Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the number of SEND places in mainstream schools in (a) Edmonton, (b) Enfield and (c) London.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places, including places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), sits with local authorities.
To support local authorities in fulfilling their statutory duties, the department is investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to help deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND, or who require alternative provision. This represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. It will support local authorities to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings, and will also be used to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings.
As part of this commitment, in March 2022 the department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment, focused on academic years 2023/24 and 2024/25. The borough of Enfield received a total of just over £6.1 million through the allocations announced in March 2022, and over £1.3 million through previous allocations announced in April 2021 (to deliver new places for the 2022/23 academic year). As funding is allocated at a local authority level, the department cannot provide data on funding for the Edmonton constituency.
Local authorities within both inner and outer London collectively received a total of just under £305.6 million through the allocations announced in March 2022. Prior to that, the regions received a combined total of just under £75.9 million through the funding announced in April 2021.
Local authorities can use this funding to work with any school or institution in their area, including mainstream and special schools. It is ultimately up to local authorities to determine how to best prioritise their funding to address their local priorities.
From Summer 2023, the department will be collecting data from local authorities on the physical capacity of special schools and special educational needs units/resourced provision in mainstream schools, as well as corresponding forecasts of demand for specialist places. We expect this to be an annual data collection, forming part of the existing School Capacity Survey.
Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children with a Statement of Special Educational Needs were awaiting a school place in mainstream education in each year from 2010 to 2022.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
The department does not collect data on how many children with an education, health and care plan or statement of special educational needs are waiting for school places in mainstream education.
Each January, the department collects data from local authorities, covering the number of children and young people and the type of provision attended. This includes mainstream schools, special schools, alternative provision, pupils educated elsewhere, and those ‘awaiting provision’. This is the provision set out in their education, health and care (EHC) plan. This is published annually and details can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans.
The department does not collect data about the specific circumstances of the children and young people ‘awaiting provision’. The department knows that this category includes children and young people in a wide range of circumstances, including some who are in an education setting, but awaiting provision in another setting, and some who have only recently moved into the area.
Local authorities must also have a Fair Access Protocol, agreed with the majority of the mainstream state-funded schools in its area, to ensure that, for in year admissions, unplaced children without an EHC Plan, especially the most vulnerable, are offered a place at a suitable school as quickly as possible.
Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the levels of misogyny and sexual harassment in primary schools.
Answered by Robin Walker
Sexual abuse, sexual violence and sexual harassment in any form is unacceptable. It is essential that children are protected, and that allegations are dealt with appropriately.
In March 2021, the former Secretary of State for Education commissioned Ofsted to undertake an immediate review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges, including primary schools. The review was published on 10 June 2021 and the department accepted the findings of the review in full, committing to go further than its recommendations.
Harmful sexual behaviours exist on a continuum. It is, therefore, vital to stem and prevent misogyny and sexual harassment as early as possible, preventing the escalation of behaviours, and entrenchment of unacceptable views.
For this reason, the department is developing further support to help build teachers’ confidence in educating on matters of sexual abuse and harassment. In March 2022, the department ran expert-led webinars on the subjects identified by teachers as most challenging to teach. Alongside this, the department is developing new non-statutory guidance for schools, covering specific topics mentioned by the Ofsted review. This will build on existing Relationships, Sex and Health Education guidance, providing more detail on when specific content regarding harassment and abuse should be taught. It will aid primary school teachers’ knowledge of what is appropriate to teach, and when.
Additionally, the department has recently consulted on proposed changes to ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ (KCSIE) which includes embedding the standalone sexual violence and sexual harassment advice into KCSIE, to give it the prominence it deserves in statutory guidance. The consultation launched on 11 January 2022 and closed on 11 March 2022. Revised guidance will be published in May and come into force in September 2022. This strengthened guidance will better support schools to prevent abuse and appropriately respond when reported, specifically highlighting the importance of acknowledging and understanding the scale of harassment and abuse.
In November and December 2021, the department held a series of events with statutory safeguarding partners and schools to identify emerging practice and barriers to effective working. This will form part of a broader piece of work to improve how teachers and professionals work together to support children and young people.
In addition, the department is developing a new online hub for designated safeguarding leads (DSLs) to provide information/support for DSLs in schools and colleges. Resources will be co-developed with DSLs and subject matter experts.
The department has also worked with the Home Office on developing and launching the Harmful Sexual Behaviour Support Service to assist professionals in identifying and tackling harmful sexual behaviours.
Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason he has not updated his guidance for schools and colleges to state that staff and students should wear clear face coverings if needed to meet the needs of pupils and students.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department’s guidance on face coverings can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-in-education/face-coverings-in-education.
As the guidance outlines, during national lockdown, in schools and colleges where Year 7 and above are taught, face coverings should be worn by adults (staff and visitors), pupils and students when moving around indoors, outside of classrooms and other teaching situations, such as in corridors and communal areas where social distancing is difficult to maintain.
Based on current evidence and the measures that schools and colleges are already putting in place, such as the system of controls and consistent bubbles, face coverings will not generally be necessary in the classroom.
Children in primary schools do not need to wear a face covering.
Some individuals are exempt from wearing face coverings. This includes people who cannot put on, wear or remove a face covering because of a physical or mental illness or impairment, or disability, or if you are speaking to or providing assistance to someone who relies on lip reading, clear sound or facial expressions to communicate. The same legal exemptions that apply to the wearing of face coverings in shops and on public transport also apply in schools and colleges.
