Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to develop central commissioning guidance for clinically-based domestic violence and abuse specialists.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

In May 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care worked with the Ministry of Justice in developing central commissioning guidance for Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs) and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors (IDVAs) working in a range of settings, including healthcare. These advocates provide tailored emotional and practical support to victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse, regardless of whether the victim is reporting to the police. The guidance advises commissioners to consider how they resource and encourage ISVA and IDVA services to best serve victims' needs, for example considering additional specialised training beyond an advocate’s core role.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s statutory guidance entitled Children missing education: statutory guidance for local authorities, published August 2024, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of specifying the (a) role and (b) responsibility of local authorities for providing education to children who are absent from mainstream education due to long term illness.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Local authorities do have a statutory duty under section 19 of the Education Act 1996 to arrange suitable and (normally) full-time education for children of compulsory school age who, because of exclusion, illness or other reasons, would not receive suitable education without such provision. This means that where a child cannot attend school because of a physical or mental health need, and cannot access suitable full-time education, the local authority is responsible for arranging suitable alternative provision.

The department sets out guidance to support local authorities to fulfil their section 19 duty available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/657995f0254aaa000d050bff/Arranging_education_for_children_who_cannot_attend_school_because_of_health_needs.pdf.

The department has also issued statutory guidance for local authorities that makes clear their role and responsibilities for ’Children missing education’ which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-missing-education.

This statutory guidance sets key principles to enable local authorities in England to implement their legal duty to identify, as far as it is possible to do so, children missing education and get them back into education.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s statutory guidance entitled Children missing education - Statutory guidance for local authorities, updated August 2024, when she plans to update the guidance; and if she will make it her policy to regularly update the guidance to adapt to emerging trends and needs as indicated by new data collected.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department conducted a call for evidence from 18 May to 20 July 2023 on ‘Improving support for children missing education’ to understand the sector’s current approach to identifying and supporting children missing education (CME), and to inform any changes which will help us to improve this support.

To address current challenges in identifying and supporting CME, the department has already:

• Established an aggregate termly local authority data collection on CME to improve our understanding of the CME cohort nationally and locally.
• Held workshops and information sessions for local authorities to improve the consistency of recording of CME data.
• Held best practice webinars on CME for schools and local authorities.

Following the call for evidence, the department is reviewing its CME guidance with a view to publishing an updated version in due course.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to support schools to develop timetabling expertise in order to enable more flexible working patterns for teachers (a) who are mothers and (b) generally.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

The department is taking action to support and promote flexible working in schools for all teachers and leaders. We have published non-statutory guidance alongside our flexible working toolkit, which includes practical resources to help leaders implement flexible working and to support school staff to request it. We have also clarified the position on planning, preparation and assessment time, so that schools are aware that teachers can use this time more flexibly. This can include taking it in a single chunk of time, or working from home, where the school deems this operationally feasible.

The department is also funding support for teachers and school leaders. We are delivering a culture change programme, focused on embedding flexible working in schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs). This programme allows schools to access support to overcome the perceived or practical barriers they face to implementing flexible working. This includes peer support provided by flexible working ambassador schools and MATs, and the delivery of supportive webinars, including several specifically addressing how timetabling can support flexible working.

Our programme also offers practical support on combining flexible working with life as a parent and has a range of tailored content such as a webinar on making a flexible working request when returning from parental leave.

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department is taking steps to update the Government's loneliness strategy, entitled, A connected society: a strategy for tackling loneliness, published on 15 October 2018.

Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

The Government is committed to supporting people to have the social connections they need. This is a key part of achieving wider government priorities across health, community cohesion, and supporting young people. Rather than a standalone strategy for tackling loneliness, we are embedding this important issue in wider government strategies, including the new National Youth Strategy which is due to be released in the autumn. The National Youth Strategy will set out a new long-term vision for young people and an action plan for delivering this.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of publishing annual statistics on the number of children who miss education due to long term illness; and if she will publish statistics on the child's (a) region, (b) age, (c) ethnicity, (d) gender and (e) type of illness.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department collects data on children missing education from local authorities. The latest data, including breakdowns by geography, characteristic and length of time missing education, is published here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-missing-education/2024-25-autumn-term. This includes data by region, age, ethnicity and gender.

The department does not yet publish data on physical health or mental health as a primary reason for children missing education. However, these fields have been added to the aggregate termly local authority data collection for the first time beginning autumn 2025 and will be included in the next official statistics release.

Data on pupil absence is collected via the school census and the latest publication is here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england/2023-24. Reasons for absence are included in the publication, including the illness rate.

Bury Film Group

Changing Places Toilets Awareness Day

Antisemitism and Holocaust inversion

National Day of Memory for Victims of Honour-Based Abuse, 14 July

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Helen Hayes (Chair); Jess Asato; Mrs Sureena Brackenridge; Sir James

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Helen Hayes (Chair); Jess Asato; Mrs Sureena Brackenridge; Sir James

Found: organisations and a Parliamentary Roundtable on 21st May 2025 organised by MPP in collaboration with Jess Asato

Found: Current membership Helen Hayes (Labour; Dulwich and West Norwood) (Chair) Jess Asato (Labour; Lowestoft

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Helen Hayes (Chair); Jess Asato; Mrs Sureena Brackenridge; Amanda

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Helen Hayes (Chair); Jess Asato; Mrs Sureena Brackenridge; Sir James

Found: Jess Asato (Labour MP for Lowestoft) said that “perceiving yourself as a burden is a common phenomenon

Found: Jess Asato (Labour MP for Lowestoft) said that “perceiving yourself as a burden is a common phenomenon

Found: New clauses 5 to 7, tabled by Jess Asato (Labour, not a committee member), sought to: • create an offence

Submit Evidence (by 10 Oct 2025)

The Education Committee’s ‘early years’ inquiry will examine a number of policy issues related to workforce sustainability in the sector, access and affordability of services for parents, and quality of provision and outcomes for young children in terms of their development.