Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that speech, language and communication (a) needs and (b) development are supported as early as possible including for children whose needs are identified pre-school age.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Early language skills are vital in enabling children to thrive in the early years and later life, as well as for all aspects of later attainment in school.
The early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards and requirements that all early years providers must follow to ensure every child has the best start in life and is prepared for school. The three prime areas of learning and development within the EYFS are particularly important for building a strong foundation, with communication and language being one of the prime areas.
Assessment plays an important part in helping parents, carers and practitioners to recognise children’s progress, understand their needs and to plan activities and support. The assessment requirements in the EYFS include a progress check at age two and the EYFS Profile, both of which involve reviewing a child’s development in communication and language.
However, the department knows that when it comes to referrals for additional support, too many children are waiting too long for speech and language therapy. NHS planning guidance asks local systems to reduce overall waiting times for community services, with a particular focus on reducing the longest waits. Community health services, including speech and language therapy, will be key in delivering this government’s commitment to shift to a neighbourhood health service and provide more care in the community. Full details of the NHS operational planning and contracting guidance can be found on this website: https://www.england.nhs.uk/operational-planning-and-contracting/.
To further support early language skills, the department is also:
Providing funding for settings to undertake evidence-based continuous professional development programmes, including those focussed on speech, language and communication, via a national network of early years stronger practice hubs.
Training through the ‘professional development programme’ and the online early years child development training, both of which include a specific module focused on early language.
Training for up to 7,000 special educational needs co-ordinators to help children with speech, language and communication needs and support earlier identification of needs.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential (a) return on investment, (b) improved outcomes and (c) opportunities from tackling the speech, language and communication needs of (i) babies, (ii) children and (iii) young people.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government’s vision for children and young people with special educational needs, including those with speech, language and communication needs, is the same as it is for all children and young people. We want them to achieve well in their early years, at school and in further education; to find employment; to lead happy and fulfilled lives; and to experience choice and control.
In July, the department announced that funded support would continue in the 2024/25 academic year for 11,100 schools registered to the Nuffield early language intervention programme. This will help pupils who need extra support with speech and language development to find their voice. The department is also funding the Early Language and Support For Every Child pathfinders, in partnership with NHS England. This will fund nine Integrated Care Boards and will fund one of the local areas within each of the nine Regional Expert Partnerships to trial new ways of working to better identify and support children with speech, language and communication needs in early years and primary schools. Alongside this, we know that continuing to build the pipeline of speech and language therapists is essential. That is why the department introduced the speech and language degree apprenticeship, which is now in its third year of delivery and offers an alternative pathway into a successful career as a speech and language therapist.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the adequacy of the specialist workforce needed for (a) babies, (b) children and (c) young people with speech, language, and communication needs.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government’s vision for children and young people with special educational needs, including those with speech, language and communication needs, is the same as it is for all children and young people. We want them to achieve well in their early years, at school and in further education; to find employment; to lead happy and fulfilled lives; and to experience choice and control.
In July, the department announced that funded support would continue in the 2024/25 academic year for 11,100 schools registered to the Nuffield early language intervention programme. This will help pupils who need extra support with speech and language development to find their voice. The department is also funding the Early Language and Support For Every Child pathfinders, in partnership with NHS England. This will fund nine Integrated Care Boards and will fund one of the local areas within each of the nine Regional Expert Partnerships to trial new ways of working to better identify and support children with speech, language and communication needs in early years and primary schools. Alongside this, we know that continuing to build the pipeline of speech and language therapists is essential. That is why the department introduced the speech and language degree apprenticeship, which is now in its third year of delivery and offers an alternative pathway into a successful career as a speech and language therapist.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure the specialist workforce needed for (a) babies, (b) children and (c) young people with speech, language and communication needs.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government’s vision for children and young people with special educational needs, including those with speech, language and communication needs, is the same as it is for all children and young people. We want them to achieve well in their early years, at school and in further education; to find employment; to lead happy and fulfilled lives; and to experience choice and control.
In July, the department announced that funded support would continue in the 2024/25 academic year for 11,100 schools registered to the Nuffield early language intervention programme. This will help pupils who need extra support with speech and language development to find their voice. The department is also funding the Early Language and Support For Every Child pathfinders, in partnership with NHS England. This will fund nine Integrated Care Boards and will fund one of the local areas within each of the nine Regional Expert Partnerships to trial new ways of working to better identify and support children with speech, language and communication needs in early years and primary schools. Alongside this, we know that continuing to build the pipeline of speech and language therapists is essential. That is why the department introduced the speech and language degree apprenticeship, which is now in its third year of delivery and offers an alternative pathway into a successful career as a speech and language therapist.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing non-repayable maintenance grants for higher education students from the least advantaged backgrounds.
Answered by Luke Hall
The government believes that income-contingent student loans are a fair and sensible way of financing higher education. It is only right that those who benefit from the system should make a fair contribution to its costs. The department has continued to increase maximum loans and grants for living and other costs for undergraduate and postgraduate students each year with a 2.8% increase for the current 2023/24 academic year and a further 2.5% increase announced for the 2024/25 academic year.
In addition, the department has frozen maximum tuition fees for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years. By 2024/25, maximum fees will have been frozen for seven successive years. The department believes that the current fee freeze achieves the best balance between ensuring that the system remains financially sustainable, offering good value for the taxpayer and reducing debt levels for students in real terms.
