Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help support schools experiencing falling pupil rolls.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department recognises that demographic change requires local areas to adapt to changing demand for school places.
Schools are funded on the basis of pupil numbers in the previous October census. This gives schools with falling rolls some time to reorganise staffing before their funding is affected.
Falling rolls funding is also provided to local authorities for schools seeing a short-term decrease in pupil numbers. We have also broadened the scope of growth and falling rolls funding to allow local authorities to use growth funding to meet the revenue costs of removing surplus places.
As announced in our Education Estates Strategy, we are also supporting local areas to plan budgets strategically. We are developing a decision-making framework for the use of mainstream school space through demographic change, with publication expected in autumn 2026.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve political literacy and democratic engagement within secondary education.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, work is underway to deliver a new curriculum and assessment system that is ambitious for every child, rich in knowledge and strong on skills.
The reformed curriculum will provide a clear framework to ensure that pupils acquire the essential skills and knowledge they need to be active, informed and responsible citizens. In line with the recommendations of the review, we will ensure that citizenship education is tightly focused on the essential content pupils should know at primary and secondary, encompassing the vital threads of government, law and democracy, climate education, financial and media literacy.
Working closely with the sector, we are working towards a first teaching of the new curriculum from September 2028 and a phased approach to new GCSE teaching from September 2029.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department has taken to help strengthen complaints and whistleblowing processes with respect to the Teachers Regulation Authority.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA), acting on behalf of my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, is responsible for considering allegations of serious teacher misconduct. Lower-level complaints and concerns should be considered at the local level by schools and employers. Where concerns are raised through whistleblowing, these are ordinarily considered at the local level in the first instance, or through the department’s wider whistleblowing arrangements. Where such concerns relate to potential serious misconduct, they may subsequently be referred into the TRA’s misconduct process and considered in line with its statutory role. The TRA has published clear guidance on how referrals of serious misconduct can be raised.
In 2025, TRA introduced a triage process to strengthen how referrals are handled. This ensures that matters which clearly do not relate to serious teacher misconduct, and which are outside of the role and remit of TRA, are signposted to appropriate local or departmental complaints processes rather than being progressed as referrals to the TRA. This approach supports proportionate use of the misconduct regime while ensuring concerns are directed to the correct route and that teachers are not inappropriately drawn into regulatory proceedings.
These measures help ensure that safeguarding concerns continue to be identified and addressed effectively, while maintaining public confidence in the teaching profession and the fairness of the regulatory system.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department has taken to help strengthen complaints and whistleblowing processes with respect to the Teachers Regulation Authority.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to increase the number of qualified lift engineers in the UK.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper set out reforms to the skills system to ensure skills provision is aligned to the needs of the Industrial Strategy and supports people to train in sectors which support growth and meet priority skills needs.
The government has launched an engineering skills package which will provide £182 million over three years to support engineering skills in England, working with Skills England to determine how this can increase the pipeline of skills such as those needed for lift engineers.
We are also launching Technical Excellence Colleges to address shortages in engineering, which is critical to the skills needed in priority sectors.
Skills England supports occupational standards specialising in the installation, maintenance and repair of lifts, escalators and related systems. It also has a range of generic standards at different levels covering technologies and occupations that are relevant to employers working on those systems. It will continue to work with employers to ensure that content is relevant and up to date.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many school-based nurseries were created under the school-based nursery capital grant for 2024-25 that replaced an existing private nursery in the same location.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
High-quality early years education is central to our mission to break down barriers to opportunity, give every child the best possible start in life, and is essential to our Plan for Change. This government is boosting availability and access through the school-based nurseries programme, supporting school led-provision and private, voluntary and independent (PVI) providers and childminders operating from school sites. There is no available data on any replacement of provision.
27 of the 300 successful schools in Phase 1 are working in partnership with a private, voluntary or independent provider, and schools can continue to partner with them and childminders for future phases. For Phase 1 of the programme, local authorities had to confirm childcare need for the proposed projects. In further phases, we have strengthened their role, asking them to confirm that any new nursery will enhance the local offer and not displace quality provision already in place.
