Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many enforcement actions have been initiated by her Department for contravention of the Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2010 section 5 since 2015.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2010 were replaced by the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, which came into force on 5 January 2015 and set out more demanding standards that independent schools must meet. Standard 5 places requirements on schools on pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
The Department commissions Ofsted or one of the approved independent inspectorates to inspect independent schools and report on whether or not they are meeting the standards. Where a school fails to meet the standards, the Department issues a statutory notice requiring an action plan to rectify the failings. In nearly all cases the school improves to meet the standards and regulatory action can stop. However, in rare cases where a school fails to make the required improvements the Secretary of State can take enforcement action: to impose a relevant restriction or to remove the school from the register of independent schools. More information on how the Department regulates the independent sector is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulating-independent-schools
Since 2015, the Secretary of State has taken enforcement action against two fee-paying independent schools for a failure to meet standard 5. Both schools were also failing to meet a number of the other standards.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children were permanently excluded from school during Key Stages 1 and 2 in (a) academies and (b) community schools in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Information on the number of permanent exclusions in state-funded primary schools is published at national and regional level in the Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England[1] series. Information on the number of permanent exclusions in primary academies from 2010/11 to 2013/14 inclusive can be found in Table 18a of the 2013/14 release and Table 16a of the equivalent release for earlier years.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-exclusions
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children have been permanently excluded from school during Key stage 1 and 2 in the last three years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Information on the number of permanent exclusions in state-funded primary schools is published at national and regional level in the Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England[1] series. Information on the number of permanent exclusions in primary academies from 2010/11 to 2013/14 inclusive can be found in Table 18a of the 2013/14 release and Table 16a of the equivalent release for earlier years.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-exclusions
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children have been permanently excluded from school during Key stage 1 and 2 in each region in the last three years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Information on the number of permanent exclusions in state-funded primary schools is published at national and regional level in the Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England[1] series. Information on the number of permanent exclusions in primary academies from 2010/11 to 2013/14 inclusive can be found in Table 18a of the 2013/14 release and Table 16a of the equivalent release for earlier years.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-exclusions
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what safeguards are in place to ensure that unregistered schools meet appropriate standards of (a) educational provision and (b) safety.
Answered by Edward Timpson
It is a criminal offence to operate an unregistered independent school. The Department for Education has recently published policy setting out our approach to prosecution which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulating-independent-schools.
We have also agreed additional resources for Ofsted to pursue cases.
The responsibility for ensuring that a child of compulsory school age receives a suitable full-time education rests with the child’s parents, either by the child’s attendance at a registered school or otherwise. ‘Otherwise’ can include education at home or attendance at settings which are not schools. If the local authority is not satisfied that a child is receiving suitable education, it has a duty to make a school attendance order.
Local authorities’ safeguarding duties apply wherever children are educated, whether in registered schools or elsewhere.
The Department also recently completed a call for evidence on proposals for the registration and inspection of out-of-school settings providing intensive education which were announced in the Counter-Extremism Strategy. Over 3,000 people completed the response form, either online or manually. The Department received a significant number of further representations to the consultation by email and post. All responses and representations are being logged, analysed and verified.
In line with Cabinet Office guidance, we will be publishing a response to the consultation in due course.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many Members of the House of Lords are sponsors of academies in England.
Answered by Edward Timpson
A list of approved academy sponsors is published by the Department for Education on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academy-sponsor-contact-list. A hard copy provided at attachment 1.
The Department does not specifically collect information about the involvement of members of the House of Lords in academy sponsorship.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many teachers below retirement age left teaching in academic year (a) 2013-14 and (b) 2014-15.
Answered by Nick Gibb
In 2013-14, 42,050 full-time equivalent teachers left service from state funded schools in England. Of these teachers, 10,500 retired with an award of pension benefits. In the same year 44,900 teacher entered the profession. In 2012-13, there were 44,400 entrants and 39,050 leavers, of which 11,230 retired.
There is no fixed retirement age for teachers but the normal pension age for Teachers’ Pensions is either 60 or 65 depending on when the teacher last entered the profession.
Information on the number of teachers entering and leaving service from state funded schools in each year is published in table C1b of the additional tables in the School Workforce in England Statistical First Release, November 2014. The table shows entrants and leavers for each year from 2010-11 to 2013-14. This publication is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2014
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reasons the proposed Politics draft AS and A level subject content published by her Department contains no substantive references to feminist ideology or the political achievements of women.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The final politics A level content will give all students the opportunity to study the core ideas of feminism, and will set out the female theorists whose work students should study. The consultation on the draft politics A level content closed on 15 December 2015; awarding bodies are currently making changes to the content to respond to the views expressed. The Government will publish its response to the consultation shortly.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what actions she will take to improve the quality of education provision by free schools in the South West.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The Government is committed to achieving educational excellence everywhere so that children in every part of the country, regardless of their background and circumstances, have access to an outstanding education.
Free schools benefit from the ability to act quickly to improve standards. The Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC) for the South West is responsible for taking action to improve underperforming free schools in the region. Where a free school is identified by Ofsted as under-performing the RSC takes swift action, working with the school to develop robust plans for improvement including, for example, appointing strong new sponsors to run the school.
Asked by: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance her Department gave on ICT contracts to schools who were part of the Building Schools for the Future programme.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Local authorities were responsible for the local delivery of the Building Schools for the Future programme (BSF). They planned, procured and continue to manage the BSF school buildings, including ICT contracts. Advice and guidance on ICT Contracts was provided to local authorities by Partnerships for Schools: http://www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk/library/BSF-archive/BSF-ICT.html