Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that (a) schools with a large intake of military families are adequately provisioned and (b) school roll audits are carried out termly rather than annually in those schools.
Answered by Robin Walker
State-funded schools in England that are attended by children and young people from military families (known as service children) receive additional funding in the form of the service pupil premium (SPP). This funding is currently worth £320 per annum for each pupil who is recorded as a service child at the time of the autumn school census, or who has had service child status at any point in the last six years.
Schools have flexibility over how they use the SPP to support the pastoral and academic needs that service children may have as a result of growing up in a military household. These can include needs relating to the impact of moving schools frequently during their primary and secondary education.
Schools are required in each termly school census to record information about the number of service children on roll. However, allocations of SPP funding for each financial year only draw on data from the autumn school census return. This ’lagged’ approach to funding gives schools certainty over their budgets, as they know the number of pupils for which they will receive funding in the year. Therefore, when pupil numbers fall, schools have time to respond before this starts to impact their budgets.
The department has allocated £246 million in growth and falling rolls funding to local authorities in the 2022/23 financial year. This is an increase of £12 million over the amount allocated for 2021/22. Growth funding can be used by local authorities to support schools with managing a significant growth in pupil numbers or a short-term decrease in pupil numbers, where those places are forecast to be required in future years.
The responsibility for how growth and falling rolls funding is allocated rests with local authorities. If an academy or maintained school takes on significant numbers of additional pupils because of a growing population in the area, then local authorities can provide funding from the growth pot they hold locally.
Furthermore, schools in which more than 6% of pupils joined at a non-typical date through the school year at any point in the last three years also attract funding through the mobility factor in the national funding formula. For years 1 to 11, this means the first census when the pupil was in the school was a Spring or Summer census. For the reception year, the first census is the Summer census. This year, the department allocated £44 million to local authorities through this factor. Local authorities allocate the funding they receive to schools through their local funding formula.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has issued guidance to local authorities on placements at independent schools for refugees who have arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department is currently working at pace to develop the methodology and mechanism for the allocation of funding for the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme. This education funding for children and young people will be distributed to local authorities. If the funding is used for a school place, it will be for state-funded schools only.
In general, there’s nothing that would stop a local authority from providing funding to an independent school, but this would be a decision for the individual local authority to make.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities issued guidance in March this year advising families how to apply for a school place in England. The Department for Education shared this via The Education Hub blog in April.
The Boarding Schools Association and the Independent Schools Council speak regularly to the Department for Education and the Home Office on matters relating to Ukraine and Russia.
We are grateful to those independent schools that have come forward to offer places and encourage independent schools to contact local authorities that are seeking to place children.
As school places are co-ordinated locally, schools should inform their local authorities that they are willing to offer places to Ukrainian students. It is for independent schools to determine their own criteria for creating scholarship schemes and putting local arrangements for administration in place.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will issue guidance to local authorities on how they can partly or wholly fund independent school places for student refugees who have arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme using the same per capita funding that would be spent if they were to be educated in the state sector.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department is currently working at pace to develop the methodology and mechanism for the allocation of funding for the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme. This education funding for children and young people will be distributed to local authorities. If the funding is used for a school place, it will be for state-funded schools only.
In general, there’s nothing that would stop a local authority from providing funding to an independent school, but this would be a decision for the individual local authority to make.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities issued guidance in March this year advising families how to apply for a school place in England. The Department for Education shared this via The Education Hub blog in April.
The Boarding Schools Association and the Independent Schools Council speak regularly to the Department for Education and the Home Office on matters relating to Ukraine and Russia.
We are grateful to those independent schools that have come forward to offer places and encourage independent schools to contact local authorities that are seeking to place children.
As school places are co-ordinated locally, schools should inform their local authorities that they are willing to offer places to Ukrainian students. It is for independent schools to determine their own criteria for creating scholarship schemes and putting local arrangements for administration in place.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the projected annual budget is for schools in the (a) 2019-20, (b) 2020-21, (c) 2021-22 and (d) 2022-23 academic years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The attached table shows the total value of the core schools budget each year.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of children are registered as attending an independent school in each (a) local authority area and (b) constituency in the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The department publishes figures on the number of independent schools and pupils attending them in the annual ‘Schools, Pupils and Characteristics’ release, by national totals and by local authority in tables 1a, 1b, and 1c, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.
The underlying data file includes figures for individual schools including school name, school type, parliamentary constituency and location. Full addresses can be found at the Get Information About Schools website, available here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.
The Oxford Analytics October 2018 report, 'The Impact of Independent Schools on the UK Economy' estimated that independent schools provide an annualised taxpayer cost saving of £3.5 billion, compared to the cost of educating all pupils in the state sector.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many independent schools there are in each (a) local authority and (b) parliamentary constituency; how many children there are at each of those schools; and what the names and addresses are of each of those schools.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The department publishes figures on the number of independent schools and pupils attending them in the annual ‘Schools, Pupils and Characteristics’ release, by national totals and by local authority in tables 1a, 1b, and 1c, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.
The underlying data file includes figures for individual schools including school name, school type, parliamentary constituency and location. Full addresses can be found at the Get Information About Schools website, available here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.
The Oxford Analytics October 2018 report, 'The Impact of Independent Schools on the UK Economy' estimated that independent schools provide an annualised taxpayer cost saving of £3.5 billion, compared to the cost of educating all pupils in the state sector.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many independent special schools there are in each (a) local authority and (b) parliamentary constituency.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The department publishes figures on the number of independent schools and pupils attending them in the annual ‘Schools, Pupils and Characteristics’ release, by national totals and by local authority in tables 1a, 1b, and 1c, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.
The underlying data file includes figures for individual schools including school name, school type, parliamentary constituency and location. Full addresses can be found at the Get Information About Schools website, available here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.
The Oxford Analytics October 2018 report, 'The Impact of Independent Schools on the UK Economy' estimated that independent schools provide an annualised taxpayer cost saving of £3.5 billion, compared to the cost of educating all pupils in the state sector.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to help ensure that children are educated on LGBT issues.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Pupils should receive teaching on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) relationships during their school years.
Through the new subjects of Relationship Education and Relationships and Sex Education, we expect secondary schools to include LGBT content. Primary schools are enabled and encouraged to cover LGBT content if they consider it age appropriate to do so.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she has taken to ensure that schools in Fylde constituency benefit from an increase in funding under the new national funding formula.
Answered by Nick Gibb
We are providing an additional £1.3 billion for schools across 2018-19 and 2019-20 to support the introduction of the national funding formula from April next year. Along with the funding we had already committed for schools at the 2015 Spending Review, this will mean the core schools budget rises from just under £41 billion to £43.5 billion by 2020. Full details of the arrangements are set out at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/justine-greening-statement-to-parliament-on-school-funding.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much the Government plans to spend on apprenticeships in the 2017-18 academic year.
Answered by Robert Halfon
We are committed to growing the quality and number of apprenticeships so that even more people have the opportunity to get on in life. That’s why in the 2017-18 academic year, we are making available over £2 billion for apprenticeships.
We are doubling the annual level of spending on apprenticeships between 2010-11 and 2019-20 in cash terms to £2.5billion.