Asked by: Jane Stevenson (Conservative - Wolverhampton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support is available for full-time further education students seeking apprenticeship opportunities.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Apprenticeships provide people with the opportunity to earn and learn the skills needed to start an exciting career in a wide range of industries, everything from artificial intelligence, archaeology, data science, business management, and banking. We want more young people to benefit from high-quality apprenticeships.
To encourage more young people to consider apprenticeships, we are promoting apprenticeships in schools and colleges through our Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge programme. This free service provides resources and interventions to help better educate young people about apprenticeships and has reached over 600,000 students across England in the 2020/21 academic year.
In the ‘Skills for Jobs’ White Paper, published in January 2021, we announced the introduction of a three-point-plan to enforce provider access legislation. This requires that all maintained schools and academies provide opportunities for providers of technical education and apprenticeships to visit schools to talk to all year 8-13 pupils. This plan includes creating clear minimum legal requirements, specifying who is to be given access to which pupils and when. This is an important step towards real choice for every pupil.
We are introducing a range of measures to incentivise schools and colleges to prioritise careers guidance and hold them to account for the quality of their careers programmes. In addition to a strong statutory framework, this includes tougher enforcement and an Ofsted review of provision. To build a whole-school or whole-college approach, we will build careers awareness into every stage of teacher professional development and embed careers education into the secondary curriculum.
The National Careers Service, a free, government-funded careers information, advice and guidance service draws on a range of labour market information to support and guide individuals. The National Careers Service is impartial, and careers guidance is tailored to individual needs. Young people aged 13 to 18 can access ongoing in-depth information, advice and guidance from the service via local telephone-based advisers or the National Careers Service website.
The department offers guidance and support to young people who are considering applying for apprenticeships through our apprenticeships.gov.uk website, which explains the application stages in a step-by-step process. Students can search for new apprenticeship opportunities on our Find an Apprenticeship (FAA) service; over 15,000 apprenticeship vacancies were advertised on FAA in October 2021.
Asked by: Jane Stevenson (Conservative - Wolverhampton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will extend the use of covid-19 home testing kits to childminders.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is continuing to work closely with colleagues across government and local authorities to secure the most effective approach to asymptomatic testing for the whole of the early years sector. This includes ongoing discussions about providing testing via the education testing programme, as well as encouraging local authorities to prioritise appropriate testing for private voluntary and independent nurseries and childminders via the Community Testing Programme wherever possible. This is now available to all local authorities.
Asked by: Jane Stevenson (Conservative - Wolverhampton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to roll out lateral flow tests to childminders and early years settings.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is continuing to work closely with other government departments and local authorities to secure the most effective approach to asymptomatic testing for the whole of the early years sector. This includes ongoing discussions about providing testing via the education testing programme as well as strongly encouraging local authorities to prioritise appropriate testing for early years staff via Community Testing programmes, which now covers all local authorities. Many local authorities’ Community Testing programmes are already underway for early years staff to access asymptomatic testing where appropriate.
The Department is rolling out our asymptomatic testing programme to primary schools, schools-based nurseries and maintained nursery schools who will receive testing kits for staff from Monday 18th January. The asymptomatic testing programme will offer all primary school, schools-based nursery and maintained nursery school staff home Lateral Flow Device test kits for twice weekly testing. This will help to break the chains of transmission of COVID-19 in primary schools and nurseries by identifying asymptomatic positive cases. Those who test positive will then self-isolate, helping to reduce transmission of the virus.
Asked by: Jane Stevenson (Conservative - Wolverhampton North East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with awarding bodies on easing coursework requirements for A Level students during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government has been working closely with Ofqual and the exam boards on the approach to GCSE, AS and A level exams and assessments in 2021, to ensure that exams go ahead next year and students receive the qualifications they deserve. In August, Ofqual published a number of subject-level changes to exam and assessment requirements for A levels next year, including for non-exam assessment, in order to free up teaching time and take account of public health considerations.
On 12 October, the Government confirmed that no further subject-level changes to exams and assessments will be made for GCSEs, AS and A levels.
In confirming these changes, we are giving teachers, school and college leaders and students clarity on what will be assessed in exams next summer.
Students taking A levels in the autumn exam series will not be assessed on the basis of any non-exam assessment, including coursework, with the exception of those taking art and design qualifications.