Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to provide additional funding to colleges for staff pay.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Further education (FE) colleges, rather than government, are responsible for setting and negotiating staff pay and terms and conditions within colleges.
In May 2025, the department announced a further £190 million investment for colleges and other 16 to 19 providers, in addition to the £400 million of extra funding we already planned to spend on 16 to 19 education in the 2025/26 financial year.
In October 2025, the department announced plans to go further in the 2026/27 financial year. From the Spending Review settlement, we will invest nearly £800 million extra on top of the original £400 million announced in 2025/26.
This significant investment will support the recruitment and retention of expert teachers in high value subject areas, and interventions to retain top teaching talent.
Targeted Recruitment Incentives of up to £6,000 (after tax) are available for eligible early career FE teachers working in key science, technology, engineering and maths and technical shortage subjects, in colleges, including in sixth form colleges. This is separate to teacher salaries.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many higher education institutions have sought to withdraw staff from the Teachers’ Pension Scheme in each of the past four quarters.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government recognises that the financial environment of the higher education (HE) sector is challenging for both providers and for their staff. We are aware that some providers are making difficult decisions around staffing in order to safeguard their financial sustainability, including in relation to pension arrangements.
As providers are independent, the government does not routinely collect information regarding pay and workforce matters in HE. However, we remain committed to engaging with both HE unions and the employer body to better understand the issues affecting the sector, including the workforce.
Furthermore, we appreciate both the impact of the increased Teachers’ Pension Scheme employer contribution rate on providers and that defined benefit pensions are highly valued by staff across the sector. As set out in the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, the government is therefore seeking to better understand concerns within the post-1992 HE sector regarding pension provision.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate she has made of the average pay gap between further education college lecturers and school teachers.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government’s role in relation to pay and conditions across schools and colleges differs.
The statutory requirements for teachers' pay and conditions within maintained schools in England are set out in the ‘School teachers’ pay and conditions’ document. This is updated each year, based on recommendations from the independent School Teachers’ Review Body.
In 2023/24, the median Full Time Equivalent (FTE) salary for classroom teachers in secondary schools was £47,666.
Further education (FE) colleges were incorporated under the terms of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, which gave them autonomy over the pay of their staff. The government does not set or recommend college teacher pay.
In 2023/24, the median FTE average salary for teaching staff on permanent or fixed term contracts in general further education colleges was £36,316 and £47,133 in sixth form colleges.
The school and FE pay figures are sourced from different datasets and recorded differently which may make it difficult to make direct comparisons.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the proportion of students who are international students in each of the past five years.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK higher education (HE) sector. These data are shared with the department and include a wide range of information on students in UK higher education providers (HEPs), including their country of domicile.
Between 2020/21 and 2024/25, the proportion of students who are international in UK HE has ranged from 22% in 2020/21, to a peak of 26% in 2022/23. Since this peak, the proportion has decreased year on year, to 24% in 2024/25.
Year on year detailed table available below. Note that data provided is for all UK HE providers. The data source link to the table is: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb273/figure-9.
Academic Year | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
Proportion of total that are International Students | 22% | 24% | 26% | 25% | 24% |
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to pages 37 of her Department's statutory guidance entitled Relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education, updated on 15 July 2025, if she has made an assessment of the potential merits of including first response for drug misuse as part of mandatory training for secondary school pupils.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
All state funded schools are required to teach first aid as part of the statutory health education set out in the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance. Independent schools are required to cover health education as part of their responsibility to provide personal, social, health and economic education.
The statutory RSHE guidance includes basic first aid for primary school children, for example dealing with common injuries, such as head injuries, and pupils in secondary schools are taught further first aid, for example specifically how to administer CPR and the purpose of defibrillators and how to use them.
Schools also have the autonomy to decide how they teach first aid, including teaching additional topical content and which resources to use. Many schools incorporate additional content, which can include how pupils should deal with a first response emergency situation, including how to respond to knife wounds, drug misuse and road traffic injury.
The department’s defibrillator programme completed in 2023 and was the largest rollout of defibrillators across England to date and provided over 20,000 defibrillators to almost 18,000 schools, ensuring that all state-funded schools in England have access to a device.
Defibrillators are designed so they can be used by anyone with no prior training. As part of the department’s roll out, we provided awareness videos to schools showing how simple defibrillators can be to use, and asked schools to share these videos in staff meetings and assemblies.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to pages 37 to 38 of her Department's statutory guidance entitled Relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education, updated on 15 July 2025, if she has made an assessment of the potential merits of including first response for knife wounds as part of mandatory training for secondary school pupils.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
All state funded schools are required to teach first aid as part of the statutory health education set out in the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance. Independent schools are required to cover health education as part of their responsibility to provide personal, social, health and economic education.
The statutory RSHE guidance includes basic first aid for primary school children, for example dealing with common injuries, such as head injuries, and pupils in secondary schools are taught further first aid, for example specifically how to administer CPR and the purpose of defibrillators and how to use them.
Schools also have the autonomy to decide how they teach first aid, including teaching additional topical content and which resources to use. Many schools incorporate additional content, which can include how pupils should deal with a first response emergency situation, including how to respond to knife wounds, drug misuse and road traffic injury.
The department’s defibrillator programme completed in 2023 and was the largest rollout of defibrillators across England to date and provided over 20,000 defibrillators to almost 18,000 schools, ensuring that all state-funded schools in England have access to a device.
