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 permits civil servants employed in the UK to work from overseas on a regular basis.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
Ministers do not permit employees to work from overseas on a regular basis. Employees are able to request an exception to work from overseas for a temporary period of time in the following limited circumstances. These include short-term situations, such as bereavement or urgent care responsibilities, where there are no alternatives, when accompanying a Civil Service partner who has been posted overseas for an agreed period of time or a UK Armed Forces or Ministry of Defence civilian partner on an overseas posting, or when working in an official capacity on departmental business.
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 has spent on advertising on podcasts in each of the last three years.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
This information is not held in the requested format.
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 permits (1) Ministers, (2) Special advisers and (3) officials to use (a) Chat GPT, (b) Google Gemini, (c) Claude, (d) Deepseek and (e) Grok as part of their official duties.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The government is committed to harnessing the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the productivity of the Civil Service and the quality of public services. Ministers, special advisers and officials may only use generative AI tools that have been approved by their department for official use.
Within the department, colleagues are encouraged to use Microsoft Copilot Chat as the approved enterprise chatbot. Claude is also sanctioned for use by a limited number of technical staff. These tools are configured to ensure departmental data is held securely and is not used to train publicly available AI models.
The use of publicly available or consumer versions of generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek is not permitted for use with departmental information.
The use of generative AI across government is governed by the AI Playbook for the UK Government, which set out the principles for the safe, responsible and effective use of these tools.
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 recent steps she has taken to support SEND pupils in Lincolnshire with their studies.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department and NHS England have been supporting the Local Area Partnership (LAP) in Lincolnshire to improve its special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) services through the development of their strategic plan, with regular engagement meetings. The LAP is currently developing their SEND reform plan, commissioned by the department in March 2026, and due for submission in June 2026.
From September, the government is providing upfront investment for schools, colleges and early years providers to intervene early in meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND, through our inclusive mainstream fund worth £1.6 billion over three years.
In addition, every local area is being funded to create a new Experts at Hand service, providing mainstream education settings with access to healthcare professionals like speech and language therapists and education experts such as educational psychologists to work directly with children and support staff to put in place appropriate support and interventions.
We will roll out a new national training programme supporting educators to identify and respond to children’s needs backed by £200 million investment, to train staff across nurseries, schools and colleges with the first wave of training materials coming online from September.
This is supported by investment to create an additional 60,000 school places for children with SEND through inclusion bases, new special or alternative provision school places and adaptations to mainstream, ensuring appropriate education facilities for all our children.
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 estimate her Department has made of the number of additional teachers funded in Lincolnshire with the proceeds from VAT on school fees.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
Reforms to VAT and business rates will raise around £1.8 billion a year by 2029/30, helping to deliver the government’s commitments relating to education and young people. This measure will raise essential revenue that will be invested in our public services, including the £1.7 billion increase to the core schools budget in 2026/27, taking total funding to £67 billion. This increase will support schools to recruit the staff they need, including in Lincolnshire.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will provide a list of training programmes used by civil servants in her department since 2020.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department offers a wide range of training and development opportunities to our employees across a broad curriculum. The majority of this training is delivered through the cross‑government Civil Service Learning platform, which can be accessed at Skills for Government here: https://prospectus.governmentcampus.co.uk/find-out-more/skills-for-government/.
Core learning areas accessed by the department include:
• Planning and delivery
• Leadership
• Communication
• Working with Parliament and government
• Grant management
• Problem solving
• Line management
• Developing behaviours
• Information, data and analysis
• Change management and agility
• Budget management
• Contract management
• Stakeholder and customer engagement
• IT software skills
• Artificial intelligence.
In addition, directorates and professional functions across the department commission or access bespoke training where required to meet specialist, technical or role‑specific 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 used artificial intelligence to assist with drafting (a) legislation and (b) policy in the last 12 months.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department recognises the opportunities for productivity and efficiency enabled by effective deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). Any use of AI is undertaken in line with relevant government guidance on security and transparency, and under appropriate oversight. The department has made proportionate use of AI‑enabled tools to support tasks such as information retrieval and summarisation. These tools are used to assist officials and do not replace decision making or professional expertise
The drafting of primary and secondary legislation is often the responsibility of a large number of officials across government departments. A range of tools are used to assist with this drafting, including AI which is most commonly used to check, critique, and otherwise interrogate drafts.
While AI can be used to assist with the drafting of legislation, the production of the draft remains the responsibility of a lead human drafter to meet the high standards expected of government legislation.
All secondary legislation is subject to established governance arrangements and are drafted and finalised under the responsibility of qualified lawyers.
It is Parliament's responsibility to scrutinise and amend legislation as it sees necessary.
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 it is her Department's policy that (a) Ministers and (b) special advisers use the disappearing messages function on Whatsapp on Government devices.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department requires ministers and officials to follow the Non-Corporate Communications Channels (NCCCs) Guidance issued by the Government Digital Service: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-corporate-communication-channels-for-government-business.
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 ensure access for pre-school children with additional needs to nursery places in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The government wants every child, including those with additional needs, to be able to access a childcare setting where they can get the best start in life. The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms we announced in February will give early years settings the training, evidence-based tools and expert input they need to welcome children with diverse needs into their settings and provide the right support from day one. We are investing over £200 million to strengthen the SEND offer in Best Start Family Hubs, including funding a family-facing practitioner in every hub to join up support across early years settings, health visitors and SEND teams. The Best Start Family Hubs will begin rolling out in April 2026.
Alongside this, the department will work with local authorities, including local authority officers in Lincolnshire County Council, to strengthen their childcare sufficiency planning for children with SEND and improve data on the availability of suitable places, giving parents greater confidence that their children can access the early education and childcare they are entitled to.
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 staff within her Department are reliant on a visa for employment.
Answered by Olivia Bailey
The department currently sponsors 28 individuals on a Skilled Worker visa through a Certificate of Sponsorship.