Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to increase funding to schools in order to allow them to cover the one per cent shortfall in the planned 3.5 per cent increased pay award for teachers.
Answered by Nick Gibb
In July the Department announced that it was accepting the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendation in full for a 2.75% uplift to the minima and maxima of all pay ranges and allowances.
In recognition of the difference between this award and the 2% the Department has assessed schools can afford on average nationally, it is providing an additional £105 million of funding for schools this year. This is on top of the £321 million the Department is already providing this year through the Teachers’ Pay Grant to cover the ongoing cost of the 2018 pay award.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he plans to take to ensure that 16 and 17 year olds in Lancashire classed as not known in respect of their education, training or employment status by Lancashire County Council's internal scrutiny committee are identified and helped into further education and apprenticeships.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
Under the 2008 Education and Skills Act, local authorities have a statutory duty to identify and track participation of 16 and 17-year-olds in education or employment with training, to support those who are not participating to do so, and to make sure there is sufficient, suitable education and training provision to meet their needs. Local authorities also have a duty to work with schools to identify those young people who need targeted support or who are at risk of not participating post-16. Alongside this, they must lead the September Guarantee process which guarantees all young people a suitable place in further education at the end of years 11 and 12.
In line with these duties, where a young person is identified as ‘Not in Education, Employment and Training’ (NEET), the local authority has a responsibility to work with them. Similarly, where a young person’s destination is identified as ‘not known’, the local authority must continue to try to locate and contact the young person through various routes.
Local authorities may choose to organise their tracking of young people in a variety of ways; however, all local authorities have a duty to submit monthly data to the Department for Education’s ‘National Client Caseload Information System’ (NCCIS). This data is then published by the department, throughout the year in various publications, for transparency purposes.
The department publishes the NEET scorecard annually, which pulls together all of the NCCIS data published throughout the previous year and other relevant data. The scorecard ranks local authorities into 5 groups based on their performance on the percentage of 16 and 17-year-olds NEET and whose activity is not known. The department actively performance manages those local authorities in the bottom group. These actions can vary from engagement at official level, meetings and ministerial letters.
As this year’s scorecard has yet to be published, it will not be possible to confirm at this time exactly what action will be taken with individual local authorities. However, as local authority groups will be based on the NCCIS NEET and participation data, published on 20 June 2019[1], which shows that Lancashire County Council’s NEET and not known percentage is 10%, of which 8% were not known, which is above the North West average of 3.2% and the England average of 2.9%, it is likely that performance management action will be taken in relation to Lancashire local authority.
The department’s performance management approach has worked well in the past, with the majority of the local authorities contacted achieving improvements in their submitted data. Where improvements are not achieved, in a reasonable timeframe, the department follows up at official level with formal meetings to agree action plans and deadlines for improvement.
[1] NEET and Participation Local Authority Figures: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to provide additional funding to local authorities who record an increase in the number of pupils with special educational needs.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
Our ambitions for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are exactly the same as for every other child and young person. As part of this, we are pleased to announce that we will be providing an additional £700 million, 10% in high needs funding next year alone, which will help local authorities to ensure that they can continue to offer the right support for children and young people with the most complex SEND.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the latest statistics on people between 16 and 24 years old who are not in education, employment or training in each local authority area.
Answered by Anne Milton
The latest estimates for young people aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) in England and the English regions, based on 2018 quarterly Labour Force Survey (LFS) data, will be published on 28 February 2019 by the department as part of the series and can be accessed at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-neet.
However, due to sample size limitations in the LFS data, it is not possible to produce reliable estimates for local authority level geographies.
For young people aged 16 to 17, local authorities are required to monitor the extent to which young people are meeting their duty to participate in education or training through the department’s National Client Caseload Information System (NCCIS). Local authority level NEET estimates for England are published annually as transparency data from NCCIS and can be accessed at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures. However, these estimates should be used with caution as the headline NEET measure includes people whose activities are not known in order to incentivise local authorities to track all young people.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the implications for his Department's policies of the recommendations of the September 2018 Commission on Religious Education Religion and Worldviews report entitled The Way Forward.
Answered by Nick Gibb
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State decided that accepting the Commission’s main proposals would be incompatible with his commitment to make no changes to the curriculum, other than those already announced, during the remaining lifetime of this Parliament.
He did however announce improvements to bursaries for initial teacher training and new funding for religious education subject knowledge enhancement courses. His full response to the Commission is set out in a letter of 6 December 2018 which can be found at: www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/news/government-response-to-the-commission-on-re/.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of his Department's progress towards the target of 75% of pupils studying the EBacc combination of GCSEs by 2022.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government responded to the consultation on implementing the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) in July 2017. Schools will have been able to take account of this in GCSE entries from 2020 onwards. The proportion of pupils taking the EBacc subject combination has increased from 22% in 2010 to 38% in 2018. The Department has seen significant increases in pupils taking EBacc science, from 63% to 96%, since 2010. The Department has also seen the proportion of pupils taking history or geography increase from 48% to 78%. Whilst the proportion of pupils taking GCSE languages has increased since 2010, the Department would like to see more pupils taking the subject and have launched initiatives to support this, such as the Modern Foreign Languages hub pedagogy programme.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of children in Year 3 and above who will be affected by the new means-tested entitlement for free school meals in households on universal credit with work-related earnings of more than £7,400 a year.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Our new criteria for free school meals eligibility will increase the number of children eligible by around 50,000 children by 2022. Due to the generous protections we will provide, all children receiving free school meals at the point the threshold is introduced, and all those who gain eligibility during the rollout of Universal Credit, will continue to receive free school meals until the end of Universal Credit rollout. After this point, those children who were protected – should they still be in school – will continue to be protected until the end of their current phase of education. Our protection arrangements will also cover pupils in receipt of benefits-related free school meals in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, as well as those in Year 3 and above.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has plans to include fostering as a recognised professional occupation.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The government’s independent review into foster care and the Education Select Committee inquiry considered the status of foster parents, including whether foster parents should be considered as professionals or employees. The department is carefully considering the recommendations of both reports and the government response will be published in spring this year. The Education Select Committee report is available here: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/inquiry1/.
The independent review of foster care is available here: https://www.gov.uk/
government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/%0b679320/Foster_Care_in_England_Review.pdf.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many new teaching assistants were employed in (a) England, (b) Lancashire and (c) Hyndburn constituency in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The number of full-time equivalent teaching assistants employed in state-funded schools in England is published each year in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical series available online at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-workforce
Statistics on the number of new teaching assistants employed each year in England, Lancashire and Hyndburn are not available in the requested format.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate has she made of the number of teaching assistants employed in (a) England, (b) Lancashire and (c) Hyndburn constituency.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The latest available figures on the number of full-time equivalent teaching assistants in state-funded schools are from November 2013 and are published online at:
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2013