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 support the provision of training and professional development for teachers.
Answered by Will Quince
The department is committed to delivering 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities by 2024. This will give all teachers and school leaders access to world-class, evidence-based training and professional development at every stage of their career.
The department is creating an entitlement to at least three years of structured training, support, and professional development for all new teachers. Underpinning this is the refreshed Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Core Content Framework and the Early Career Framework (ECF). Together, these ensure that new teachers will benefit from at least three years of evidence-based training, across ITT and into their induction.
Beyond the first few years of teaching, the department will help all teachers and school leaders to continuously develop expertise throughout their careers. We have launched a new and updated suite of National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) for teachers and school leaders at all levels, from those who want to develop expertise in high-quality teaching practice to those leading multiple schools across trusts. Since autumn 2021, eligible teachers and leaders have been able to access scholarships to undertake fully funded NPQs.
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 help support students with their mental health.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
To ensure that all students have access to dedicated mental health support, no matter where they study, we have asked the Office for Students (OfS) to fund Student Space, a mental health and wellbeing online platform for students, with up to £3.6 million invested so far. Providing vital mental health and wellbeing resources to all students across the country, it has been accessed by over 250,000 students since its launch in August 2020.
We asked the OfS to allocate an additional £15 million towards student mental health in the 2022/23 financial year to help address the challenges to student mental health posed by the transition to university and to support better joined-up working with NHS services. This funding targets those students in greatest need of such services, including vulnerable groups and hard to reach students.
To make faster progress, the OfS will allocate up to £3 million of this funding towards developing stronger partnership working with NHS services. Alongside my hon Friend, the member for Chichester, the former Minister of State for Higher and Further Education chaired a summit in June to launch this work and ensure that the department and the Department of Health and Social Care work together to achieve this common goal.
The department also supports the University Mental Health Charter led by Student Minds. The University Mental Health Charter intends to drive up standards of practice across the higher education (HE) sector and, so far, 41 HE providers have joined the programme. I have written to heads of HE providers to set the ambition that all HE providers sign up within the next five years.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate he has made of the number of Ukrainian school pupils in classrooms across the UK.
Answered by Will Quince
The department has started collecting information from each local authority in England on school placements for children from outside of the UK. This includes data on the number of applications and offers made to children from Ukraine. Data relating to the 2021/22 academic year can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-placements-for-children-from-outside-of-the-uk.
The data shows that between September 2021 and May 2022 there has been an estimated 9,900 school place offers made to Ukrainian children. The data relates to local authorities in England only.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress he has made to improve the quality of higher education courses.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
The government is committed to improving the quality of higher education (HE), tackling low-quality courses and ensuring all students, regardless of their background, benefit from high-quality world-leading education.
We are taking forward significant regulatory reform with the Office for Students (OfS) which aims to introduce a more rigorous and effective quality regime. This includes setting stringent minimum numerical thresholds for student outcomes, where the OfS is currently considering responses to its consultation, and measures to ensure a high-quality academic experience.
HE courses which lead to poor outcomes let down students, fail to provide value-for-money for taxpayers and students, and erode confidence in our world-class university system. Where quality requirements are not being met, the OfS will impose sanctions on providers where appropriate, including financial penalties, suspension from the OfS register or, in the worst cases, deregistration.
We have asked the OfS to implement a visible and effective inspections regime where the OfS has concerns about the quality of provision. This will involve on-site inspections. The OfS is delivering this and announced its first wave of onsite inspections on 26 May which will look specifically at Business and Management courses provided by eight HE providers. These will also examine whether poor-quality online learning has replaced face-to-face teaching to the detriment of students’ academic experience.
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 facilitate collaboration between colleges and employers.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
The introduction of the new Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIP) will forge closer and more dynamic relationships between employers and colleges as they work together to meet an area’s technical skills needs.
The eight LSIP Trailblazers engaged a range of employers and skills providers, helping to forge relationships and networks that had not previously existed. We are making good progress on the next stage of rolling out LSIP across the country, and we expect to designate the first tranche of employer representative bodies to lead on the development of the plans in the early autumn.
The rollout of LSIP will build on the excellent provider and employer collaboration that has been built upon through apprenticeships, T Levels and our other skills reforms.
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 school places available for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
Answered by Will Quince
In March 2022, the department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations (HNPCA) amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment. This funding forms part of the £2.6 billion we are investing between 2022 and 2025 and represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision.
It will support local authorities to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools in the 2023/23 and 2024/25 academic years, as well as other specialist settings, and will also be used to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings. This will improve existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision (AP).
The department is also supporting local authorities through our ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools. We have recently launched ‘How to Apply’ guidance for the 2022 Special and AP free school application waves. These waves are open to all local authorities in England. Guidance can be found online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/special-free-school-applications and: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apply-to-open-an-alternative-provision-free-school.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to help improve behaviour in schools.
Answered by Brendan Clarke-Smith
The department will shortly be publishing the updated Behaviour in Schools guidance. This guidance advises schools on how they can build a positive behaviour culture through a whole-school approach to help schools create calm, safe and supportive environments.