The government understands the pressures people have been facing with the cost of living and has taken action to help. The department has already made £276 million of student premium and mental health funding available for the 2023/24 academic year to support successful outcomes for students, including disadvantaged students. The department has also made a further £10 million of one-off support available to help student mental health and hardship funding for the 2023/24 academic year. This funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes. For the 2024/25 financial year the department has increased the Student Premium, including the full-time, part-time and disabled premium, by £5 million to reflect high demand for hardship support. Further details of this allocation for the 2024/25 academic year will be announced by the Office for Students (OfS) in the summer.
Overall, support to households to help with the high cost of living is worth £108 billion over 2022/23 to 2024/25, which is an average of £3,800 per UK household. The department believes this will have eased the pressure on family budgets and so will in turn enable many families to provide additional support to their children in higher education to help them meet increased living costs.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to ban school pupils from using phones on the way to and from school.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The department has published new guidance on the use of mobile phones in schools. This sets out that all schools should develop and implement a policy that creates a mobile phone free environment by prohibiting the use of mobile phones and other smart technology with similar functionality to mobile phones throughout the school day.
Each school is responsible for deciding how they apply this new guidance and how to accommodate the needs of their pupils. It is for school leaders to develop and implement a tailored policy on the use of mobile phones and other similar devices.
If a decision is made to prohibit mobile phones from the school premises entirely, schools should consider the impact on children travelling to and from school where not having a mobile phone poses a risk or the perception of a risk. Schools are encouraged to consult with parents to develop such a policy, considering ways to mitigate specific concerns and build support for this approach.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average annual net effect of student loan interest payments on the public purse was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robert Halfon
Student loan repayments are not broken down by interest versus loan portions, meaning that “student loan interest repayments” are not directly measured.
The interest rate charged on a student loan does not affect the amount a borrower repays on a student loan in a given month because the repayment is a proportion of income over a threshold. Unlike mortgages, a higher interest rate on a loan does not lead to higher repayments. As such, in terms of cashflow, total repayment levels in the last 5 years are not greatly affected by increased interest rates.
Statistics on income contingent repayments and interest added to student loans, at a national level, are published by the Student Loans Company here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/student-loans-in-england-2022-to-2023.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to ensure that teachers receive continuing professional development training in supporting young people with their mental health.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Shadow Secretary of State for Education
It is important to recognise that teachers are not mental health professionals and should not be expected to provide specialist mental health support. However, schools and colleges play a vital role in promoting mental wellbeing, by providing calm, safe and supportive learning environments and helping pupils who need it to access early, targeted support. The department offers a range of training and resources to help teachers do so effectively.
The department is offering all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025, enabling them to introduce effective whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing. Over 14,400 settings have claimed a grant so far, including more than 7 in 10 state-funded secondary schools, and the department has recently made second grants available for settings who have lost their trained lead. The department’s quality assured training course provides the practical knowledge and skills to implement a whole school or college approach to promoting mental wellbeing. The course also helps senior mental health leads to facilitate the development of school staff, to ensure that all staff can recognise and understand the process to respond to mental health concerns.
The department has recently launched two new resources to help trained mental health leads and wider school and college staff to promote and support pupil mental health, both hosted on the Mentally Healthy Schools site. The resource hub signposts practical resources and tools to embed whole-school or college approaches and the targeted mental wellbeing toolkit gives practical advice and tools to help schools and colleges identify the most effective targeted support options for their setting. The resource hub is available at: https://mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/whole-school-or-college-resources/. The target mental wellbeing toolkit is available at: https://mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/targeted-support/.
To further support teachers and leaders wanting to expand their knowledge and skills, the department has accredited a range of national professional qualifications (NPQs). These qualifications are designed to provide training and support for teachers and school leaders at all levels and deliver improved outcomes for young people. Teachers and leaders who undertake an NPQ in leading teaching, leading behaviour and culture, or leadership will learn the essential knowledge and skills needed to create a calm, safe and supportive school culture, promoting wellbeing for all pupils and staff.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with refence to her Department's press release entitled Crackdown on rip-off university degrees, published on 17 July 2023, on which degree courses she plans to increase controls.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department wants to ensure that all students, regardless of their background, benefit from high quality, world-leading higher education (HE) that leads to excellent outcomes.
The Office for Students (OfS) has responsibility for monitoring quality and standards and acting where there is a breach of its conditions of registration. The OfS registration condition B3 sets minimum requirements for student outcomes, including course continuation, completion and progression onto graduate employment or further study.
Where courses perform below these thresholds, the providers could face investigation, enabling the OfS to understand the reasons for their performance. If a HE provider is found to be in breach of regulatory requirements, the OfS has the power to intervene and impose sanctions.
To date, the OfS has undertaken 18 investigations in relation to student outcomes (B3) performance. The OfS will publish the outcomes of those investigations in due course and will make decisions about whether regulatory action is appropriate. The department expects the OfS to take decisive action where there has been a clear breach of B3, including, where appropriate, through the use of recruitment limits. Recruitment limits will prevent the growth of courses that do not meet minimum expectations for student outcomes, where there is no justifiable explanation for them failing to do so.
Other sanctions available to the OfS include issuing a specific ongoing condition of registration requiring an improvement in performance, financial penalties and ultimately the suspension or removal of the HE provider from the register (and with it, access to student finance).
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with refence to her Department's press release entitled Crackdown on rip-off university degrees, published on 17 July 2023, on which degree courses she plans to increase controls.
Answered by Robert Halfon
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.