Asked by: David Williams (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that Foundational Apprenticeships support disadvantaged young people into apprenticeship schemes.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government has a driving mission to break down barriers to opportunity. Too many young people face difficulties progressing beyond secondary education and we want to ensure that more people from disadvantaged backgrounds can undertake apprenticeships.
The department has begun work to develop new foundation apprenticeships, providing high quality entry pathways for young people. We will engage with relevant stakeholders to inform our thinking to maximise its positive impact on young people, including those in disadvantaged areas. More detail on foundation apprenticeships will be set out in due course.
The department continues to pay additional funding to employers and training providers to support them to take on young apprentices, apprentices with learning difficulties and disabilities, and care leavers.
Asked by: David Williams (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help support people to transition from level three qualifications to higher levels.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Skills are crucial to economic growth, with a third of productivity improvement over the last two decades explained by improvements to skills levels. However, between 2017 and 2022, skills shortages in England doubled to more than half a million and now account for 36% of job vacancies.
To address this, Skills England will bring together central and local government, businesses, training providers and unions across all regions to meet the skills needs of the next decade to provide strategic oversight of the post-16 skills system that is aligned to the government’s Industrial Strategy.
The government will also bring forward a comprehensive strategy for post-16 education to break down barriers to opportunity, support the development of a skilled workforce and drive economic growth through its Industrial Strategy.
The department will continue to support learners who wish to progress from Level 3 to a higher level, whether that is to study at university, a higher level or degree apprenticeship, or a Level 4 or 5 classroom-based qualification such as a Higher Technical Qualification, which have been approved as providing the skills that employers need.
Asked by: David Williams (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to (a) support Local Skills Improvement Plans and (b) prevent duplication of those plans with Skills England.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) support the department’s aim to make technical education and training more responsive to local labour market and employer needs.
Since autumn 2022, the designated employer representative bodies (ERBs) leading the LSIPs have engaged thousands of local businesses regarding their skills needs. The resultant LSIPs are a valuable source of information for local skills deliverers, employers and stakeholders, and will provide important intelligence for the newly-established Skills England.
Skills England will work closely with regional stakeholders, including the designated ERBs that cover all of England across the 38 LSIP areas.
Asked by: David Williams (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help support local authorities to meet the legal deadline to provide an education, health and care plan.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Every child deserves the opportunity to achieve and thrive but, at the moment, far from every child is being given that chance. The current special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision system has lost the confidence of families and children with SEND are being failed on every measure. The department is planning to work with the teachers, parents, children, therapists and councils that for so long have been trying so hard but have been set up to fail by a broken system. This work forms part of the government’s Opportunity Mission, which will break the unfair link between background and opportunity. This begins with giving every child, including those with SEND, the best start in life.
The department wants to ensure that, where required, education, health and care (EHC) plan assessments are progressed promptly and, if needed, plans are issued as quickly as possible so that children and young people can access the support they need.
The department publishes annual data from the SEN2 survey in relation to the processes associated with an EHC plan, including the timeliness of assessments and where agreed, the issuing of an EHC plan. The department closely monitors the information from the annual SEN2 data release and uses it to inform discussions with local areas.
Local authorities identified as having issues with EHC plan timeliness are subject to additional monitoring by the department who work with the specific local authority. Where we have concerns about the local authority’s capacity to make the required improvements, we have secured specialist SEND Advisor support to help identify the barriers to EHC plan process timeliness and put in place practical plans for recovery.
We know that local authorities have been impacted by increased demand for EHC plans and workforce capacity to meet this demand, so more efficient and effective service delivery, alongside communication with schools and families, is central to the recovery.
When inspections indicate that there are significant concerns with local authority performance, the department will intervene directly. This may mean issuing an Improvement Notice, Statutory Direction and/or appointing a commissioner, the deployment of which is considered on a case-by-case basis. We also provide support and challenge, for example from SEND Improvement Advisers and Sector Led Improvement Partners, to address the challenges local authorities face and improve services for children.
Asked by: David Williams (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support early speech and language interventions in (a) Stoke-on-Trent North constituency and (b) Kidsgrove.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Early language skills are vital to enable children to thrive in early years and later in life, including for all aspects of later attainment in school.
The department has provided funding for settings to undertake evidence-based continuous professional development programmes, including those focused on speech, language and communication, via a national network of Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs. This has involved working closely with the Education Endowment Foundation to build the evidence pipeline in early speech and language interventions.
The department has invested £28.7 million to enable 75 local authorities, including Stoke, to establish home learning environment services through Family Hubs, to tackle the pandemic’s impact on children’s education and enable investment in speech and language interventions.
The department also works in partnership with NHS England to deliver the Early Language Support for Every Child pathfinders, as well as working with partners to deliver an Early Language Local Innovation and Excellence programme, which includes implementation of published Speech and Language Communication pathway guidance and an Early Language Identification Measure.
Subsequently, the department has invested over £20 million in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme. In July 2024, we announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the NELI programme (two thirds of English state primaries) would continue for the 2024/25 academic year. Schools across Stoke-On-Trent North and Kidsgrove are able to access the NELI intervention.