Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure there is an adequate provision of SEND places in schools.
Answered by David Johnston
The department recognises the importance of accessing timely and effective support to improving the experiences of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and their families. Nationally, 17% of pupils are identified with some form of SEN, three quarters of whom receive SEN support from their mainstream school, funded from its own resources.
Local authorities must ensure that there are sufficient good school places for all pupils, including special schools and those with SEND. They are statutorily required to keep the services and provision for children and young people with SEND under review, including its sufficiency, working with parents, young people, and providers.
To support local authorities to meet this duty, in the SEND and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, the department committed to investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to fund new special and AP places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND, including announcing 41 new special free schools. This funding represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. As part of this investment, the department has published over £1.5 billion of High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. Of this, Durham has been allocated a total of £11.2 million. Local authorities can use their allocations to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings such as specialist post-16 institutions, and to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings. This investment is on top of the department’s ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools.
Through these reforms, the department wants to ensure that placements for children and young people with SEND are sufficient to meet need, allowing them to access the right support, in the right setting, at the right time.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support more children with special education needs into mainstream schools.
Answered by David Johnston
In the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, the department set out its ambition for more children and young people to have their needs met effectively in mainstream settings where it is possible for this to happen. For those children and young people with SEND who do require an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan and specialist provision, the department will ensure that parents do not face an adversarial system to secure this.
The department will improve mainstream education by setting standards for the early and accurate identification of need, and for timely access to the support to meet those needs.
To deliver new national SEND and AP standards across EHC, the department is starting by building on existing best practice, including on early language support, autism and mental health and wellbeing. The department will publish three advisory practitioner standards by the end of 2025. The department will also publish a significant portion of the national standards by the end of 2025.
It is crucial that Speech Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) are identified early to enable the right support to be put in place. In partnership with NHS England, the department is funding the Early Language and Support for Every Child (ELSEC) pathfinders within its Change Programme.
Reaching over 70% of schools and further education colleges, the Universal Services Programme will help the education workforce to identify and meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, earlier and more effectively. The department is investing a further £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists to increase capacity.
The department is introducing a leadership level new National Professional Qualification (NPQ) for SENCOs. This will replace the existing qualification and ensure that SENCOs receive consistent high-quality training. The department has also committed to funding training for up to 7,000 early years staff to gain an accredited Level 3 early years SENCO qualification.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of raising undergraduate student maintenance loan amounts in line with inflation.
Answered by Michelle Donelan
Maximum grants and loans for living costs were increased by 3.1% this academic year (2021/22) and we have announced that they will increase by a further 2.3% in the 2022/23 academic year. We are currently reviewing options for uprating in future academic years.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential merits of encouraging local authorities to allow parents to apply for free childcare midway through a school term.
Answered by Will Quince
As set out in the regulations underpinning the entitlements to free early education and childcare, children become eligible for a free early education place at different points in the year. Depending on when the child turns three, the 30 hours free childcare entitlement begins from 1 September, 1 January or 1 April following their third birthday.
These termly deadlines link closely with that of the department’s other early entitlements to create consistency across the offers. The merit of delivering the entitlements in this way are that it allows local authorities and childcare providers to better plan and ensure sufficient early years places are available for parents each term, as there are clear periods for when children are likely to enter into a place.
This is intended to ensure that all children are entitled to at least three years of early education and/or reception before they reach statutory school age.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government has taken to help ensure that people undergoing vocational training have sufficient access to childcare.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The Care to Learn (C2L) scheme is available to help young parents, defined as those aged under 20, to continue in education after the birth of a child. The scheme provides funding towards childcare whilst the young parent is engaged in a study programme and is not able to provide care for their child. C2L can also help with travel costs involved in taking the child to the childcare provider. During the 2020/2021 academic year, payments totalling over £5 million were made through the scheme.
Learner Support funds childcare for students aged 19 and over in further education. Learning providers decide how much a student receives, depending on their scheme and the individual circumstances of the student.
30 hours free childcare and Tax-Free Childcare are entitlements for working parents of three and four-year-olds. These aim to help working parents with the costs of childcare so they are able to take up paid work or work additional hours. The Childcare Bill policy statement, published in December 2015, is clear that students are not eligible for 30 hours free childcare. However, parents who undertake paid work in addition to their studies and meet the income requirements will be eligible for additional hours.
To qualify for 30 hours free childcare and Tax-Free Childcare, students do not have to physically work 16 hours a week. However, they do need to earn the equivalent of a weekly minimum of 16 hours at National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage. Currently, this is just over £7,400 a year.
Parents undertaking vocational training remain entitled to the universal 15 hour free entitlement for three and four-year-olds. They may also be eligible for 15 hours free early education for disadvantaged two-year-olds. More information on the eligibility criteria can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/help-with-childcare-costs/free-childcare-2-year-olds.
Further information on the full range of childcare support available can be found at: https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/. Constituents can also access the government’s childcare calculator, available here: https://www.gov.uk/childcare-calculator.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
What steps he is taking to help schools improve their buildings and facilities to provide high-quality education.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The government has committed to invest more than £23 billon in the school estate between 2016-17 and 2020-21. This includes a combination of formula and bid-based allocations to schools, local authorities and academy trusts as well as centrally delivered programmes.
As part of this, the Priority School Building Programme is rebuilding or refurbishing buildings in the worst condition at over 500 schools.
The government has provided £560 million in additional condition funding this year for repairs and upgrades in schools - on top of £1.4 billion already committed in 2020-21.
The Prime Minister announced plans in June for a transformative ten-year school rebuilding programme. This will replace poor condition school buildings with modern, energy efficient designs, transforming education for thousands of pupils.
We will start with 50 schools in the most need of repair, supported by over £1 billion in capital funding, with full details of these projects and further funding for the programme to be set out later in the autumn at the Spending Review.