Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on bringing new carers into the sector and stopping carers exiting the sector.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to improving standards across the foster care sector and is taking steps to improve the recruitment and retention of foster carers, which is critical to improving outcomes for children.
The department’s action plan to renew fostering, backed by £88 million over the next two years, sets out the urgent steps we are taking to reverse the decline in foster carers and reform the system. 14 regional hubs are moving towards end-to-end recruitment from September, backed by £12 million in transformation funding. Our Room Makers programme will provide up to £25 million to add additional capacity to existing loving foster homes. We have launched a £12.4 million innovation programme, and enhanced digital tools and a communications campaign will launch in the autumn.
The government is currently consulting on revised national fostering standards to ensure children and foster families receive consistently high-quality support. Alongside this, the department continues to support and invest in the rollout of the Mockingbird model, while drawing on programme data and feedback from fostering services and carers to assess its impact on children, placement stability and carer support.
We recognise the benefits Mockingbird can offer in building peer support, stability and resilience for fostering families and will continue to promote effective practice across the sector.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what further steps her Department has taken to evaluate the Mockingbird fostering model since the 2020 evaluation by her Department.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to improving standards across the foster care sector and is taking steps to improve the recruitment and retention of foster carers, which is critical to improving outcomes for children.
The department’s action plan to renew fostering, backed by £88 million over the next two years, sets out the urgent steps we are taking to reverse the decline in foster carers and reform the system. 14 regional hubs are moving towards end-to-end recruitment from September, backed by £12 million in transformation funding. Our Room Makers programme will provide up to £25 million to add additional capacity to existing loving foster homes. We have launched a £12.4 million innovation programme, and enhanced digital tools and a communications campaign will launch in the autumn.
The government is currently consulting on revised national fostering standards to ensure children and foster families receive consistently high-quality support. Alongside this, the department continues to support and invest in the rollout of the Mockingbird model, while drawing on programme data and feedback from fostering services and carers to assess its impact on children, placement stability and carer support.
We recognise the benefits Mockingbird can offer in building peer support, stability and resilience for fostering families and will continue to promote effective practice across the sector.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of expanding the Mockingbird Programme.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to improving standards across the foster care sector and is taking steps to improve the recruitment and retention of foster carers, which is critical to improving outcomes for children.
The department’s action plan to renew fostering, backed by £88 million over the next two years, sets out the urgent steps we are taking to reverse the decline in foster carers and reform the system. 14 regional hubs are moving towards end-to-end recruitment from September, backed by £12 million in transformation funding. Our Room Makers programme will provide up to £25 million to add additional capacity to existing loving foster homes. We have launched a £12.4 million innovation programme, and enhanced digital tools and a communications campaign will launch in the autumn.
The government is currently consulting on revised national fostering standards to ensure children and foster families receive consistently high-quality support. Alongside this, the department continues to support and invest in the rollout of the Mockingbird model, while drawing on programme data and feedback from fostering services and carers to assess its impact on children, placement stability and carer support.
We recognise the benefits Mockingbird can offer in building peer support, stability and resilience for fostering families and will continue to promote effective practice across the sector.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve standards across the foster care sector.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to improving standards across the foster care sector and is taking steps to improve the recruitment and retention of foster carers, which is critical to improving outcomes for children.
The department’s action plan to renew fostering, backed by £88 million over the next two years, sets out the urgent steps we are taking to reverse the decline in foster carers and reform the system. 14 regional hubs are moving towards end-to-end recruitment from September, backed by £12 million in transformation funding. Our Room Makers programme will provide up to £25 million to add additional capacity to existing loving foster homes. We have launched a £12.4 million innovation programme, and enhanced digital tools and a communications campaign will launch in the autumn.
The government is currently consulting on revised national fostering standards to ensure children and foster families receive consistently high-quality support. Alongside this, the department continues to support and invest in the rollout of the Mockingbird model, while drawing on programme data and feedback from fostering services and carers to assess its impact on children, placement stability and carer support.
We recognise the benefits Mockingbird can offer in building peer support, stability and resilience for fostering families and will continue to promote effective practice across the sector.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of free-school meals on children in Ilford South constituency; and whether she has considered trialling Free School Meals to children in secondary schools.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity and tackling child poverty. We have announced that free school meals will be extended to all children from households in receipt of Universal Credit from September 2026, lifting 100,000 children across England out of poverty and putting £500 per child back in families’ pockets as set out in our Child Poverty Strategy.
Providing over half a million disadvantaged children with a free, nutritious meal each day supports higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes. This expansion ensures funding is targeted where it is most needed, supporting pupils from low-income families.
The department does not routinely assess the impact of free school meals at constituency level, but national evidence shows the positive effect they have on pupils’ attainment, wellbeing and readiness to learn.
Free school meals are also available to eligible pupils and all infant pupils, alongside programmes such as the Holiday Activities and Food programme.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve the nutritional quality of grab and go style foods in schools.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The School Food Standards set the mandatory nutritional framework for food and drink provided in state‑funded schools in England. They are designed to ensure children receive the energy and nutrients they need during the school day, while giving schools flexibility to design menus that work for their pupils and local circumstances.
Since the School Food Standards were introduced in 2014, the dietary recommendations on free sugar, fibre and sweeteners have changed and the proportion of children living with obesity is high. The department is committed to raising the healthiest generation ever, so we are consulting on proposed updates to the School Food Standards in England to ensure that all food served at school, including ‘grab and go’ options, better reflects current nutritional guidance and support children’s health, wellbeing and learning. The consultation is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/school-food-standards-updating-the-legislative-framework.
As part of our proposals, we are proposing that ‘grab and go’ options must also contain or be accompanied by vegetables or salad.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to respond to the consultation entitled Government Statistical Service Harmonisation: Assessing user needs for additional response options for the new ethnicity harmonisation standard.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The Government Statistical Service ethnicity consultation has been promoted across the department’s analytical community. While individual staff may submit responses in their own capacity, the department is gathering input from data collection, statistical publication and policy teams to inform any collective contribution it may make to the consultation.
The department welcomes the opportunity to input into updated harmonised standards and expects to implement them across departmental data collections and statistics where appropriate in due course.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department classifies (a) Sikhs and (b) Jews as (i) an ethnic and (ii) a religious group.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department collects information on the ethnicity of pupils annually through the spring school census, in line with the harmonised standards set by the Office for National Statistics and the Government Statistical Service.
The department publishes the data code sets that must be used when submitting information as part of the Common Basic Data Set (CBDS). The CBDS ethnicity code set does not include separate categories for Sikhs or Jews.
The department does not collect information on pupils’ religion.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools reported deepfake intimate image abuse in 2024-25.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Schools are under no obligation to report data on deepfake intimate image abuse to the department.
The department’s statutory safeguarding guidance, 'Keeping children safe in education', which supports schools and colleges to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, includes robust advice on how to protect pupils online. The guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many Sikhs are employed in her Department; and whether they are recorded as (a) an ethnic or (b) a religious group.
Answered by Janet Daby
According to the latest published Civil Service Statistics, as at 31 March 2024, 140 staff in the department, including associated executive agencies, recorded their religion as Sikh. These figures are published in Table A3 of the Civil Service Statistics 2024, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/civil-service-statistics-2024.
Updated data as at 31 March 2025 is due to be published by the Cabinet Office in July 2025.
Those who are recorded as ‘Sikh’ are captured in the department’s HR system under ‘Religion’, not as an ethnic group.