Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to support further education colleges to invest in low-carbon (a) technology and (b) infrastructure.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Ensuring that every young person has a pathway through further and higher education and into employment is a key pillar of the government’s opportunity and growth missions. The department wants to build a world class further education (FE) system which delivers for the whole nation and supports these missions. A key part of this is ensuring colleges are fit for the future, with better facilities and good quality, sustainable buildings.
At the Autumn Budget 2024, the department announced £950 million of skills capital funding for 2025/26, including £300 million of new funding to support FE colleges to maintain, improve and ensure suitability of their estate. It will be for colleges to decide how to prioritise funding in line with guidance which the department will publish. However, spend could include investment in low-carbon infrastructure in line with the Further Education Generic Design Brief and Technical Annexes, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/employers-requirements-for-college-projects-part-a-and-part-b.
As part of the FE Capital Transformation Programme, which is a six-year programme investing more than £1.5 billion to upgrade the FE college estate, the department is working in partnership with sixteen colleges to address some of the worst condition sites in the country. These schemes are being built to the above specifications. One of these projects is the Ashington Campus of Northumberland College, which is a Gen-Zero development, designed to be ultra-low carbon in both construction and operation.
FE colleges are also able to apply to the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, administered by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. A number of FE colleges have benefitted from this scheme to invest in measures to achieve net zero in operation at some or all of their sites.
Future investment will depend on the outcomes of the spending review which will be announced later this year.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential impact of supporting the expansion of (a) local authority supply pools and (b) not-for-profit supply provision on (i) supply teachers and (ii) schools.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Supply teachers perform a valuable role and the department is grateful for their important contribution to schools across the country.
Schools and local authorities are responsible for the recruitment of their supply teachers. Local authority supply pools are one of the approaches to providing supply teachers and local authorities have the autonomy to decide whether to operate these supply teacher pools.
Supply teachers employed directly by a state-maintained school or local authority must be paid in accordance with the statutory arrangements for teachers laid down in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document.
The department, in conjunction with the Crown Commercial Service, has established the agency supply deal, which supports schools in obtaining value for money when hiring agency supply teachers and other temporary school staff. Details of this can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/deal-for-schools-hiring-supply-teachers-and-agency-workers.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the (a) impact of the proposed pay rise for teachers on school budgets and (b) potential merits of providing additional funding to cover such a pay rise.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
On 10 December 2024, the department published its written evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body, to inform their recommendations for school teachers’ pay in the next academic year. This included a proposed pay award of 2.8% for teachers for the 2025/26 academic year. In the context of the challenging national economic picture, a 2.8% award would be appropriate, ensuring teachers’ pay remains competitive and continues to reflect the vital contribution they make to children’s life chances.
The whole public sector, including schools, is being expected to drive better value from existing budgets to help rebuild public services. Schools will be expected to fund the 2025 pay award from the additional investment provided at the Budget, alongside their existing funds. The department will support schools to use their funding as efficiently as possible with a suite of new productivity initiatives. The department will soon publish a national affordability estimate for schools in the School Cost Technical Note. This estimate will be equivalent to the position of an average school.
Final decisions on the teacher’s pay award for 2025/26 will be made following recommendations from the independent pay review body process, which is on-going. The government will consider its response to the Pay Review Body’s recommendations with regard to the overall financial position. The written evidence sets out the department’s expectations about what schools will want to consider in their budget plans.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the increase to employers' National Insurance contributions will be covered in full for schools.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The government has agreed that public sector employers will receive compensation in recognition of the increase in their National Insurance contributions (NICs). That compensation will be additional to the £2.3 billion increase to the core schools budget for the 2025/26 financial year announced at the Autumn Budget 2024. Due to timing constraints, it will be provided as a separate grant, alongside the dedicated schools grant, in 2025/26. Further arrangements for this will be shared with schools as soon as is practicable.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has for the holiday activities and food programme.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The future of the Holiday Activities and Food programme beyond 31 March 2025 is subject to decisions flowing from this autumn’s government Spending Review. The outcome of this process will be communicated in due course.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she plans to take to ensure children from the most deprived households access free breakfast clubs.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to delivering on its pledge to provide free breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary aged pupils. We have made early progress towards this, including announcing that up to 750 early adopters will be delivering these new breakfast clubs from April 2025.
The government confirmed it will triple its investment in breakfast clubs to over £30 million in the 2025/26 financial year to help ensure children are ready to learn at the start of the school day and to help drive improvements to behaviour, attendance and attainment. This will also support parents, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of trends in the retention of teachers in further education colleges.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to supporting further education (FE) providers to recruit, retain and develop the high-quality teachers they need to deliver the best possible outcomes for their learners, including as a key part of our commitment to recruit an additional 6,500 teachers across colleges and schools.
To improve retention, the department is delivering Targeted Retention Incentive payments to eligible new and early career FE teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and priority technical subjects.
The FE Workforce Data Collection, first published in 2023, will provide valuable year-on-year information on the FE Workforce, including demographic and pay data. In the long term, this valuable insight will allow the department to monitor trends in recruitment and retention and ensure that we are providing the best support to FE teachers and providers.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding for the further education sector.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Further Education (FE) plays a critical role in delivering the Government’s Missions and ensuring that everyone has access to the opportunities they need, breaking down the barriers to their success and boosting economic growth.
FE funding, including its adequacy, will be considered as part of the upcoming Spending Review.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking in schools to (a) tackle misogyny and (b) ensure girls' safety.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Schools and colleges are under a legal duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children and must have regard to ‘Keeping children safe in education’ (KCSIE), which is the department’s statutory safeguarding guidance. KCSIE contains information about child-on-child sexual violence and sexual harassment, as well as guidance on managing reports of child-on-child sexual violence and sexual harassment.
Every pupil deserves to learn in a safe, calm classroom and the department will always support its hard working and dedicated teachers to make this happen. Schools should be clear in every aspect of their culture that sexism, sexual violence and sexual harassment are never acceptable and will not be tolerated.
The statutory guidance for Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) emphasises that schools should be alert to issues such as everyday sexism, misogyny, homophobia and gender stereotypes and take positive action to build a culture where these are not tolerated, with any occurrences identified and tackled. Schools should make clear that sexism, sexual violence and sexual harassment are not acceptable, will never be tolerated and are not an inevitable part of growing up. The full RSHE guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.
Schools should consider what they can do to foster healthy and respectful peer-to-peer communication and behaviour between boys and girls and provide an environment which challenges perceived limits on pupils based on their gender or any other characteristic.
The department is currently reviewing the RSHE statutory guidance. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, has been clear that children’s wellbeing must be at the heart of this guidance for schools and, as such, the government will look carefully at the consultation responses, discuss with stakeholders and consider the relevant evidence, including the Cass Review which has since been published, before setting out next steps.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will lower the threshold for free school meals qualification.
Answered by Damian Hinds
The department has extended free school meal (FSM) support several times and to more groups of children than any other government over the past half a century. As a result, the greatest ever proportion of children are now receiving free lunches. Over one third of children are now eligible for FSM, compared to one in six in 2010.
However, a threshold must be set somewhere. The department believes that the current eligibility threshold level, which enables children in low-income households to benefit from FSM, while remaining affordable and deliverable for schools, is the correct decision.
The department will continue to keep FSM eligibility under review to ensure that these meals are supporting those who most need them.