Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to tackle racism in schools.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The government condemns and strives to tackle all forms of racial discrimination, prejudice, and harassment. Under the Equality Act 2010, schools have a duty to take steps to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation, and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations across all protected characteristics, including between people of different ethnic backgrounds. The department has published advice to support schools to fulfil their duties under the Equalities Act 2010, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-advice-for-schools?msclkid=9ce22dddcc5d11ec9a0a2d6e2fd0a666.
As part of a broad and balanced curriculum, pupils should be taught about different societies, and how different groups have contributed to the development of Britain, and this can include experiences and voices of people from all backgrounds. The curriculum offers many opportunities for schools to do this, notably through citizenship education and relationships, sex and health education (RSHE). The RSHE curriculum has a strong focus on equality, respect, the harmful impact of stereotyping, as well as the importance of valuing difference. Guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-relationships-sex-and-health.
Schools should address any intolerant, racist or discriminatory views expressed by pupils through their wider anti-bullying and safeguarding policies. All schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy which outlines measures to encourage good behaviour, and prevent all forms of bullying amongst pupils. The policy should set out the behaviour expected of pupils, the sanctions that will be imposed for misbehaviour, and recognition for good behaviour. This should be communicated to all pupils, school staff and parents. The department’s advice for schools, which outlines schools’ responsibilities, is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preventing-and-tackling-bullying. .
The department publishes information, guidance and support for teachers and school leaders on how to challenge radical views, including racist and discriminatory beliefs, on the Educate Against Hate website. This includes the Respectful School Communities toolkit, a self-review and signposting tool to support schools to develop a whole-school approach which promotes respect and discipline. This can help to combat bullying, harassment and prejudice of any kind, including hate-based bullying, and is available here: https://www.educateagainsthate.com/school-leaders/?filter=guidance-and-training-school-leaders.
The department is also providing over £3 million of funding between August 2021 and March 2024, to five anti-bullying organisations to support schools to tackle bullying. We have deliberately focused this grant programme on preventing and tackling bullying of pupils with protected characteristics. This includes projects targeting the bullying of particular vulnerable groups, such as those who are victims of hate related bullying.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to promote British values in schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
All schools have a duty to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance. Citizenship is an effective way of doing this and the Department expects teachers to reinforce these values as well as to support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
Through citizenship, which is a statutory subject at Key Stages 3 and 4 of the National Curriculum, pupils are taught about Parliament, the importance of voting and elections, the legal system in the UK, different sources of law and how the law helps society deal with complex problems. The subject helps to prepare pupils to play a full and active part in society and teaches them how to explore political and social issues critically, to weigh up evidence, to debate, and to make reasoned arguments. Pupils should also be taught about the diverse national, regional, religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom and the need for mutual respect and understanding.
Pupils are taught about respect and tolerance through relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), which is compulsory for all school-aged pupils. The statutory guidance on RSHE sets out the content to be covered for each subject, which includes teaching about treating everyone with respect regardless of their background and characteristics. Further information is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.
The Department has published advice for schools on promoting these values, which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-fundamental-british-values-through-smsc. Further resources have been made available through the ‘Educate Against Hate’ website, which can be found here: https://educateagainsthate.com/resources/respectful-school-communities-self-review-signposting-tool-2/.
As with other aspects of the curriculum, schools have flexibility over how they deliver these subjects, so they can develop an integrated approach that is sensitive to the needs and background of their pupils.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to allocate more support to (a) vulnerable and (b) disabled children in need of Educational Health Care Plans.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The department will be allocating more support to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those who require education, health and care (EHC) plans.
High needs funding will be rising to £10.1 billion in the 2023/24 financial year, an increase of over 50% from the 2019/20 financial year allocations.
Both special schools and alternative provision (AP) schools will benefit from the additional funding allocated for the 2023/24 financial year. To ensure that they see increases equivalent to those that mainstream schools will receive, we have introduced a new condition that local authorities must pass on a 3.4% increase in total funding per place, to each special and AP maintained school and academy.
Local authorities will be able to use the rest of their additional allocation of high needs funding to support young people with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools and elsewhere, including those requiring an EHC plan.
The department is also currently in the process of reviewing consultation responses through the SEND and AP Green Paper.
We are committed to publishing a full response to the SEND and AP Green Paper in an improvement plan early this year.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she plans to take to help pupils affected by industrial action in schools catch up with missed learning and development that has been delayed as a result of that action.
Answered by Nick Gibb
It is disappointing that the National Education Union (NEU) proceeded with strike action on 1 February 2023. Many parents and pupils will have faced disruption, but the Department is hugely grateful to head teachers, teachers and support staff who continued to work, ensuring over 90% of schools remained open to some or all pupils.
The Department knows that the best place for pupils to be for their education, physical and mental health is in schools with their friends and teachers.
The Department is engaged in ongoing, constructive talks with unions on a range of issues, including those around pay, workload, recruitment and retention.
In addition to engaging with unions, the Department has taken steps to mitigate the effects of any disruptive strike action on pupils’ education and wellbeing. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, wrote to every school in early January setting out the additional funding each school in England would receive following the £2 billion of additional funding announced for schools, both this year and next, in the Autumn Statement. This additional funding will support schools with increased costs and was a request from unions, which the Government delivered. The Secretary of State also wrote to union leaders on 27 January, asking the NEU to encourage their members to inform their head teachers if they intended to strike, in order to support schools in ensuring as many pupils are in school on strike days. The Department is clear that schools should remain open for as many pupils as possible.