We have already made a real impact, delivering a reported 5,000 new nursery places through Phase 1, and are due to announce successful projects for Phase 2 soon.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help support children in schools to develop their vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and listening skills.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department recognises the importance of speaking and listening skills, which has been very clearly set out by the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review. As part of our English curriculum reform, we will make sure that communication skills inherent in curriculum subjects are more clearly expressed through revised programmes of study. We will revise the English and drama programmes of study to add more clarity and specificity in speaking and listening, as well as ensuring that the reformed English language GCSE focusses on the features and use of language as a form of communication. We will also create a new oracy framework to sit alongside the national curriculum that will support primary teachers to help their pupils become confident, fluent speakers, as well as a new secondary oracy, reading and writing framework, which will enable secondary teachers to connect and embed all three of those vital skills in each of their subjects as part of a whole school strategy.
We are also considering whether and how the sequencing of grammatical content in the curriculum should be changed, to enable pupils to master concepts and use them in context.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an estimate of the number of people facing financial difficulties due to the time taken to issue Teachers' Superannuation Scheme statements for teachers pensions.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Recalculating benefits for retired members is a complex process. The teachers’ pension scheme (TPS) has around 590,000 members affected by transitional protection, 142,000 of which are rectification members. For those members retiring, these cases are relatively straightforward as no benefits are already in payment. For retired members, additional complications around tax, interest rules and system functionality required extensive consultation.
Capita, as the scheme administrator, keeps affected members informed of revised timelines through established channels, including My Pension Online and its website. The latest update is available here: https://www.teacherspensions.co.uk/news/public-news/2025/11/timeline-for-sending-out-remediable-service-statements-rss.aspx.
As responsibility for this work transitions to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as the new scheme administrator of the TPS in summer 2026, the department is working with TCS to finalise the timeline for issuing all remediable service statements. Once the timeline is confirmed, it will be communicated to all affected scheme members.
This is a high priority for the department, and officials continue to closely monitor progress and work with Capita to streamline processes and introduce automation where possible. Original pension benefits continue to be paid for retired members, and any pension adjustments arising from members’ choices will be backdated with interest to ensure members are not financially disadvantaged.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of people in receipt of a teachers pension impacted by the length of time taken to issue Teachers' Superannuation Scheme statements.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Recalculating benefits for retired members is a complex process. The teachers’ pension scheme (TPS) has around 590,000 members affected by transitional protection, 142,000 of which are rectification members. For those members retiring, these cases are relatively straightforward as no benefits are already in payment. For retired members, additional complications around tax, interest rules and system functionality required extensive consultation.
Capita, as the scheme administrator, keeps affected members informed of revised timelines through established channels, including My Pension Online and its website. The latest update is available here: https://www.teacherspensions.co.uk/news/public-news/2025/11/timeline-for-sending-out-remediable-service-statements-rss.aspx.
As responsibility for this work transitions to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as the new scheme administrator of the TPS in summer 2026, the department is working with TCS to finalise the timeline for issuing all remediable service statements. Once the timeline is confirmed, it will be communicated to all affected scheme members.
This is a high priority for the department, and officials continue to closely monitor progress and work with Capita to streamline processes and introduce automation where possible. Original pension benefits continue to be paid for retired members, and any pension adjustments arising from members’ choices will be backdated with interest to ensure members are not financially disadvantaged.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce the time taken for issuing Teachers' Superannuation Scheme statements affecting teachers pensions.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Recalculating benefits for retired members is a complex process. The teachers’ pension scheme (TPS) has around 590,000 members affected by transitional protection, 142,000 of which are rectification members. For those members retiring, these cases are relatively straightforward as no benefits are already in payment. For retired members, additional complications around tax, interest rules and system functionality required extensive consultation.
Capita, as the scheme administrator, keeps affected members informed of revised timelines through established channels, including My Pension Online and its website. The latest update is available here: https://www.teacherspensions.co.uk/news/public-news/2025/11/timeline-for-sending-out-remediable-service-statements-rss.aspx.
As responsibility for this work transitions to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as the new scheme administrator of the TPS in summer 2026, the department is working with TCS to finalise the timeline for issuing all remediable service statements. Once the timeline is confirmed, it will be communicated to all affected scheme members.
This is a high priority for the department, and officials continue to closely monitor progress and work with Capita to streamline processes and introduce automation where possible. Original pension benefits continue to be paid for retired members, and any pension adjustments arising from members’ choices will be backdated with interest to ensure members are not financially disadvantaged.