Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of reviewing the code-based system for accessing government-funded childcare to reduce the administrative burden on early years providers.
Answered by David Johnston
The department expects to provide over £4.1 billion by 2027/28 to facilitate the expansion of funded childcare and to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year overall on free hours and early education entitlements. This is the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever. As the childcare support is gradually rolled out, the department is encouraging consideration and take up through a parent facing campaign called Childcare Choices.
The department is using a range of communications to drive users to the Childcare Choices website to find out more information about the different offers, check eligibility, sign up for updates and to apply. This has included a leaflet campaign distributed to over four million households across the country, as well as GP surgeries and supermarkets. The department has partnered with Peanut and Mumset to provide information on the available and expanded offers and directly communicated to parents through the Childcare Choices newsletter, which now has over 257,000 subscribers.
This has resulted in over 210,000 childcare codes being validated for two year olds to benefit from 15 hours childcare from April 2024. The department is continuing to work with a range of partners to refine and disseminate messaging around the existing and new entitlements as it moves forward using a range of channels.
The number of code validations will continue to grow, meaning even more working parents will have the option to have a family and a career, whilst also helping to grow the economy. The department continues to engage with local authorities and providers regarding the effective working of the code-based system.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to encourage the take up of the newly introduced funded childcare.
Answered by David Johnston
The department expects to provide over £4.1 billion by 2027/28 to facilitate the expansion of funded childcare and to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year overall on free hours and early education entitlements. This is the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever. As the childcare support is gradually rolled out, the department is encouraging consideration and take up through a parent facing campaign called Childcare Choices.
The department is using a range of communications to drive users to the Childcare Choices website to find out more information about the different offers, check eligibility, sign up for updates and to apply. This has included a leaflet campaign distributed to over four million households across the country, as well as GP surgeries and supermarkets. The department has partnered with Peanut and Mumset to provide information on the available and expanded offers and directly communicated to parents through the Childcare Choices newsletter, which now has over 257,000 subscribers.
This has resulted in over 210,000 childcare codes being validated for two year olds to benefit from 15 hours childcare from April 2024. The department is continuing to work with a range of partners to refine and disseminate messaging around the existing and new entitlements as it moves forward using a range of channels.
The number of code validations will continue to grow, meaning even more working parents will have the option to have a family and a career, whilst also helping to grow the economy. The department continues to engage with local authorities and providers regarding the effective working of the code-based system.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of a curiosity-led learning approach in early years settings.
Answered by David Johnston
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to give children the right foundation for future progress in school and life. The EYFS defines three characteristics of effective teaching and learning: playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically. Early years settings have the flexibility to utilise different learning approaches and design their own curriculum, based on the EYFS statutory requirements.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it her policy to encourage early years providers to adopt a curiosity-led learning approach.
Answered by David Johnston
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to give children the right foundation for future progress in school and life. The EYFS defines three characteristics of effective teaching and learning: playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically. Early years settings have the flexibility to utilise different learning approaches and design their own curriculum, based on the EYFS statutory requirements.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of increasing Government (a) financial and (b) other support for people looking to open new nurseries.
Answered by David Johnston
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking with local authorities to help increase the rate of reunification of children in kinship care with their birth families.
Answered by David Johnston
The department is committed to ensuring that looked after children are able to achieve permanence. Where a looked after child’s permanence plan is to return to the care of their parents, there should be a robust decision-making process to ensure this decision is safe and sustainable and will safeguard and promote their welfare. Local authorities should set out what support and services will be provided following reunification.
In the 2023 update to the statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ the department set out that local authorities may consider whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.
The £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder programme will test family network reforms including through increased use of family group decision making. This reform area will empower families by prioritising family-led solutions, engaging wider family networks throughout decisions made about a child which may support reunification, including back to birth parents.
The number and percentage of looked after children returning home to live with parents or other people with parental responsibility is published annually in the department’s children looked after statistical release and can be interrogated at local authority level on GOV.UK. Figures are available for the last five years. The department does not intend to break down the data any further to identify returns to birth parents from kinship care.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring local authorities to (a) measure and (b) publish their performance on reuniting children in kinship care with their birth parents.
Answered by David Johnston
The department is committed to ensuring that looked after children are able to achieve permanence. Where a looked after child’s permanence plan is to return to the care of their parents, there should be a robust decision-making process to ensure this decision is safe and sustainable and will safeguard and promote their welfare. Local authorities should set out what support and services will be provided following reunification.
In the 2023 update to the statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ the department set out that local authorities may consider whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.
The £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder programme will test family network reforms including through increased use of family group decision making. This reform area will empower families by prioritising family-led solutions, engaging wider family networks throughout decisions made about a child which may support reunification, including back to birth parents.
The number and percentage of looked after children returning home to live with parents or other people with parental responsibility is published annually in the department’s children looked after statistical release and can be interrogated at local authority level on GOV.UK. Figures are available for the last five years. The department does not intend to break down the data any further to identify returns to birth parents from kinship care.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the impact of local authority specialist family reunification teams on trends in the number of children who have been reunited with their birth parents in the last 10 years.
Answered by David Johnston
The department is committed to ensuring that looked after children are able to achieve permanence. Where a looked after child’s permanence plan is to return to the care of their parents, there should be a robust decision-making process to ensure this decision is safe and sustainable and will safeguard and promote their welfare. Local authorities should set out what support and services will be provided following reunification.
