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 efficacy of incentives designed to keep experienced teachers in the classroom.
Answered by David Laws
Teacher retention remains high: 90% of those entering the profession are teaching one year later, and 78% are teaching after five years. Reforms to teachers’ pay mean that schools have greater flexibility to attract, retain and reward the very best teachers.
A report by the Sutton Trust in 2011, Improving the impact of teachers on pupil achievement in the UK, concluded that a more flexible pay and promotion system would have the potential to attract and retain more high quality applicants to the teaching profession.
We are intending to evaluate pay implementation, including the impact on teachers’ career intentions. This will begin in the autumn.
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 request Ofsted to record how many children leave primary school able to swim.
Answered by Edward Timpson
There are no plans to ask Ofsted to collect this information. Ofsted inspections report on the effectiveness of teaching and the quality of schools’ leadership and management.
Swimming is part of the national curriculum, and 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 remains compulsory in the national curriculum following the curriculum review.
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 Physical Education and sport. Schools have the freedom to use the funding for additional provision for swimming but this must be for activity over and above the national curriculum requirements.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to deal with emotional neglect of children.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Our revised statutory safeguarding guidance, ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children 2013', includes a definition of emotional abuse which social workers already act on when deciding on what action to take to keep a child safe.
We want social workers and other professionals who work with children and families to recognise the early signs of all forms of abuse and neglect and take appropriate action. To support this, the Department is working on a number of initiatives. We have brought together a panel of experts to review the evidence concerning indicators of neglect that are associated with a likelihood of future harm to babies, pre-school children and school-age children.
We are reviewing the recommendations in the Action for Children report ‘Child Neglect: The scandal that never breaks' and the Ofsted report ‘In the child's time: professional responses to neglect' and will consider how to support professionals in recognising early signs of all forms of neglect. We are also working with the Department of Health on their proposals for the development of a new criminal offence of ill-treatment or wilful neglect. Following the Narey review, we are improving social work training and developing further the skills of social workers in critical areas including neglect and how to undertake a good quality assessment.
We have also published training materials commissioned from Action for Children and the University of Stirling. These materials, ‘Childhood neglect: Improving outcomes for children', contain guidance and training resources to help staff identify and respond early to all signs of neglect and to know what types of interventions are the most effective.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average cost per pupil of running a pupil referral unit was in the last year for which figures are available.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
The Department for Education does not routinely collect data on the average per pupil cost of running a pupil referral unit. Pupil referral units cater for a diverse range of needs and so the actual cost per pupil will vary significantly between institutions.
The Department introduced new funding arrangements in April 2013 that take account of this variation. The new system offers stability for pupil referral units by providing £8,000 for each identified alternative provision place. This funding is supplemented by local authorities or schools when they place pupils into a pupil referral unit. The amount of top-up funding provided is determined locally to reflect the actual costs of educating pupils at that pupil referral unit.