Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has considered including supported internship provision in Skills England.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity, so that every young person can follow the pathway that is right for them. The department recognises that high-quality supported internships are an important pathway to improve the life chances of young people with special educational needs and disabilities by supporting them into sustained, paid employment. As an executive agency of the Department for Education, Skills England will work across government to ensure that there are clear education and training pathways. It will do this by engaging employers and other partners to identify skills gaps in key sectors and using this insight to drive improvements in the skills offer to boost economic growth.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding available to schools to purchase Adrenaline Autoinjector Pens for pupils with allergies.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a duty on maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units to make arrangements for supporting pupils with medical conditions. The accompanying statutory guidance ‘Supporting pupils with medical conditions at school’ makes clear to schools what is expected of them in taking reasonable steps to fulfil their legal obligations and to meet the individual needs of pupils with medical conditions, including allergies. The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3.
Overall schools funding will total £65.3 billion in 2025/26 compared to £61.6 billion in 2024/25. This represents an increase of £3.7 billion for mainstream schools and young people with high needs in 2025/26 compared to 2024/25.
The Spending Review reaffirmed the government’s commitment to children and young people. It announced that core schools funding, including investment in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), will rise to £69.5 billion by 2028/29.
Our overall investment in schools funding is a critical step forward in our mission to support all children and young people to achieve and thrive and will support teachers and leaders to deliver high and rising standards across every school and for every pupil, including those with SEND.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that apprenticeship opportunities are made more widely available for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government has a driving mission to break down barriers to opportunity. As part of this, we want to ensure that more people from disadvantaged backgrounds can undertake apprenticeships.
The department continues to pay additional funding to employers and training providers to support them to take on young apprentices, apprentices with learning difficulties and disabilities, and care leavers.
The department has begun work to develop new foundation apprenticeships, providing high quality entry pathways for young people. We will engage with relevant stakeholders to inform our thinking to maximise the positive impact on young people, including those in disadvantaged areas. More detail on foundation apprenticeships will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Sutton Trust’s Closing the Attainment Gap report, published on 22 February 2024, what recent assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of expanding free school meal eligibility to all children on Universal Credit.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is driving an agenda of change to break down the barriers to opportunity and to reduce child poverty, working across local and national government.
Child poverty has increased by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low income family. That is why the government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, tackling the root causes, and giving every child the best start at life. To support this, a new Ministerial taskforce has been set up to develop a Child Poverty Strategy, which will be published in the spring.
The department is also committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity so that all children have the freedom to achieve and thrive in education. To support this aim, the government is committed to introducing free breakfast clubs in every primary school to set children up for the day and ensure they are ready to learn, while supporting parents and carers to work.
Disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools, as well as 16 to 18-year-old students in further education (FE), are entitled to receive free meals on the basis of low income. 2.1 million disadvantaged pupils are registered to receive free school meals (FSM) and a further 90,000 are registered to receive FE free meals. In addition, all children in reception, year 1 and year 2 in England's state-funded schools are entitled to Universal Infant Free School Meals, which benefits around 1.3 million pupils.
As with all government programmes, we will keep our approach to FSM under review.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Sutton Trust’s Inequality in early years education report, published on 24 January 2024, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of establishing a national strategy for the reinvigoration of children’s centres.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government’s Opportunity Mission aims to give all children the best start in life, breaking the link between young people’s background and future success.
This means supporting strong family relationships and stable home environments, providing access to family services that provide the right help at the right time, alongside quality early education.
Family hubs do great work to help families access vital services. The Autumn Budget 2024 included an announcement of £69 million to continue delivery of the existing network of family hubs for 2025/26. More than 400 family hubs opened under the existing programme, targeted at the most disadvantaged areas.
The department’s long term intention is to reform the early years system and improve family services to provide the foundation of opportunity and improved life chances for children.
The department is considering how best to achieve these aims under the terms of the subsequent muti-year spending review.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report entitled Social Selection on the Map, published by the Sutton Trust on 3 September 2024, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of (a) reviewing existing admissions code policies and (b) making Pupil Premium eligibility a required part of schools’ oversubscription criteria.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department has no current plans to make eligibility for the pupil premium a mandatory oversubscription criteria in school admission arrangements.
