Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason his Department did not include the food sector in the Lifetime Skills Guarantee; and if he will reconsider its exclusion to help promote a sustainable future for British farming and enhance UK food security.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
Through the Free Courses for Jobs offer, we are making courses available that offer good wage outcomes and address skills needs in the economy, empowering adults with the tools they need to secure a better job.
We have identified hundreds of courses that can give adults the skills they need in the labour market, and this includes agriculture and land-based engineering qualifications.
Many of the qualifications available support employers regardless of their sector, including those in the food and drink industry – for example, business, accountancy, and digital qualifications.
We are keeping the list of qualifications and the sector subject areas in scope under review and will consider requests for including courses that meet the published criteria.
Qualifications not included in this offer will still be eligible for Advanced Learner Loans. Advanced Learner Loans are income-contingent loans that provide extensive coverage of regulated qualifications at level 3 to level 6, helping to meet the upfront tuition fees. Applications in the 2019/20 academic year have been to study at nearly 450 training providers, and over 3000 qualifications are currently in scope.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on providing urgent assurances to international students applying to UK universities that they will be granted a visa under the Student Route in the event that their institution adopts a blended learning approach for 2021-22 in response to ongoing covid-19 restrictions.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
My department and I speak regularly with our counterparts in the Home Office about how visa and immigration policies may affect students.
International students are permitted to start a course from overseas through distance learning without a visa. These concessions are kept under regular review.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding for student mental health services to meet the increased demand resulting from the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Protecting student and staff wellbeing is vital - these are difficult times and it is important students can still access the mental health and wellbeing support that they need. We recognise that many students are facing additional mental health challenges due to the disruption and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. I have engaged with universities on this issue, and have written to Vice Chancellors on numerous occasions, outlining that student welfare should be prioritised.
We have worked with the Office for Students (OfS) to provide Student Space, which has been funded with up to £3 million by the OfS. Student Space is a mental health and wellbeing platform, designed to work alongside existing services and to bridge gaps in support that arise from this unprecedented situation. This resource provides dedicated one-to-one phone, text and web chat facilities, as well as a collaborative online platform providing vital mental health and wellbeing resources.
Ensuring that students have access to high-quality mental health support is my top priority, which is why I asked the OfS to look at extending the platform. I am delighted that they have been able to extend the platform to support students for the whole 2020/21 academic year, because no student should be left behind at this challenging time.
Furthermore, we have asked the OfS to allocate £15 million towards student mental health in the academic year 2021/22 through proposed reforms to Strategic Priorities grant funding, to help address the challenges to student mental health posed by the transition to university, given the increasing demand for mental health services. This will target those students in greatest need of such services, including vulnerable groups and hard to reach students.
The government has also worked closely with the OfS to help clarify that providers can draw upon existing funding to increase hardship funds and support disadvantaged students impacted by COVID-19. Providers are able to use the funding, worth around £256 million for the academic year 2020/21, towards student hardship funds, including the purchase of IT equipment, and mental health support, as well as to support providers’ access and participation plans. We have also made an additional £70 million of student hardship funding available to higher education providers this financial year.
Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the government has provided over £10 million to leading mental health charities including charities like Young Minds and Place 2 Be, which young people can access to support their mental health.
Students struggling with their mental health can also access support via online resources from the NHS, Public Health England via the mental health charity Mind and the Every Mind Matters website: https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of higher education students in England in the academic year 2020-21 have had applications for a full maintenance loan declined as a result of not being able to provide information about their parent or guardian’s financial circumstances because the definition of estrangement, as outlined in the current Student Support Regulations, was not met.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The government is aware of the disproportionate impact that the COVID-19 outbreak will have on some students. I have written to universities and other higher education (HE) providers to highlight the vulnerability of estranged students and ask them to prioritise this group for additional support.
The Student Loans Company (SLC) does not hold readily available data on the number of people who applied for means-tested living costs support but did not provide household financial information to support their application and then subsequently made a maintenance loan application on the basis of being estranged from their family.
The SLC data for new and returning full-time undergraduate students for the 2020/21 academic year suggests that 7,917 applicants originally stated they were estranged when applying for a maintenance loan. Of these, 598 applicants (7.55%) have so far been awarded only the non-means tested basic rate of maintenance loan because they have either not demonstrated they were estranged or otherwise independent, or they have not provided any household financial information.
7,319 of the 7,917 applicants (92.45%) have so far been awarded their entitlement as an estranged student, as they requested. Students who have so far been awarded the non-means tested basic rate of maintenance loan only may be awarded a higher rate maintenance loan if they provide the required information at a later point in the academic year.
All eligible students qualify for a partially means-tested loan for living costs. Students on the lowest incomes, including most students assessed as estranged from their parents, will qualify for the maximum loan for living costs which has been increased by 2.9% for the current 2020/21 academic year and 3.1% for 2021/22 to record levels in cash terms.
The government has meanwhile worked closely with the Office for Students (OfS) to help clarify that HE providers can draw upon existing funding this academic year to increase hardship funds and support disadvantaged students. HE providers are able to use OfS Student Premium funding worth around £256 million towards student hardship funds. We have also made an additional £70 million of student hardship funding available to HE providers this financial year. HE providers will have flexibility in how they distribute the funding to students, in a way that will best prioritise those in greatest need.
Additional bursaries are offered by some HE providers for students who are estranged from their families.
I would be happy to meet with the hon. Member for Cambridge to discuss this matter.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what amount of expired Apprenticeship Levy funding has been reclaimed from levy paying NHS organisations in England in 2019-20.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
As the NHS is made up of a large number of diverse employers, it is not possible to identify the amount of expired apprenticeship levy funds for the NHS in England as a whole. This information is therefore not held centrally.
Moreover, due to taxpayer confidentiality, we are unable to publish the amount that individual employers, including individual NHS Trusts, have contributed through the apprenticeship levy or the amount of funds that have been spent or have expired.
The funds in apprenticeship service accounts are available for levy-paying employers to use for 24 months before they begin to expire on a rolling, month-by-month basis.
Employers can choose which apprenticeships they offer, how many apprenticeships they offer and when they offer the apprenticeships. We do not anticipate that all employers who pay the levy will need or want to use all the funds available to them, but they are able to do so if they wish. Funds raised by the levy are used to support the whole apprenticeship system. This means that employers’ unused funds are not lost but are used to support apprenticeships in smaller employers and to cover the ongoing costs of apprentices already in training.
As we set out in the Spending Review, we will again be making available £2.5 billion for investment in apprenticeships in the 2021-22 financial year, which is double that spent in the 2010-11 financial year.
We are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, employers and stakeholders to make sure the NHS is fully supported to recruit the apprentices it needs to deliver high-quality care. There are 74 high-quality apprenticeship standards in the health and science sector, including a complete nursing apprentice pathway from entry-level through to postgraduate level.