Face coverings can make it more difficult to communicate with pupils and students with additional needs or those who many rely on lip reading or facial expressions for understanding. We expect staff to be sensitive to these needs when teaching and interacting with pupils and students.
We continue to provide information to the sector on our guidance, and any changes to it, through regular departmental communications. We also continue to work with the sector to understand the impact of the system of controls on staff, pupils and parents.
Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that adult education institutions are adequately resourced to support online learning.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
We continue to support providers through the COVID-19 outbreak, and the testing programme that has been successfully stood up for colleges and secondary schools will continue to be used to support teachers, vulnerable children and children of critical workers and to prepare for wider re-opening.
We will continue to pay grant-funded providers their scheduled monthly profiled payments for 2020/21 academic year. We are currently reviewing the end of year grant funded AEB reconciliation position for 2020 to 2021 in recognition of the difficulties and uncertainties many providers are facing. We will communicate any changes to the published arrangements through our Update publication in the coming weeks.
Where applicable, providers were able to apply to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) Post 16 and ESFA provider relief schemes for support.
For colleges in significant financial difficulties, the existing support arrangements remain in place, including short-term emergency funding.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, we have put in place a package of support to help the further education (FE) sector build their capacity to deliver digitally. This includes flexibilities to secure devices and connectivity through the 16-19 bursary funding and through changes to the adult education budget funding rules for the 2020/21 academic year.
In order to support colleges to respond to current challenge, including developing new ways of working, we adapted the College Collaboration Fund. This will see investment in new high-quality digital curriculum content, including funding for 7 projects that will develop hundreds of hours of new digital content for a wide range of vocational subjects, as well as PSHE and English and Maths.
We are also investing in FE practitioner online teaching skills through funding the Education and Training Foundation to support teachers to develop their online teaching skills, and we recently announced 80 new grants of £1,000 to FE providers across England to provide additional training and support for mentors and coaches specialising in assisting teachers with remote education.
Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will ensure that adult education providers who have continued to deliver courses throughout the covid-19 lockdown will not receive reductions in grant funding as a result of lower than forecast student numbers.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
We continue to support providers through the COVID-19 outbreak, and the testing programme that has been successfully stood up for colleges and secondary schools will continue to be used to support teachers, vulnerable children and children of critical workers and to prepare for wider re-opening.
We will continue to pay grant-funded providers their scheduled monthly profiled payments for 2020/21 academic year. We are currently reviewing the end of year grant funded AEB reconciliation position for 2020 to 2021 in recognition of the difficulties and uncertainties many providers are facing. We will communicate any changes to the published arrangements through our Update publication in the coming weeks.
Where applicable, providers were able to apply to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) Post 16 and ESFA provider relief schemes for support.
For colleges in significant financial difficulties, the existing support arrangements remain in place, including short-term emergency funding.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, we have put in place a package of support to help the further education (FE) sector build their capacity to deliver digitally. This includes flexibilities to secure devices and connectivity through the 16-19 bursary funding and through changes to the adult education budget funding rules for the 2020/21 academic year.
In order to support colleges to respond to current challenge, including developing new ways of working, we adapted the College Collaboration Fund. This will see investment in new high-quality digital curriculum content, including funding for 7 projects that will develop hundreds of hours of new digital content for a wide range of vocational subjects, as well as PSHE and English and Maths.
We are also investing in FE practitioner online teaching skills through funding the Education and Training Foundation to support teachers to develop their online teaching skills, and we recently announced 80 new grants of £1,000 to FE providers across England to provide additional training and support for mentors and coaches specialising in assisting teachers with remote education.
Asked by: Kate Osamor (Labour (Co-op) - Edmonton and Winchmore Hill)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support adult education institutions and providers during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
We continue to support providers through the COVID-19 outbreak, and the testing programme that has been successfully stood up for colleges and secondary schools will continue to be used to support teachers, vulnerable children and children of critical workers and to prepare for wider re-opening.
We will continue to pay grant-funded providers their scheduled monthly profiled payments for 2020/21 academic year. We are currently reviewing the end of year grant funded AEB reconciliation position for 2020 to 2021 in recognition of the difficulties and uncertainties many providers are facing. We will communicate any changes to the published arrangements through our Update publication in the coming weeks.
Where applicable, providers were able to apply to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) Post 16 and ESFA provider relief schemes for support.
For colleges in significant financial difficulties, the existing support arrangements remain in place, including short-term emergency funding.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, we have put in place a package of support to help the further education (FE) sector build their capacity to deliver digitally. This includes flexibilities to secure devices and connectivity through the 16-19 bursary funding and through changes to the adult education budget funding rules for the 2020/21 academic year.
In order to support colleges to respond to current challenge, including developing new ways of working, we adapted the College Collaboration Fund. This will see investment in new high-quality digital curriculum content, including funding for 7 projects that will develop hundreds of hours of new digital content for a wide range of vocational subjects, as well as PSHE and English and Maths.
We are also investing in FE practitioner online teaching skills through funding the Education and Training Foundation to support teachers to develop their online teaching skills, and we recently announced 80 new grants of £1,000 to FE providers across England to provide additional training and support for mentors and coaches specialising in assisting teachers with remote education.