However, through the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, the department is planning to legislate on requiring all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions, special educational needs and disabilities inclusion and place planning, by giving local authorities greater powers to help them deliver their functions on school admissions and ensure admissions decisions account for the needs of communities.
We expect this will require taking forward changes to the School Admissions Code. As part of this, the department will also consider any wider changes necessary to ensure fair access to school for all. Any changes to the Code will require a statutory process, including a full public consultation and parliamentary approval.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
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 increasing the parental income thresholds used to determine the level of support for maintenance loans.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department needs to ensure that the student funding system is financially sustainable. The department recognises the impact that the cost-of-living crisis has had on students, which is why the highest levels of support are targeted at students with household incomes of £25,000 or less.
For the 2025/26 academic year, the department will be increasing loans for living costs by 3.1%, which is in line with the forecast rate of inflation based on the RPI All Items Excl Mortgage Interest (RPIX) inflation measure. Vulnerable groups of students eligible for benefits, such as lone parents and some disabled students, qualify for higher rates of loans for living costs. This ensures that most support is targeted at students from the lowest income families, while keeping the student finance system financially sustainable.
There is much more to do to expand access and improve outcomes for disadvantaged students. That is why the department has announced that it expects the higher education sector to do more to support students by working with the government and the Office for Students and by making the most of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. The department will be setting out longer term plans for the sector next year.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
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 extending the pupil premium to post-16 institutions.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department believes further education has a crucial part to play in ensuring the UK has the skills needed for sustainable economic growth. A range of options and priorities will be considered to secure a sustainable and adequate funding of post-16 institutions and learners as part of the next stage of the spending review, which is expected to conclude in late spring 2025.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase funding for skills-based education in Nuneaton constituency.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to offering skills training to learners to help them acquire the necessary skills for employment or further training. The Adult Skills Fund (ASF), previously the Adult Education Budget (AEB), is worth £1.34 billion this academic year and fully funds or co-funds education and skills training for eligible adults aged 19 and over.
In 2024/25, as part of the AEB transition to the ASF, the department introduced five new funding rates, which has seen 78% of qualifications funded through the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The department is investing in level 3 learning via the ‘free courses for jobs’ offer, which allows eligible learners to access a high value level 3 qualification for free. An additional funding uplift is paid by the department, at two different rates, for providers that offer a wide range of sector subjects.
The total ASF allocation for a provider in the Nuneaton constituency for the 2024/25 academic year is approximately £4.6 million. More information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/funding-allocations-to-training-providers-2024-to-2025.
Over £7.5 billion in 16 to 19 programme funding will be invested during the 2024/25 academic year as part of the department’s drive for all young people to access high quality education and training that meets their needs and helps them to thrive. My right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced at Budget a further boost of £300 million in the 2025/26 financial year for further education (FE) to ensure young people are developing the skills they need to succeed and a further £300 million to support colleges to maintain, improve and ensure suitability of their estate.
Information on 16 to 19 funding allocations received by institutions in Nuneaton is available in the published allocations, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/funding-education-for-16-to-19-year-olds#published-allocations.
For the 2023/24 academic year, 16 to 19 funded institutions in the Nuneaton constituency were allocated £31.23 million in 16 to 19 funding. This includes high needs student funding, student support funding and funding for the FE teachers pension scheme employer contribution grant. For the 2024/25 academic year, they received £33.96 million. This is an increase of £2.73 million, or 8.7%.
Asked by: Jodie Gosling (Labour - Nuneaton)
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 (a) ensuring that academy schools publish full SEND information reports and (b) sanctioning schools that do not.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Maintained and Academy schools are required to publish special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) information reports according to the Children and Families Act 2014, s69. The specific information required is set out in the SEND regulations 2014 and the SEND code of practice, which can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/6/part/3 and here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-code-of-practice-0-to-25.
The department welcomes the publication of the response to the Big Listen, which stated that Ofsted will consult on introducing a new inspection judgement area for inclusion across education settings. The department will continue to work with Ofsted to consider how outcomes for children and young people with SEND, or in alternative provision, are better reflected in the Education Inspection and the Area SEND inspection frameworks.