Asked by: Jo White (Labour - Bassetlaw)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many employers who (a) pay and (b) do not pay the apprenticeship levy started new learners on apprenticeship programmes in the 2023-24 financial year.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The below table shows the number of apprenticeship service employers accounts with apprenticeship starts in the 2023/24 academic year.
Employer Type | 2023/24 |
Levy | 13,157 |
Non-levy | 57,017 |
Total | 70,174 |
The figures are for the number of employer accounts instead of employers. An employer may have more than one apprenticeship service employer account.
Asked by: Jo White (Labour - Bassetlaw)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure all schools teach financial literacy.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Basstettlaw to the answer of 14 October 2024 to question 7255.
Asked by: Jo White (Labour - Bassetlaw)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the total underspends for the non-devolved adult education budget were in England in each year since 2018-19.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The budget and the actual spending of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) element of the Adult Education Budget from 2018/19 to 2023/24 financial year is set out in the table below. Funding to providers is allocated on an academic year and underspends are based on a financial year basis; therefore, underspends in a financial year predominantly reflect provider delivery in the preceding academic year (i.e. 2018/19 academic year is reflected in 2019/20 financial year).
The ESFA allocates grant funding to providers. Providers who underdeliver on their allocations by more than 3% will have their funding recovered through a reconciliation process (allowing providers who can over deliver to grow their allocation by up to 10%).
| Budget | Underspend |
2018/2019 | £1,347,300,000 | £3,125,005 |
|
| |
2019/2020 | £904,829,000 | -£2,710,548 |
|
| |
2020/2021 | £742,706,000 | £56,090,670 |
|
| |
2021/2022 | £701,527,000 | £115,118,943 |
|
| |
2022/2023 | £633,659,000 | £80,083,526 |
|
| |
2023/2024 | £572,004,000 | £43,192,844 |
Asked by: Jo White (Labour - Bassetlaw)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to identify children who are educated outside school.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to giving every child the best start in life, regardless of where and how they are educated. We cannot ignore the rising numbers of home-educated children and official data which shows that growing numbers of children have been moved into home education due to mental health concerns or lack of provision for special educational needs in their local schools.
Local authorities have legal duties to be satisfied that all children are receiving a suitable education. However, this duty is undermined by the fact that parents have no obligation to inform their local authority of their decision to home educate. This means that local authorities are unable to fulfil their duties. There is a risk that children are going under the radar and missing out on the education they deserve that will enable them to access the best opportunities in life.
For this reason, the government will use the Children’s Wellbeing Bill to require English local authorities to maintain registers of children not in school. Parents and certain out-of-school education providers will be required to provide information for those registers. This will help local authorities piece together a fuller and more accurate picture of those children who are receiving education otherwise than at school and target resources to locating and supporting those who are missing out on education. Local authorities will also have a duty to provide support to those home-educators who request it, which will act as an incentive for families to register.
The registers will contain information on those children who are registered on a school roll and are receiving education otherwise than at school. It will not include children who are on a school roll but failing to attend. The department is taking separate action on that important issue of persistent absence.
In terms of this new system of registration, parents can be assured that the registers will not be used to criminalise any parent who does not send their child to school. Parents who do not provide information for the registers will result in their local authority being unable to be satisfied that a child is not receiving a suitable education and so the local authority will need to proceed to a formal request for evidence about that education. If that evidence is not forthcoming, or is insufficient, this will usually lead to the local authority needing to issue a School Attendance Order. This is the same mechanism that exists in the current law; no change will be made.
The government takes the matter of data protection very seriously, including any threats to privacy and personal data. Local authorities will be legally restricted as to whom they may share register information with and for what purposes. The usual provisions of the UK-GDPR will apply to all data processing activities.
The department continues to work with local authorities on existing non-statutory registers and to collect data from those registers.
Asked by: Jo White (Labour - Bassetlaw)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what her planned timetable is for issuing contracts to the providers who have been selected to deliver the pilot teacher degree apprenticeships.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
In early 2024, the department invited applications from initial teacher training (ITT) providers and degree-awarding institutions to participate in the Teacher Degree Apprenticeship (TDA) funding pilot in secondary mathematics.
The department assessed all bids and selected eight providers to offer the pilot in March 2024. As part of the pilot, providers received a course development grant. The grant offer letters were agreed between April and July 2024.
Schools that employ trainees on their mathematics TDA courses as part of the funding pilot will receive additional grant funding to support with trainee salary costs. These grants have not yet been paid and will be distributed once candidates have been recruited to courses.
The department continues to work closely with pilot providers to monitor and support course development, candidate recruitment and delivery. The pilot will allow the department to gauge the impact of salary grant funding on recruitment to the TDA.
TDA courses are expected to be published from autumn 2024, with the first cohort of training commencing in autumn 2025.