Defibrillators are designed so they can be used by anyone with no prior training. As part of the department’s roll out, we provided awareness videos to schools showing how simple defibrillators can be to use, and asked schools to share these videos in staff meetings and assemblies.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to page 37 of her Department's statutory guidance entitled Relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education, updated on 15 July 2025, if she has made an assessment of the potential merits of including first response for road traffic accidents as part of mandatory training for secondary school pupils.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
All state funded schools are required to teach first aid as part of the statutory health education set out in the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance. Independent schools are required to cover health education as part of their responsibility to provide personal, social, health and economic education.
The statutory RSHE guidance includes basic first aid for primary school children, for example dealing with common injuries, such as head injuries, and pupils in secondary schools are taught further first aid, for example specifically how to administer CPR and the purpose of defibrillators and how to use them.
Schools also have the autonomy to decide how they teach first aid, including teaching additional topical content and which resources to use. Many schools incorporate additional content, which can include how pupils should deal with a first response emergency situation, including how to respond to knife wounds, drug misuse and road traffic injury.
The department’s defibrillator programme completed in 2023 and was the largest rollout of defibrillators across England to date and provided over 20,000 defibrillators to almost 18,000 schools, ensuring that all state-funded schools in England have access to a device.
Defibrillators are designed so they can be used by anyone with no prior training. As part of the department’s roll out, we provided awareness videos to schools showing how simple defibrillators can be to use, and asked schools to share these videos in staff meetings and assemblies.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many local authority group-based providers of Ofsted registered Early Years Foundation Stage (a) education and (b) care provided childcare places in each year since 2010.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ofsted Early Years Register collects data on the number of providers of childcare on domestic premises, childcare on non-domestic premises, childminders, and home childcare. It does not identify local authority run provision and it is not broken down by age.
Ofsted’s registered early years and childcare statistics contains granular data about providers registered with Ofsted, their places and inspection outcomes (where appropriate) and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/early-years-and-childcare-statistics.
Ofsted have also recently published management information aggregating registered childcare providers and inspections and their outcomes. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/childcare-providers-and-inspections-management-information.
The department publishes an annual survey of childcare and early years providers. This includes school-based provision that is not required to register with Ofsted. This survey includes a category for “school, college, local authorities and 'other unclassified'” group-based providers, which includes those run by local authorities. The survey covers three broad groups of providers: group-based providers, school-based providers and childminders.
Between 2018 and 2023 in England the survey reported:
| 2018 | 2019 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
Other group-based providers | 700 | 700 | 600 | 1,100 | 1,000 |
Total providers | 66,600 | 66,000 | 62,000 | 59,400 | 56,300 |
This data is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-childcare-and-early-years.
It is not possible to break the survey data down further and identify numbers of, for example, local authority run group-based providers or school run group-based providers within the other group-based providers group. The reports do not include the number of places per provider.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of childcare places for children aged between zero and two years were provided by local authority group-based providers of Ofsted-registered early years foundation stage education and care in each year since 2010.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ofsted Early Years Register collects data on the number of providers of childcare on domestic premises, childcare on non-domestic premises, childminders, and home childcare. It does not identify local authority run provision and it is not broken down by age.
Ofsted’s registered early years and childcare statistics contains granular data about providers registered with Ofsted, their places and inspection outcomes (where appropriate) and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/early-years-and-childcare-statistics.
Ofsted have also recently published management information aggregating registered childcare providers and inspections and their outcomes. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/childcare-providers-and-inspections-management-information.
The department publishes an annual survey of childcare and early years providers. This includes school-based provision that is not required to register with Ofsted. This survey includes a category for “school, college, local authorities and 'other unclassified'” group-based providers, which includes those run by local authorities. The survey covers three broad groups of providers: group-based providers, school-based providers and childminders.
Between 2018 and 2023 in England the survey reported:
| 2018 | 2019 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
Other group-based providers | 700 | 700 | 600 | 1,100 | 1,000 |
Total providers | 66,600 | 66,000 | 62,000 | 59,400 | 56,300 |
This data is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-childcare-and-early-years.
It is not possible to break the survey data down further and identify numbers of, for example, local authority run group-based providers or school run group-based providers within the other group-based providers group. The reports do not include the number of places per provider.
Asked by: Apsana Begum (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many childcare places were provided by local authority group-based providers of Ofsted registered Early Years Foundation Stage (a) education and (b) care in each year since 2010.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Ofsted Early Years Register collects data on the number of providers of childcare on domestic premises, childcare on non-domestic premises, childminders, and home childcare. It does not identify local authority run provision and it is not broken down by age.
Ofsted’s registered early years and childcare statistics contains granular data about providers registered with Ofsted, their places and inspection outcomes (where appropriate) and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/early-years-and-childcare-statistics.
Ofsted have also recently published management information aggregating registered childcare providers and inspections and their outcomes. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/childcare-providers-and-inspections-management-information.
The department publishes an annual survey of childcare and early years providers. This includes school-based provision that is not required to register with Ofsted. This survey includes a category for “school, college, local authorities and 'other unclassified'” group-based providers, which includes those run by local authorities. The survey covers three broad groups of providers: group-based providers, school-based providers and childminders.
Between 2018 and 2023 in England the survey reported:
| 2018 | 2019 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
Other group-based providers | 700 | 700 | 600 | 1,100 | 1,000 |
Total providers | 66,600 | 66,000 | 62,000 | 59,400 | 56,300 |
This data is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-childcare-and-early-years.
It is not possible to break the survey data down further and identify numbers of, for example, local authority run group-based providers or school run group-based providers within the other group-based providers group. The reports do not include the number of places per provider.