In addition, the department is pursuing an ambitious wider programme of work to improve behaviour in schools. Our £10 million behaviour hubs programme, launched in April 2021, is projected to support up to 700 schools over three years. It enables schools with exemplary positive behaviour cultures to work closely with schools that want and need to improve pupil behaviour, alongside a central offer of support and a taskforce of advisers.
Moreover, the national behaviour survey is underway and is asking panels of pupils, parents, leaders, and teachers about their perception of behaviour. The aim of the survey is to support future policy development by improving our evidence base and data collection on behaviour. By capturing the views of professionals and listening to the voice of children and parents, the department will gain a better understanding of behaviour and what we need to do to support teachers and leaders in practice.
In autumn 2021, the department introduced a new and updated suite of fully funded National Professional Qualifications (NPQs), including the new specialist NPQ for Leading Behaviour and Culture. Specialist and leadership NPQs provide training and support for teachers and school leaders at all levels, from those who want to develop expertise in high-quality teaching practice, such as behaviour management, to those leading multiple schools across trusts.
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 help ensure that schools are a safe environment for pupils.
Answered by Robin Walker
Well-maintained, safe buildings are essential to support high-quality education, which is why investing in the estate is a priority for the department. We have significantly improved our understanding of the condition of the school estate through the Condition Data Collection programme, which allows effective targeting of funding where it is needed most.
Local authorities, academy trusts and school governing bodies are responsible for ensuring buildings are well-maintained, safe, and compliant with relevant regulations. The department supports the sector through capital funding, delivering major rebuilding programmes, and providing extensive guidance and support.
The department provides annual capital funding to schools, and those responsible for school buildings, to improve and maintain the condition of the estate, based on local knowledge of building issues and priorities. Since 2015, over £13 billion of condition funding has been allocated, including £1.8 billion committed in the 2022/23 financial year.
In addition to annual capital allocations, the School Rebuilding Programme will deliver rebuilding and refurbishment projects at 500 schools over the next decade, transforming education for hundreds of thousands of pupils. The first 100 schools to benefit from the programme were announced in 2021, and the department expects to announce up to 300 more schools this year. The latest round of nominations closed in March, and responsible bodies were able to submit evidence of severe need or potential safety issues, which will be prioritised by the programme.
The department is also helping to improve practice and safe management of buildings by providing extensive guidance, advice, and tools on effective estate management, including specific safety issues, such as asbestos.
The department has also recently revised its statutory guidance, ‘keeping children safe in education’, which provides a strong safeguarding framework for schools. This guidance along with revision of the ‘searching, screening and confiscation’ guidance, and the forthcoming updated ‘behaviour in school’ guidance, will support schools to create a safe environment for pupils.
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 limit student loan interest payments.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
The government has not yet decided on what interest rates will be applied to student loans from September 2022. The department will be considering all options over the coming months and will confirm in due course the rates to apply from 1 September.
Changes to student loan interest rates will not increase monthly student loan repayments. Monthly repayments are calculated as a fixed percentage of earnings above the relevant repayment threshold and do not change based on interest rates or the amount borrowed. If income is below the relevant repayment threshold, or a borrower is not earning, then they do not have to make repayments at all. Any outstanding debt, including interest accrued, is written off after the loan term ends (or in case of death or disability) at no detriment to the borrower. There are no commercial loans that offer this level of protection.
The government, by law, must cap maximum student loan rates to ensure the interest rate charged on the loan is in line with market rates for comparable unsecured personal loans. The government monitors student loan rates against the Bank of England’s data series for the effective interest rates on new and existing unsecured personal loans.
We announced in February that we will be reducing interest rates for new borrowers and so, from academic year 2023/24, new graduates will not, in real terms, repay more than they borrow. Alongside our wider reforms, this will help to make sure that students from all walks of life can continue to receive the highest-quality education from our world-leading HE 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 improve the quality of higher education courses.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
We want all students, regardless of their background, to benefit from high quality world-leading higher education. The government is committed to tackling low-quality courses and ensuring that students and the taxpayer see returns on their investment and receive value-for-money.
We are taking forward significant regulatory reform with the Office for Students (OfS) to introduce a more rigorous and effective quality regime. This includes, for the first time, setting stringent minimum numerical thresholds for student outcomes, and the introduction in May 2022 of revised conditions of registration.
In March 2022, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education and I made clear to the OfS that the government expects the OfS to step up its investigation activities through the implementation of a visible and effective on-site ‘boots on the ground’ inspections regime to be followed by robust regulatory action wherever that is appropriate. In cases where low and unacceptable quality is confirmed, regulatory action could include the imposition of formal sanctions including financial penalties and, ultimately, the suspension or removal from the OfS register, and with it access to student finance.
In addition, we have consulted on the introduction of targeted student number controls to prevent the growth of low-quality courses with poor outcomes. The consultation has now closed and we are considering the views submitted, which we will respond to in due course.
We have made clear our firm view that students must be able to expect high-quality teaching that includes face-to-face education. I wrote to Vice-Chancellors on 4 May 2022 setting out my expectation that, now the government has removed all restrictions on in-person teaching, all students should be receiving a comparable amount of in-person teaching to before the pandemic and that providers should be transparent about the sort of teaching students can expect.