Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support her Department is providing to schools that are having to reduce costs in Newbury constituency.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Overall school funding is increasing by £3.7 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, meaning the core school budget will total £65.3 billion. This is a 6% rise in cash terms compared to 2024/25.
Schools in West Berkshire local authority are attracting £143.6 million through the dedicated schools grant. This represents an increase of 2.6% per pupil compared to 2024/25.
We are providing schools with an additional £615 million in the 2025/26 financial year to support them with the 4% teacher pay award and 3.2% support staff pay offer. Schools will be expected play their part in driving productivity across the public sector and find approximately the first 1% of pay awards by ensuring resources are deployed to maximise support for teaching and learning.
We are supporting schools to make savings and bring down operating costs. For example, 400 schools participating in the department’s new energy offer are projected to save an average of 36% compared to previous contracts.
We are also working to secure better banking solutions and provide services such as Get Help Buying for Schools and the Teaching Vacancies Service to reduce procurement and recruitment costs.
We know workforce deployment is the biggest component of school budgets. We will support schools to benefit fully from the tools we already offer to benchmark and integrate resourcing and curriculum planning, such as the Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool. We will also introduce a new toolkit to support schools to adopt evidence-based deployment models.
Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support her Department is providing to schools to ensure that at least 50 percent of children achieve passes in (a) maths and (b) English GCSEs in Newbury constituency.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
In the 2023/24 academic year, 69.7% of students in the Newbury constituency achieved a grade 4 or above in both English and mathematics, and 49.5% of students achieved a grade 5 or above in both subjects.
High and rising school standards, with excellent foundations in reading, writing and mathematics, are at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life.
To drive standards in reading and writing, the government has committed £27.7 million in the 2025/26 financial year. This includes new training and resources for secondary school staff to support reading in key stage 3, with a specific focus on readers who are at risk of falling behind. The department’s English Hubs programme also supports the teaching of phonics, early language development and reading for pleasure. Newbury’s nearest English Hub is Whiteknights English Hub.
To drive standards in mathematics the department funds the Maths Hubs programme, supported by the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics. Local maths hubs provide school-to-school support focused on mathematics subject knowledge and pedagogy training for teachers in primary and secondary schools. The Newbury constituency is served by the Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire Maths Hub, which reports participation from 85% of schools from within its region.
Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of proposed US tariffs on foreign-produced films on the UK film industry.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
There are no tariffs on the UK film industry, but we continue to monitor the situation closely and recognise the seriousness of this issue.
We continue to take a calm and balanced approach to our discussions with the US following our recent UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal.
The US and the UK have a special, mutually beneficial relationship, unique cultural and linguistic ties. Our film sectors are heavily connected, founded on decades of partnership and exchange.
Our commitment to helping our film and TV industry flourish remains absolute and it is important to maintain the conditions that allow our sectors to continue to flourish together and avoid measures which undermine these conditions.