In the 2023 update to the statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ the department set out that local authorities may consider whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.
The £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder programme will test family network reforms including through increased use of family group decision making. This reform area will empower families by prioritising family-led solutions, engaging wider family networks throughout decisions made about a child which may support reunification, including back to birth parents.
The number and percentage of looked after children returning home to live with parents or other people with parental responsibility is published annually in the department’s children looked after statistical release and can be interrogated at local authority level on GOV.UK. Figures are available for the last five years. The department does not intend to break down the data any further to identify returns to birth parents from kinship care.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase the retention rate of teachers in coastal communities.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The department currently has the highest number of teachers on record, with over 468,000 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England. This represents an increase of 27,000 (6%) since the School Workforce Census began in 2010.
The department knows there is further to go to improve recruitment in some subjects. That is why the department has put in place a range of measures, including bursaries worth £28,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £30,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing. For language subjects, the department is offering bursaries worth £25,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £27,000 tax-free in French, German and Spanish. The department is also continuing to offer bursaries and scholarships to all non-UK national trainees in physics and languages. The Initial Teacher Training (ITT) financial incentives package for the 2024/25 recruitment cycle is worth up to £196 million, which is a £15 million increase on the last cycle.
For the 2024/25 and 2025/26 academic years, the department is doubling the rates of the Levelling Up Premium to up to £6,000 after tax for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including in Education Investment Areas. As of 2023, 69% of secondary or special schools in coastal towns are eligible for the Levelling Up Premium, compared to 59% of schools elsewhere in the country. This will support both recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in these subjects and in the schools and areas that need them most.
Coastal communities are also well served by the department’s network of Teaching School Hubs (TSHs), which are school-led centres of excellence in professional development, delivering training and support to teachers and school leaders at every stage of their career. The 87 TSHs cover all of England, with 31 hubs currently serving 146 coastal areas across England.
Regarding recruitment targets, simply looking at post-graduate Initial Teacher Training (PGITT) recruitment as an indicator of broader teacher recruitment is misleading as it is not the only route into teaching, nor does it represent the available number of teachers in the workforce. The PGITT target is calculated using the Teacher Workforce Model, which considers a broad range of factors including, but not limited to, projected pupil numbers, historical recruitment performance, teacher retention forecasts, economic factors, and recruitment from other non-ITT related routes such as returners and those teachers that are new to the state-funded schools sector.
Therefore, the PGITT target is not based on the total number of entrants schools’ need, but rather on the forecast residual need after accounting for other non-PGITT inflows, such as undergraduate ITT and returners. The department calculates targets on an annual basis, and if retention and entrants from other routes are higher than expected during the time that trainees are applying for and completing their course, this can offset the need to meet the PGITT targets in full.
The department will continue to monitor PGITT and other routes into teaching and have provided targeted support to ensure it recruits and retains sufficient numbers of teachers in all key subjects, including physics and languages.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase recruitment of teachers of (a) physics, (b) modern foreign languages and (c) other specialist subjects.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The department currently has the highest number of teachers on record, with over 468,000 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England. This represents an increase of 27,000 (6%) since the School Workforce Census began in 2010.
The department knows there is further to go to improve recruitment in some subjects. That is why the department has put in place a range of measures, including bursaries worth £28,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £30,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing. For language subjects, the department is offering bursaries worth £25,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £27,000 tax-free in French, German and Spanish. The department is also continuing to offer bursaries and scholarships to all non-UK national trainees in physics and languages. The Initial Teacher Training (ITT) financial incentives package for the 2024/25 recruitment cycle is worth up to £196 million, which is a £15 million increase on the last cycle.
For the 2024/25 and 2025/26 academic years, the department is doubling the rates of the Levelling Up Premium to up to £6,000 after tax for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including in Education Investment Areas. As of 2023, 69% of secondary or special schools in coastal towns are eligible for the Levelling Up Premium, compared to 59% of schools elsewhere in the country. This will support both recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in these subjects and in the schools and areas that need them most.
Coastal communities are also well served by the department’s network of Teaching School Hubs (TSHs), which are school-led centres of excellence in professional development, delivering training and support to teachers and school leaders at every stage of their career. The 87 TSHs cover all of England, with 31 hubs currently serving 146 coastal areas across England.
Regarding recruitment targets, simply looking at post-graduate Initial Teacher Training (PGITT) recruitment as an indicator of broader teacher recruitment is misleading as it is not the only route into teaching, nor does it represent the available number of teachers in the workforce. The PGITT target is calculated using the Teacher Workforce Model, which considers a broad range of factors including, but not limited to, projected pupil numbers, historical recruitment performance, teacher retention forecasts, economic factors, and recruitment from other non-ITT related routes such as returners and those teachers that are new to the state-funded schools sector.
Therefore, the PGITT target is not based on the total number of entrants schools’ need, but rather on the forecast residual need after accounting for other non-PGITT inflows, such as undergraduate ITT and returners. The department calculates targets on an annual basis, and if retention and entrants from other routes are higher than expected during the time that trainees are applying for and completing their course, this can offset the need to meet the PGITT targets in full.
The department will continue to monitor PGITT and other routes into teaching and have provided targeted support to ensure it recruits and retains sufficient numbers of teachers in all key subjects, including physics and languages.