Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help schools with a high number of Special Educational Needs (SEN) pupils meet the first £6,000 of SEN funding.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities have the responsibility to make sure that the schools in their area are given enough funding to meet the needs of all their pupils, including the additional support required by those with special educational needs (SEN). Local authorities design their local school funding formula to give extra money to schools likely to have more children with SEN. Authorities also have flexibility to give even more funding to schools with a relatively high proportion of such children, and to give top-up funding for individual pupils whose additional support costs more than £6,000 per year.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional support her Department is providing to schools to help provide more help to pupils with serious neurological conditions.
Answered by Edward Timpson
We recognise the need to ensure children with serious neurological conditions can access their education alongside everyone else. In recognition of this, the Children and Families Act 2014 now places a duty on governing bodies of maintained schools, proprietors of academy schools and alternative provision academies and management committees of pupil referral units to make arrangements for supporting pupils with medical conditions, which would include serious neurological conditions, at their school. This has been reinforced through new statutory guidance for maintained schools and academies on ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’ which was published in September 2014:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3
This guidance emphasises the following:
• Pupils at school with medical conditions should be properly supported so that they have full access to education, including school trips and physical education.
• Governing bodies must ensure that arrangements are in place in schools to support pupils at school with medical conditions.
• Governing bodies should ensure that school leaders consult health and social care professionals, pupils and parents to ensure that the needs of children with medical conditions are effectively supported.
Where a pupil has a neurological disorder that results in a special educational need (SEN), the school and the local authority are also under an obligation through the reformed SEN and Disability (SEND) system to meet their needs and provide appropriate support.
In 2015-16, the department has funded £5.9 million of grants through the voluntary and community sector (VCS) National Prospectus and £7 million of contracts to support implementation of the SEND reforms. These organisations provide support on specific types of SEN for schools, teachers and parents; delivery support for schools, colleges, early years settings and local authorities in implementing the new duties in the Children and Families Act 2014; and support for parent-carer forums.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the scope within the existing budget of increasing the number of SEN-trained teaching assistants so that children with high needs can have more one-to-one support.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Most teaching assistants who support children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) are employed by schools to meet the needs of those who require such intervention. Others are employed using top-up funding that the local authority provides to schools, usually for children with the most complex needs who have statements of SEN or Education, Health and Care plans.
It is for individual schools to make the necessary decisions as to how many teaching assistants they should have and how to deploy them. Schools are legally required to use their best endeavours to make sure that children with SEN get the support they need. A school may judge it appropriate to provide one-to-one support for some children. If so, it is for the school to ensure that those providing such support are suitably trained.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of false allegations of child abuse or mistreatment made against staff in (a) professional care centres, (b) social services units and (c) other contexts in each of the last three years.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities are responsible for putting in place arrangements for the appropriate management of allegations against people who work with children. Statuary guidance on handling allegations is set out in Working Together 2015 and Keeping Children Safe in Education.
The Department for Education does not hold records of allegations made against staff. While sympathetic to the position of those subject to false allegations on any matter, we have no plans to set up a scheme to enable claims for professional damages in these circumstances.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will establish a scheme whereby people falsely accused of child abuse or mistreatment can claim for professional damages incurred as a result of such allegations.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities are responsible for putting in place arrangements for the appropriate management of allegations against people who work with children. Statuary guidance on handling allegations is set out in Working Together 2015 and Keeping Children Safe in Education.
The Department for Education does not hold records of allegations made against staff. While sympathetic to the position of those subject to false allegations on any matter, we have no plans to set up a scheme to enable claims for professional damages in these circumstances.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve how child services protect children and young people at risk of abuse.
Answered by Edward Timpson
On 24 June the Prime Minister announced a new Child Protection Taskforce chaired by the Secretary of State for Education. The Prime Minister’s announcement can be found online here: www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-new-taskforce-to-transform-child-protection. The Taskforce will lead work to: extend and accelerate reforms the quality of social work practice and leadership; develop better multi-agency working between children’s social care, the police, health and other local services; improve local authority performance and promote innovative practice; and strengthen governance and accountability in children’s social care.
To improve the quality of services, we are establishing a new national centre of expertise to identify and share high quality evidence on how to tackle child sexual abuse. We have also invested around £100 million in the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme to develop, test and spread more effective ways of supporting children who need help from children’s social care services. Many of the projects are focused on whole system reforms in child protection services whilst others target specific challenges such as child sexual exploitation or female genital mutilation. All projects are being rigorously evaluated.
Social workers provide invaluable services to the most vulnerable children and families in societies and we are committed to improving the quality of the workforce to ensure that children are properly protected and supported. The Chief Social Worker for Children and Families introduced for the first time in the autumn a clear statement of the knowledge and skills that frontline social workers will need to have and display. We will be consulting shortly on similar statements for practice supervisors and practice leaders, key roles to drive high quality practice.
