Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much the Education and Skills Funding Agency spent on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Janet Daby
The department and its executive agencies, including the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), only provide equipment for home working in the case of a workplace adjustment related to a disability and which the Equality Act requires us to support.
Departmental spend over the last three years, which includes ESFA spend, on equipment which exceeded £500:
Financial Year | Total spend on equipment exceeding £500 |
2022/23 | £28,103.73 |
2023/24 | £53,675.59 |
2024/25 | £46,576 |
To obtain comprehensive data which includes spending on equipment below £500 for each of the last three years, it would be necessary to contact individual teams across the department and agencies, which would not be possible within the timeframe for responding to a PQ, and would incur a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much the Standards and Testing Agency has spent on equipment to enable staff to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Janet Daby
The Standards and Testing Agency (STA) is an executive agency of the department and follows our policies on hybrid working and the purchase of equipment for use at home.
The department has set an expectation that colleagues spend at least 60% of their working time in the office or another work setting. Employees who work from home as part of a flexible arrangement, and not as part of a contractual arrangement, are expected to have access to a suitable workspace and equipment at their own cost. The exception to this would be equipment recommended as a part of a reasonable adjustment following an occupational health assessment, but such equipment would be charged to a central departmental budget rather than to STA.
STA has no recorded expenditure on equipment to enable staff to work from home in any of the last three financial years.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to increase the level of support available to help schools meet the needs of pupils with learning disabilities in South Holland and the Deepings constituency.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The department wants to drive a consistent and inclusive approach to supporting children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to achieve and thrive in mainstream settings through early identification, effective support, high-quality teaching and effective allocation of resources.
We are engaging extensively with stakeholders, including our Expert Advisory Group for Inclusion, on the best ways to drive inclusive practice and how to improve mainstream education outcomes and experiences for children and young people with SEND.
Details of the government's intended approach to SEND reform will be set out in a Schools White Paper in the autumn.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of fines that were issued to parents for unauthorised school absence in (a) South Holland District Council and (b) South Kesteven District Council in the last 12 months.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The information is not held by the department at local authority district level.
Information on penalty notices for unauthorised absence is collected at local authority level. The latest available data, covering the 2023/24 academic year, is available in the parental responsibility measures statistical release, which can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/parental-responsibility-measures/2023-24.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department spent on equipment for civil servants to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Janet Daby
The department does not hold a complete central record of all spending on equipment to support home working. Information is only centrally recorded where the individual costs exceed £500.
The department spent the following over the last three years on equipment which exceeded £500:
Financial year | Total spend on equipment exceeding £500 |
2022/23 | £28,103.73 |
2023/24 | £53,675.59 |
2024/25 | £46,576 |
To obtain comprehensive data which included spend on equipment below £500 for each of the last three years, it would be necessary to contact individual teams across the department, which would not be possible within the timeframe for responding to a Written Parliamentary Question, and would incur a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to support the introduction of more vocational education pathways for students in Lincolnshire.
Answered by Janet Daby
As announced in the Spending Review, the department is making over £1 billion of additional investment per year in skills by 2028/29.
This will support and grow the wide range of technical routes and work-based training available for people of all ages, across the country including in Cambridgeshire. This includes:
We have also strengthened legislation to ensure all secondary pupils have multiple opportunities for meaningful encounters with providers of technical education and apprenticeships.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to ensure improved access to schooling for children with (a) visual and (b) hearing impairments in South Holland and the Deepings constituency.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision sits with local authorities. The department provides local authorities with capital funding to support them to meet this duty and has published allocations for £740 million in High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for the 2025/26 financial year.
Of this £740 million, Lincolnshire Council has been allocated £10.3 million. This funding can be used to improve access to schooling for children and young people with a variety of SEND, including visual and hearing impairments. It is intended to adapt schools to be more accessible, to create specialist facilities within mainstream schools that can deliver more intensive support adapted to suit the pupils’ needs and to create special school places for pupils with the most complex needs.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential contribution of school food procurement to the resilience of the (a) fruit and (b) vegetable supply chain.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The new national procurement policy statement sets out requirements for government contracts, favouring products certified to high environmental standards that we think British producers operating to high standards are well-placed to meet.
We are engaging with stakeholders on revising the school food standards to ensure the guidance supports our work to create the healthiest generation of children in history. The current standards state one or more portions of vegetables as an accompaniment and one or more portions of fruit must be provided every day, as well as at least three different fruits and three different vegetables each week. As with all aspects of the school food standards review, we will consider our approach to fruit and vegetable provision.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many Young Futures Hubs she plans to create in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.
Answered by Janet Daby
The government has committed to the creation of a new Young Futures Programme, which will establish a network of Young Futures Hubs and Young Futures Prevention Partnerships. Young Futures Hubs will bring together services to improve access to opportunities and support for young people at community level, promoting positive outcomes and enabling them to thrive.
To roll out Young Futures Hubs, building on the success of existing infrastructure and provision, the government will establish a number of early adopter hubs, the locations of which will be determined by where they will have the most impact. These early adopters and work in local areas and will inform the longer-term development of the programme, including how quickly we move to a greater number of hubs and where they may be located.
The government will set out more details on timelines and locations in due course.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many students from overseas have come from countries where there are travel restrictions for people with security clearance by country of origin.
Answered by Janet Daby
The department does not collect this information.