Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 19 January 2024 to Question 8408 on Offences against Children, whether she plans to take further steps with Cabinet colleagues to incorporate Article 19 into UK legislation (a) in non-online contexts and (b) other than through the Online Safety Act 2023.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government remains committed to protecting and upholding children’s rights. The department is confident that existing domestic legislation gives effect to the rights within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child, including Article 19.
The Children Act 1989 and Children Act 2004 set out a range of duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Furthermore, the government’s multi-agency statutory guidance ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ is clear that children at risk of or experiencing harm from within or outside their home must receive the support they need, recognising harms may arise from school, peer groups, online or the wider community. This guidance was updated in December 2023 to strengthen multi-agency working across the whole system of help, support and protection. More information on the guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2.
Importantly, the department introduced new national multi-agency child protection standards setting out what every individual, at every level, in every agency should do to work together and understand their role, to improve child protection practice and outcomes for children. The department has also strengthened expectations about the role of other agencies, including police and health, in child protection processes.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an estimate of the number of SMEs that have recruited (a) 10, (b) between 10 and 20, (c) between 30 and 40 and (d) more than 50 apprentices since April 2023.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The below table shows the breakdown of non-levy paying employer accounts, often small and medium-sized enterprises, that have recruited more than ten apprentices since April 2023.
Number of starts since April 2023 (grouped) | Number of non-levy employer accounts |
10 | 90 |
11-19 | 214 |
20-29 | 33 |
30-39 | 6 |
40-49 | 1 |
50+ | 2 |
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 18 December 2023 to Question 6458 on Special Educational Needs: County Durham, whether she is providing additional resources to Durham County Council to meet demand for Education, Health and Care plans.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
County Durham are part of the department's Delivering Better Value (DBV) programme. DBV aims to work with selected authorities to review how services are structured and delivered to achieve better outcomes for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in a sustainable way. The DBV programme achieves this by helping each of the participating local areas complete a diagnostic to work out the root causes of their challenges and identify local opportunities to sustainably improve the outcomes and experiences of the children and young people with SEND in their care.
On completion of their diagnostic, Durham created an action plan to address their key local challenges and implement service reforms; based on this the department provided grant funding of £1 million to support the delivery of their plans.
Durham County Council have also been involved with the Targeted Performance Improvement programme which has supported them with embedding Ordinarily Available Provision.
In addition, SEND funding to the Local Authority of County Durham has increased by 35% to £94 million over the past three years.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 11 December 2023 to Question 5246 on Special Educational Needs: County Durham, what interim support is available to families waiting for an Education, Health and Care plan to be issued.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Durham County Council publish information on their Local Offer outlining what support is available for children, young people and their families in County Durham. This information is available here: https://www.durham.gov.uk/localoffer. The Durham Local offer outlines Durham’s approach to Special Education Needs and Disabilities in schools and the graduated approach.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 11 December 2023 to Question 5246 on Special Educational Needs: County Durham, if he will make it his policy to conduct an investigation into why the rate of Education, Health and Care plans excluding exceptions issued within 20 weeks in County Durham reduced from 76.2% in 2021 to 29.2% in 2022.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Through the work of the department’s Regions Group, the department is working closely with Durham County Council to understand the reasons why the rate of Education, Health and Care plans excluding exceptions issued within 20 weeks has reduced. The department will work with the local area to monitor the issuing of completed plans and support them in to improving this rate.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of the (a) capacity of and (b) resources available to schools to support SEND students.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Local authorities are responsible for providing enough school places for children in their area.
The department supports local authorities to provide sufficient school places through capital funding, and the department has published over £1.5 billion of High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. This funding is allocated to local authorities to support them to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) or who require Alternative Provision (AP). This funding forms part of our transformational investment of £2.6 billion in new high needs provision between 2022 and 2025 and is on top of our ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools.
The department has begun collecting data from local authorities on available capacity in special schools, SEND units and resourced provision, along with corresponding forecasts of demand for these places. This data will help the department to effectively support local authorities to fulfil their statutory duty to provide sufficient specialist places.
Including the additional funding from the teachers’ pay additional grant, funding for the ongoing costs of mainstream schools and high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND is over £1.8 billion higher in 2024/25, compared to 2023/24. The total school’s revenue budget will be £59.6 billion in 2024/25 which is a record level in real terms per pupil.
Within this total, high needs funding is increasing to over £10.5 billion next year which is an increase of over 60% from the 2019/20 allocations.
This funding will help local authorities and schools with the costs of supporting children and young people with SEND.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average waiting time is for an Education, Health and Care plan to be completed following a Special Educational Needs and Disability referral in County Durham.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Data on the number of Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans. The latest data was published on 8 June 2023. This includes the number of EHC Plans that were issued within a 20-week timeframe in County Durham.
The department will continue to work with County Durham to monitor the issuing of completed Plans.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to p.19 of the Stable Homes, Built on Love consultation, published in February 2023, how will the investment of £9 million for training and support for kinship carers be spent.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Following on from the progress and positive impact of the peer-to-peer support contract, the department will deliver a package of training and support that all kinship carers in England can access if they wish to, regardless of whether they have a legal order in place. This will go live from Spring 2024.
The department was successful in obtaining a supplier, providing the best value for money, to deliver the training commitment made in Stable Homes, Built on Love. The department will be working with the charity Kinship to deliver this £3 million programme of training and support.
This programme will include online and face-to-face training on all aspects of kinship care.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools closed classrooms due to (a) maintenance and (b) structural issues in the last 12 months.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department will always put the safety and wellbeing of children and staff in education settings at the heart of its policy decisions. It is the responsibility of those who run our schools, academy trusts, local authorities, and voluntary-aided school bodies, who work with their schools on a day-to-day basis, to manage the maintenance of their schools. Most building and refurbishment works within schools and colleges do not involve RAAC and will not require the involvement of the Department. The Department does not therefore hold information on the number of buildings closed due to maintenance and structural issues.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding allocated to the maintenance and renewal of school buildings.
Answered by Nick Gibb
It is the responsibility of those who run schools - academy trusts, Local Authorities and voluntary-aided school bodies - to manage the safety and maintenance of their schools and to alert the Department if there is a serious concern with a building. It has always been the case that where the Department is made aware of a building may pose an immediate risk, immediate action is taken.
The Department provides extensive guidance for responsible bodies to help them make effective spending decisions and manage their estates strategically and effectively through resources such as the Good Estate Management for Schools guidance.
The 2021 Spending Review announced over £19 billion of capital funding to support the education sector between 2022/23 and 2024/25. In addition to targeted work on RAAC, the Department has continued to invest in improving the condition of the school estate, with over £15 billion allocated since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed for the 2023/24 financial year. On top of this, the Department is transforming 500 schools through the School Rebuilding Programme. A total of 400 schools have been confirmed, with 100 places reserved for later in the programme. Buildings in the poorest condition and those with evidence of potential safety issues have been prioritised, including some now known to contain RAAC. The Department is committed to the projects that have already been announced as being rebuilt or refurbished through the School Rebuilding Programme.
The Department will always put the safety and wellbeing of children and staff in education settings at the heart of its policy decisions. The Government has taken more proactive action to identify and mitigate RAAC in education settings than the devolved administrations in the UK, or indeed, governments overseas.