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.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps her Department has taken to help improve the educational attainment rate of Romani Gypsy, Roma and Irish traveller children.
Answered by Damian Hinds
A world-class education system that works for everyone is the surest way to ensure that all children and young people can reach their potential. The department has high expectations for all pupils. The department does not design education policy to target certain groups of pupils based on ethnicity, but instead is focused on improving outcomes for all children. For all children to reach their potential they need an ambitious, knowledge-rich curriculum, taught by great teachers in schools with high expectations and good pupil behaviour.
One of the most significant factors affecting pupil attainment, which cuts across all ethnicities, is economic disadvantage. That is why the department has continued to provide pupil premium funding which will rise to over £2.9 billion in 2024/25. Pupil premium per pupil rates will have increased by 10% over the three years from 2021/22 to 2024/25. This increase will ensure that this targeted funding continues to help schools to support the educational outcomes of disadvantaged pupils.
In 2024/25, the national funding formula (NFF) will allocate £7.8 billion (17.8% of all funding allocated by the NFF) through additional needs factors based on deprivation, low prior attainment, English as an additional language and mobility.
The department recognises the issues faced by Romani Gypsy, Roma and Irish Traveller children and young people and how schools and others can make a positive difference. While some pupils from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds can, and do, perform well at school, as a group their attainment and attendance at school is particularly low at every key stage of education.
The department will continue to work to deliver reforms, to ensure all children and young people are able to reach their potential and experience the transformative effect of a high-quality education and continue to support schools and leaders to respond to the needs of their schools and communities.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many incidents of ethnicity-based bullying within schools were reported to her Department in the last 12 months; and what steps her Department is taking to help tackle such incidents.
Answered by David Johnston
There is no legal requirement on schools to record and report incidents of bullying and there never has been. Schools should develop their own approaches for monitoring bullying and exercise their own judgement as to what will work best for their pupils.
All schools are legally required to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying. They have the freedom to develop their own anti-bullying strategies appropriate to their environment and are held to account by Ofsted.
In July 2017, the department updated its advice for schools, which outlines schools’ responsibilities to support children who are bullied. The advice makes clear that schools should make appropriate provision for a bullied child's social, emotional and mental health needs. This advice is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preventing-and-tackling-bullying.
The department provided over £3 million of funding, between 10 August 2021 and 31 March 2024, to five anti-bullying organisations to support schools to tackle bullying. This included projects targeting bullying of particular groups, such as those who are victims of hate related bullying.
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 ensure that universities uphold the right to freedom of expression for students campaigning on matters relating to the (a) war in Gaza and (b) rights of Palestinians.
Answered by David Johnston
The right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and academic freedom in higher education (HE) is one this government takes very seriously, and one that it has legislated to further protect.
Universities should be places where academics, students and visiting speakers can express a diverse range of views without fear of repercussion. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act received Royal Assent on 11 May 2023 and is now an Act of Parliament. The main provisions in the Act will come into force on 1 August 2024.
The Act will strengthen HE providers’ duties to secure freedom of speech and will create a new duty to promote the importance of freedom of speech. The Act will also extend the duties to secure freedom of speech to students’ unions and will establish new routes of redress if the duties are breached.
It is important to note that the Act only covers speech that is within the law. The right to freedom of speech is not an absolute right and it does not include the right to harass others or incite them to violence or terrorism. Encouraging terrorism and inviting support for a proscribed terrorist organisation are criminal offences, and HE providers should not provide a platform for these offences to be committed. In addition, providers should be very clear that any antisemitic abuse or harassment will not be tolerated.
Asked by: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to ensure every (a) primary and (b) secondary pupil in England can visit the theatre at least once in their school career.
Answered by Damian Hinds
All state-funded schools should teach a broad and balanced curriculum that promotes pupils' cultural development. The best schools combine creative subjects with core subjects, and the department is committed to ensuring that all pupils have access to both.
Cultural education is therefore integral to a high-quality education. Alongside drama as part of the English curriculum and dance as part of the physical education curriculum, music and art and design, remain important pillars of the knowledge-rich National Curriculum.
Drama is not an individual subject within the English National Curriculum, but it is an important part of a pupil’s school experience. The main introduction of drama to the primary programmes of study details the type of drama opportunities pupils should be given and acknowledges the artistic practice of drama. Teachers will use their professional judgement as to how and when such opportunities are created.
On 10 February 2017, the department announced an update to the content for the GCSE in drama and the A level in drama and theatre studies to specify that all pupils will now have the entitlement to experience live theatre, reaffirming the government’s commitment to providing pupils with an enriching arts education.
A parent’s income should not be a barrier to a pupil participating in a school trip. Schools may not charge for school trips that take place during school hours, or which take place outside school hours but are part of the National Curriculum, part of religious education, or part of the syllabus for a public exam that the pupil is being prepared for at the school. Parents can be asked for contributions towards the cost of a trip, but schools must make clear that contributions are voluntary. The published advice, ‘Charging for School Activities’, is clear that no pupil should be excluded from an activity simply because their parents are unwilling or unable to pay. The advice can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/706830/Charging_for_school_activities.pdf.
Finally, pupil premium funding will rise to over £2.9 billion in the 2024/25 academic year. The increase will ensure that this targeted funding continues to help schools to support the educational outcomes of disadvantaged pupils. As set out in the menu of approaches, schools are able to use pupil premium to fund extracurricular activities, including school trips to theatres.