Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the additional funding from the Arts Premium that will be allocated to primary schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Arts education is an important part of a broad and balanced curriculum and should not be the preserve of the elite but the entitlement of every single child. Between 2016-20 the Department is providing almost £500 million of funding for a range of creative and performance arts education programmes including Music Education Hubs, the Music and Dance Scheme, the Dance and Drama Awards, and a set of diverse cultural education programmes. As set out in the manifesto and in early January, we also announced funding of £85 million for music and arts in 2020-21; £80 million for music hubs coupled with further investment in film, dance, theatre and design.
The Department believes that the arts help young people to learn creative skills and widen their horizons, so we will also offer an ‘arts premium’ to secondary schools to fund enriching activities for all pupils. We will share further details on the premium in due course.
Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of levels of government funding for the 30-hours free childcare policy.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
By 2019-20, we will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support – a record amount. This includes around £1 billion extra a year to deliver 30 hours of free childcare and fund the increase in hourly rates that we introduced in April 2017.
Our average funding rates are based on the department’s ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ which was described as ‘thorough and wide ranging’ by the National Audit Office. The review looked at both current and future cost pressures.
More than 340,000 children have benefitted from our 30 hours offer over its first year, and the vast majority of providers have increased the number of free hours available to parents.
We continue to monitor both the implementation of 30 hours and delivery costs. We have recently commissioned new research to provide us with further robust and detailed data of the costs of delivering childcare for under five year olds using a representative sample of early years providers.
Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children are eligible for 30 hours free childcare in the Salford local authority area.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The government set out in the 2015 Spending Review that we expect 390,000 children to be eligible for 30 hours free childcare. This figure is derived from national survey data taken in January and is an average across the year. Estimates at a regional and local authority level are not available due to the relatively small population that we are estimating within sub national geographies.
We publish termly experimental statistics showing the number of children in a place. The most recent publication showed that 1,535 codes were issued in Salford and 1,550 children were in a 30 hours places in the summer term. The full publication – including a local authority level breakdown - is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/30-hours-free-childcare-summer-term-2018.
As we move in to the second year of delivery, we will continue to publish Management Information on the number of codes issued for 30 hours. This will be available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/30-hours-free-childcare-eligibility-codes-issued-and-validated. The most recent publication on 9 August shows that 996 codes have already been issued in Salford for the start of the next academic year.
Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the financial sustainability of childcare providers in the private, voluntary and independent early education sector.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
By 2019-20 we will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support – a record amount. This includes around £1 billion extra a year to deliver 30 hours of free childcare and fund the increase in hourly rates that we introduced in April 2017.
Our average funding rates are based on the department’s ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ which was described as “thorough and wide ranging” by the National Audit Office. The review looked at both current and future cost pressures.
The latest Ofsted data from March 2018 showed that the number of non-domestic providers has remained stable. We continue to monitor both the implementation of 30 hours and delivery costs. We have recently commissioned new research to provide us with further robust and detailed data of the costs of delivering childcare for under five-year-olds using a representative sample of early years providers.
Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to his Department's proposals for Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health in schools on page 4 of its Green Paper on children and young people's mental health, published on 4 December 2017, what plans his Department has to ensure that schools will retain the benefit of the training given to those so designated people in the longer-term.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Green Paper sets out an ambitious set of proposals to fill the gap in support for children and young people’s mental health together with over £300 million of funding. This will incentivise and support all schools and colleges to identify and train a Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health, introduce new Mental Health Support Teams and reduce waiting times for NHS services.
Nearly half of all schools already have a mental health lead. The training will help existing and new leads to establish whole school approaches and to engage with the new teams.