learning platform in each year since the beginning of that platform.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The Skills Toolkit was announced in April 2020 and the cost of developing the platform in this financial year is £798,700. This includes the launch and the two subsequent expansions of the platform. A further £325,700 has been spent on communications activities to promote the platform.
As of 1 November 2020 there have been an estimated 119,000 course registrations. As of 1 November 2020 there have been 1,323,450 page views. These are experimental statistics and further information can be found in the official statistical release of 27 November 2020 in the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/apprenticeships-and-traineeships.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people have (a) started and (b) completed courses available in The Skills Toolkit online learning platform since it was launched on 28 April 2020.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The platform was launched on 28 April and as of 30 September 2020 we had 97,615 course starts, 16,219 course completions and 1,100,260 page views. The department continues to review the data and outcomes from the platform in partnership with the providers – such as Google and Microsoft – who host the courses that feature on the platform.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the (a) effectiveness of The Skills Toolkit and (b) effect of that toolkit on improving learners' (i) employability, (ii) digital skills and (iii) maths skills.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The platform was launched on 28 April and as of 30 September 2020 we had 97,615 course starts, 16,219 course completions and 1,100,260 page views. The department continues to review the data and outcomes from the platform in partnership with the providers – such as Google and Microsoft – who host the courses that feature on the platform.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many teachers in UK schools are EU nationals.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Migration Advisory Committee’s report, ‘A full review of the Shortage Occupation List’, published in May 2019, estimated that around 4% of secondary school teachers and around 2% of primary and nursery school teachers were born in the European Economic Area (EEA) (excluding UK).
The Department publishes data on the nationality of initial teacher training (ITT) trainees, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2019-to-2020.
In 2019-20, there were 28,859 postgraduate new entrants to ITT whose nationality was known, which was 98% of all postgraduate new entrants. Of these, 5% (1,484) were EEA nationals (excluding UK).