Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of reducing funding for (a) journalism, (b) media studies, (c) publishing and (d) information services courses on (i) their commercial viability and (ii) trends in numbers of students studying those courses.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
I refer the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington to the answer of 16 July 2025 to Question 63373.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data she used to inform her decision to remove high-cost subject funding from (a) journalism, (b) media studies, (c) publishing and (d) information services.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
I refer the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington to the answer of 16 July 2025 to Question 63373.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it her policy to reverse her decision to reduce funding for (a) journalism and (b) media-related courses.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
I refer the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington to the answer of 16 July 2025 to Question 63373.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much and what proportion of the Strategic Priorities Grant was allocated to (a) journalism and (b) other related courses in each of the last five years.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government provides funding through the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) on an annual basis to support teaching and students in higher education (HE). The department is prioritising support for high-cost subjects that are essential to the delivery of our industrial strategy and for access to HE for disadvantaged groups.
Funding for all subjects, including journalism, will benefit from the increase in tuition fee limits in line with inflation.
Journalism remains an important and valued subject, and the government acknowledges its importance, alongside numerous other subjects that do not attract SPG high-cost subject funding, such as history, languages, economics, mathematics and law.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many higher education providers received Strategic Priorities Grant funding for journalism courses in each year since 2019.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government provides funding through the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) on an annual basis to support teaching and students in higher education (HE). The department is prioritising support for high-cost subjects that are essential to the delivery of our industrial strategy and for access to HE for disadvantaged groups.
Funding for all subjects, including journalism, will benefit from the increase in tuition fee limits in line with inflation.
Journalism remains an important and valued subject, and the government acknowledges its importance, alongside numerous other subjects that do not attract SPG high-cost subject funding, such as history, languages, economics, mathematics and law.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding was allocated to journalism courses through the Strategic Priorities Grant in each of the last five years.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government provides funding through the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) on an annual basis to support teaching and students in higher education (HE). The department is prioritising support for high-cost subjects that are essential to the delivery of our industrial strategy and for access to HE for disadvantaged groups.
Funding for all subjects, including journalism, will benefit from the increase in tuition fee limits in line with inflation.
Journalism remains an important and valued subject, and the government acknowledges its importance, alongside numerous other subjects that do not attract SPG high-cost subject funding, such as history, languages, economics, mathematics and law.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of planned disability benefit changes on rates of school readiness.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The ‘Pathways to Work’ green paper, published in March 2025, sets out plans and proposals to reform health and disability benefits and employment support. The reforms will ensure the most vulnerable and severely disabled people are protected while ensuring everyone who can work receives the active support they need. This includes an extra £1 billion for personalised health, skills and employment support for sick and disabled people. The department knows that good work brings higher incomes, dignity and can significantly reduce the chances of falling into poverty.
The reforms to disability benefit were part of a wider range of reforms, and so the specific impact on school readiness has not been assessed.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate she has made of the total cost to the public purse for removing (a) RAAC and (b) asbestos from schools in England in the (i) 2022-23, (ii) 2023-24 and (iii) 2024-25 financial years.
Answered by Damian Hinds
Well maintained, safe school buildings are a priority for the department to support a high-quality education for all children. Responsibility for keeping buildings safe and well maintained lies with schools and their responsible bodies, such as local authorities, academy trusts and voluntary-aided (VA) bodies. The department supports responsible bodies by providing capital funding, delivering major rebuilding programmes and offering guidance and support.
The government is funding the permanent removal of RAAC present in schools and colleges either through capital grants, or through the School Rebuilding Programme. The 2021 Spending Review announced a total of £19 billion of capital funding to support the education sector between the 2022/23 and 2024/25 financial years. Funding for RAAC during this spending period will be managed from unallocated departmental capital budgets and will not involve cutting existing commitments.
The scope and cost of each RAAC project will vary depending on the extent of the issue and nature and design of the buildings. The department is working with settings to conduct the necessary technical assessments as quickly as possible to scope and progress the works needed. The total costs will not be known until all building works have been carried out.
With regard to asbestos, the department expects all local authorities, governing bodies, and academy trusts to have robust plans in place to manage any asbestos in school buildings effectively, in line with their legal duties. The department follows advice from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that as long as asbestos is in good condition, well protected and unlikely to be damaged or disturbed, it is usually safer to manage in place.
In many cases, asbestos will be removed as part of wider rebuilding or refurbishment work and annual condition funding can be used to remove asbestos where required. The department has allocated over £17 billion since 2015 for keeping schools safe and operational, including £1.8 billion in each year of the 2021 Spending Review period. Decisions on spending are primarily taken locally by responsible bodies, so the department does not hold data on the total cost of spend on asbestos removal. Where asbestos needs to be removed as part of work to mitigate RAAC, based on professional advice, the department will work closely with responsible bodies to help them do so.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional funding has been made available to further education colleges since their reclassification as public sector organisations in November 2022.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department is investing an additional £185 million in the 2023/24 financial year and £285 million in the 2024/25 financial year to drive forward skills delivery in the further education sector. This funding is to help colleges and other providers to address their key priorities, particularly tackling recruitment and retention issues in high-value subject areas that are critical to the economy.
The above investment is in addition to the £125 million of funding made available in the 2023/24 financial year to boost the national 16 to 19 funding rate and subject-specific funding.
In the 2023/24 academic year, the department is applying a 2.2% increase to the final earnings for all adult education budget (AEB) formula-funded provision, excluding associated learner and learning support. In addition, the department is applying a 20% boost on top of earnings for all AEB formula-funded provision in six sector subject areas, including: Engineering, Manufacturing Technologies, Transport Operations and Maintenance, Building and Construction, ICT for Practitioners, and Mathematics and Statistics.
The department will make an initial downpayment over the next two years ahead of introducing the Advanced British Standard, with funding benefiting further education as follows:
- An additional investment of around £150 million each year to support those who do not pass mathematics and English GCSE at 16 to gain these qualifications. This will particularly benefit further education colleges, who play a vital role in helping close the attainment gap by 19.
- An increase in funding to colleges and schools so they can deliver maths to more students aged over 16, increasing the Core Maths and Advanced Maths Premium and investing in a digital platform for tutoring in Core Maths. In total this is £60 million of additional funding for maths education over the next two years of which further education institutions will potentially be able to benefit from the Core Maths Premium and Advanced Maths Premium.
- To improve the recruitment and retention of teachers of key shortage subjects around £100 million will be invested each year to double the rates of the Levelling Up Premium and expand it to cover all further education colleges. All teachers who are in the first five years of their career, teaching shortage subjects and working in disadvantaged schools and all further education colleges, will be paid up to £6,000 per year tax-free.
Since reclassification, £884 million of capital funding has been confirmed for further education colleges and designated institutions to fund condition improvement, expansion and the provision of specialist equipment and facilities. Some capital programmes have wider eligibility to also include sixth form colleges and other statutory sixth form providers.
The department has also opened the college capital loans scheme in April to enable capital projects reliant on commercial borrowing to proceed as planned.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools in England have been built using Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC); and what steps she is taking to test the structural integrity of those buildings.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is in the process of gathering information from responsible bodies of all schools, asking them to complete a questionnaire on the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in their premises.
The Department published updated guidance on RAAC in December 2022 and has appointed three leading structural surveying firms to investigate all cases of suspected RAAC. The Department is supporting responsible bodies to undertake this and their consultant structural engineers with assessing and managing RAAC in their estates. Where RAAC is confirmed, the Department helps access appropriate support through existing departmental programmes.