In the Department’s guidance on handling strike action in schools, the Department has confirmed that if a head teacher needed to restrict attendance as a last resort, they should prioritise school places for vulnerable children, children of critical workers and pupils who are due to take public examinations and other formal assessments. Head teachers have also been asked to do all they can to ensure children continue to have access to education on strike days, including through online teaching. The Department has also provided advice to schools through bulletins, and to parents through the Department’s Education Hub.
The Department has made almost £5 billion available to support pupils’ education recovery from the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department is funding what it knows works, such as teacher training and evidence-based support, including tutoring and extra education opportunities.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase apprenticeships opportunities in the cyber technology sector.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
Apprenticeships provide people with the opportunity to earn and learn the skills needed to start, progress or re-train in the technology sector, helping employers to address their current and emerging skills needs and build a diverse pipeline of talent.
The department continues to work in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and supports their newly launched strategy to make the digital economy more inclusive, competitive, and innovative by supporting the growth of Digital, Cyber, and Artificial Intelligence strategies.
We have put employers at the heart of our apprenticeship system, empowering them to design the standards they need. Employers in the digital sector have so far developed 26 high-quality digital apprenticeship standards across all levels in occupations such as Data Science, Cyber Security, Digital and Technology solutions, AI, Software Developer and Creative Digital Design.
In the 2020/21 academic year there were 18,400 apprenticeship starts in the Information and Communication Technology sector subject area, with 17,000 starts reported so far for the first eight months of the 2021/22 academic year.
The department is also encouraging all employers to offer more flexible training models. There are two flexi-job apprenticeship agencies supporting the digital sector, ensuring apprentices are ready to work on-site and can benefit from the high-quality long-term training that an apprenticeship provides.
We are working closely with stakeholders in the digital skills sector to identify opportunities for improvements that support digital growth and deliver sector growth campaigns via trusted sector voices including TechUK and BCS, to inspire and inform SMEs to recruit apprentices in the digital sector.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase levels of adult numeracy.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
The department has launched Multiply, a new programme for improving adult numeracy, funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Up to £559 million is available over the Spending Review period for Multiply, including up to £430 million across all four nations for local areas to deliver bespoke adult numeracy interventions.
All adults without a GCSE grade C/4 (or equivalent) in mathematics will be able to access free flexible courses that fit around their lives, including in person training, personal tutoring, and digital content.
Adults who don’t already have a GCSE pass Grade 4/C (or equivalent) or above in mathematics are already entitled to funding for mathematics qualifications up to level 2. Multiply does not remove this entitlement, nor does it reduce funding for the Adult Education Budget.
Multiply will boost funding for maths, enabling delivery of innovative approaches to improving numeracy in adults, helping more people take the next step to higher levels of training or unlock new job opportunities.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to upgrade the further education estate.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
The Further Education (FE) Capital Transformation Programme is delivering the government’s £1.5 billion manifesto commitment to upgrade FE college estates in England.
We are delivering a programme of funding to address condition need across the FE sector, allocating £200 million in August 2020 to all FE colleges and designated institutions, to enable providers to undertake immediate remedial work and upgrade the condition of their estates.
We announced the next phase of the FE Capital Transformation Programme in April 2021, with our plans to work in partnership with 16 colleges to upgrade and revitalise some of the worst condition sites in England, with some construction work now beginning.
In April 2022, we announced that up to £405 million of funding is being provided to a further 62 colleges who were successful in bidding for funding through the FE Capital Transformation Fund. The programme will fund two condition improvement projects that will support colleges involved with the Education and Skills Funding Agency Specialist Restructuring Team.
We will aim to provide an update on plans for how we will deliver the remainder of the £1.5 billion of funding later this year.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the quality of technical qualifications.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
We are reforming technical education to ensure that all post-16 students have access to technical options that support progression and meet employer needs. This includes the introduction of T Levels, designed with employers, reviewing all other technical qualifications at level 3 and below and introducing new Higher Technical qualifications.
We are putting employers at the heart of the skills system and boosting the quality of qualifications on offer, basing them on employer-led occupational standards, so that all students leave education with the skills most needed by industry.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to protect freedom of speech in universities.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
This government believes that freedom of speech and academic freedom are fundamental pillars of our higher education system and that protecting these principles should be a priority for universities.
That is why the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Bill has been introduced. The bill will strengthen existing freedom of speech duties and directly address gaps within the existing law, ensuring, for example, that higher education providers found to be in breach of their duties can be clearly and robustly held to account. The bill also applies the duties directly to students’ unions and constituent colleges, including those at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The bill introduces a role for the Office for Students board, with responsibility for overseeing its strengthened duties to promote freedom of speech and investigate where potential breaches of the duties occur.
The changes will introduce clear consequences for breaches of the new duties and ensure that these principles are upheld.
The bill is currently passing through the House of Lords.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to attract (a) science, (b) technology, (c) engineering and (d) mathematics teachers in disadvantaged areas.
Answered by Will Quince
From autumn 2022, the Levelling Up Premium will provide early career teachers in maths, physics, chemistry, and computing with bonuses of up to £3,000 tax-free annually, in the first five years of their career, if they teach in eligible disadvantaged schools. The full eligibility criteria for the Levelling Up Premium, including eligible schools, is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/levelling-up-premium-payments-for-teachers#eligibility-criteria-for-teachers.
The department is also offering bursaries, worth £24,000 tax-free, and scholarships, worth £26,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainee teachers into key subjects such as maths, physics, chemistry, and computing.
These measures are supporting the recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in the schools and areas that need them most.