We have introduced Frontline and Step Up to Social Work programmes to attract high calibre graduates to social work, with a stronger focus on children’s statutory services. 101 Frontline participants are currently training in 18 local authorities in London and Greater Manchester and over 300 Step Up students completed training in 75 local authorities in spring 2015, and we are committed to grow these programmes. We are also working with four teaching partnerships, involving local authorities and higher education institutions, to ensure the initial training that social workers receive is more relevant to the demands of statutory roles.
We are also taking a robust approach to tackling failure in children’s services. Where performance is constantly poor, such as Doncaster, we have put in place new trust arrangements to deliver children’s social care services on behalf of a local authority. Trusts represents an opportunity to deliver a key public service in a different and ground-breaking way that better meets the needs of the children and families in the area. We have enabled strong local authorities to work with weaker ones to drive improvement, for example Hampshire are now running Isle of Wight’s children’s services following evidence of inadequate performance in child protection.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to ensure that all primary school children (a) learn to swim and (b) are knowledgeable about water safety.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The Government is committed to ensuring that swimming and teaching water safety takes place in schools. Swimming is compulsory for maintained schools in the national curriculum. All pupils must be taught to swim at least 25 metres unaided and be able to use recognised swimming strokes by the end of key stage 2 (age 11). It also requires that a child can demonstrate an understanding of water safety.
The Government has committed over £450 million of ring-fenced funding up to and including 2015/16 for primary schools to improve their provision of PE and sport. Head teachers are best placed to decide how the funding should be used. They can choose to provide additional training and instruction in swimming and water safety but this must be over and above the requirements of the national curriculum.
There are a range of resources to help schools provide high quality teaching, including from organisations such as the Amateur Swimming Association and from the Royal Lifesaving Society.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many cases in the family courts resulted in removed children being returned to their parents in each of the last five years.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The table below shows, for each of the last five years:
The number of children taken into care.
The number of children who are subsequently ceased to be looked after and returned home to live with parents or relatives,
The number of children who have not returned home to live with parents or relatives but were subsequently placed with parents whilst still looked after.
Year ending
| Of which: | ||
Have subsequently ceased to be looked after to return home to live with parents or relatives2,[3] | Have subsequently been placed with parents and have either remained in care or have since ceased to be looked after for some other reason than returning home to live with parents or relatives2,[4] | ||
31 March 2010 | 9,580 | 2,960 | 1,470 |
31 March 2011 | 9,560 | 2,860 | 1,500 |
31 March 2012 | 10,140 | 2,750 | 1,340 |
31 March 2013 | 11,140 | 2,680 | 1,380 |
31 March 2014 | 10,920 | 2,120 | 1,070 |
Source: SSDA903 children looked after return 2014
[1] Children who were taken into care are children who started to be looked after under a care order, police protection, emergency protection order or child assessment order. Only the first occasion on which a child was taken into care in the year has been counted, but a child may appear more than once if they started to be looked after in one year, left care and then returned to care in a subsequent year.
[2] Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10.
[3] The child may have ceased to be looked after at any subsequent point in time and it is possible the child could have returned to care since ceasing to be looked after. This includes children who, prior to ceasing care, were placed with parents at some point during their period of care.
[4] The child was placed with parents at some point during the period of care, however, the child may have changed placements subsequently. This excludes children who ceased to be looked after to return home to live with parents or relatives.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she has taken to help schools which are not spending the school sport premium appropriately.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The Department for Education is working across Government and with external partners to support schools to spend the money effectively and sustainably, to improve the quality of Physical Education (PE) and sport provision. There are a number of case studies of best practice which can be found online:
www.gov.uk/government/policies/getting-more-people-playing-sport#case-studies
Ofsted has also published guidance that includes examples of effective use of the PE and sport premium.
PE and sport organisations are offering expert advice to schools on how to ensure the greatest improvement in PE and sport provision, as well as where to seek further support at a local level. They have produced resources to help schools assess their PE and sport provision and guidance to generate action plans and how to evidence impact. Posters have also been distributed to schools to help inform effective investment into teacher professional learning and the employment of coaches. These posters capture the latest national advice and guidance, and include information to help schools maximise the investment and understand statutory obligations and minimum standards specifically around the delivery of PE and school sport.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what sanctions there are for schools which fail to spend the school sport premium appropriately.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The conditions of the funding are clear; it must be spent on improving the provision of Physical Education (PE) and sport for the benefit of pupils so that they develop healthy lifestyles. All schools must abide by the conditions of the funding. Schools should publish on their website: the amount of grant received, how it has been spent (or will be spent) and what impact the school has seen on pupils’ PE and sport participation and attainment as a result.
Schools are held accountable for how they spend their funding through Ofsted whole-school inspections. Ofsted have strengthened the coverage of PE and sport in their Inspection Handbook. Inspectors assess and report on how effectively the funding is being used to improve PE and sport provision when making a judgement on the quality of the school’s leadership and management.