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Written Question
Plagiarism
Thursday 26th June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the level of plagiarism in the education sector; and what steps her Department is taking to tackle plagiarism.

Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Cheating of any kind is unacceptable. It threatens to undermine the reputation of our world-class education sector and devalues the hard work of those who succeed on their own merit.

Ofqual require Awarding Organisations to have robust policies and procedures in place to prevent, detect, and deal with malpractice, including plagiarism.

The Joint Council for Qualifications have published guidance to support schools and colleges to identify and address concerns about plagiarism in exams and assessments, which can be found at: https://www.jcq.org.uk/exams-office/malpractice/plagiarism-in-assessments---guidance-for-teachersassessors/.

Higher education providers are independent bodies responsible for their own approaches to preventing academic misconduct by students, including plagiarism, but are regulated in relation their assessment practices by the Office for Students (OfS). The OfS sets the expectation that assessments must be designed in a way that minimises opportunities for misconduct and facilitates its detection where it does occur.


Written Question
RAF Brize Norton
Thursday 26th June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether there is CCTV coverage of the perimeter of RAF Brize Norton.

Answered by Luke Pollard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)

RAF Brize Norton has CCTV in operation that enables remote coverage of base areas which is part of the multilayered approach to security on site.

The Defence Secretary has ordered that a full security review be conducted at pace, not only at Brize Norton, but across the defence estate.


Written Question
Private Education: VAT
Thursday 26th June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on what projects her Department plans to spend the revenue raised from VAT on independent school fees in the (a) 2024-25 and (b) 2025-26 financial years; and how much she plans to allocate to each project.

Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)

The Government has taken a number of decisions on tax to stabilise the public finances and support public services. Ending tax breaks for private schools will raise £1.8bn a year.

To raise school standards for every child, and break down the barriers to opportunity, the government will increase the core schools budget by £2.0bn in real terms over this Spending Review (2023-24 to 2028-29). This provides a £4.7bn cash increase per year by 2028-29 (compared to 2025-26), which ensures average real terms growth of 1.1% a year per pupil.


Written Question
Schools: Work Experience
Wednesday 25th June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to reinstate two weeks of compulsory work experience in schools.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

Earlier this year, we updated the careers statutory guidance reflecting the revised Gatsby Benchmarks of good careers guidance and included the new definition of meaningful workplace experiences to raise the quality of work experience.

In this guidance we also set out the vision for this government’s priority for the delivery of two weeks’ worth of meaningful work experience for all pupils over the course of their secondary education, irrespective of background.

Building on the Gatsby Benchmark 6 definition for Experiences of Workplaces, we will ensure that all pupils have multiple, meaningful and varied high-quality workplace experiences, including one weeks’ worth of workplace activities between years 7-9 and one weeks’ worth of work placement between years 10-11, progressively increasing their exposure to different places of work.

We are currently piloting a new flexible model of work experience, designed to reduce barriers for young people, schools and employers. The department will set out more details of the work experience guarantee in due course.


Written Question
Prisoners: Ethnic Groups
Tuesday 24th June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people in prison for offences of (a) violence against the person, (b) sexual offences, (c) robbery, (d) theft offences, (e) criminal damage and arson, (f) drug offences, (g) possession of weapons, (h) public order offences, (i) miscellaneous crimes against society, (j) fraud offences, (k) summary non-motoring, (l) summary motoring and (m) offence not recorded are of (i) Asian or Asian British, (ii) Black or Black British, (iii) Mixed, (iv) White, (v) Chinese or other, (vi) not stated and (vii) unrecorded ethnicity.

Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury

The requested information is shown in the attached table.


Written Question
Education: Finance
Friday 13th June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding she plans to provide to (a) the National Careers Service, (b) the Education and Training Foundation, (c) WorldSkills UK and (d) the Careers and Enterprise Company in the 2025-26 academic or financial year.

Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

As part of our Plan for Change, the government is investing in skills in order to drive economic growth and break down barriers to opportunity. The overall programme resource budget for apprenticeships, further education and higher education in the 2025/26 financial year is £15.8 billion. This includes funding for the National Careers Service, the Education and Training Foundation, WorldSkills UK, and the Careers and Enterprise Company.


Written Question
Environment Agency and Rural Payments Agency: Equality
Thursday 12th June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many staff in the (a) Environment Agency and (b) Rural Payments Agency have job titles which include the words (i) equality, (ii) diversity, (iii) inclusion, (iv) gender, (v) LGBT and (vi) race.

Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

This information is not held centrally.


Written Question
Schools: Finance
Tuesday 3rd June 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) primary and (b) secondary schools received a lump sum payment in the last financial year; and for how many of those schools the lump sum represented (i) less than one, (ii) two to five, (iii) five to 10, (iv) 10 to 20, (v) 20 to 30, (vi) 30 to 40 and (vii) over 50 per cent of their total income.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

The schools national funding formula (NFF) introduced in 2018 is used to distribute core funding for mainstream schools, for pupils from reception to year 11. The NFF determines how much funding each local authority receives, and local authorities then determine individual schools’ final allocations through their own local formulae.

In both the schools NFF and local authority formulae, the majority of funding is distributed on the basis of pupil numbers and pupil characteristics. In line with the formula introduced under the previous government, every school receives a contribution to the costs that do not vary with pupil numbers, which is why both the national and local funding formulae provide a lump sum for every school, irrespective of their size.

The table below summarises the proportion of the funding generated by local authority formulae that the lump sum represents in 2024/25.

Lump sum proportion

Number of schools

<1%

9

1<2%

1,350

2<5%

2,744

5<10%

5,898

10<20%

7,128

20<30%

2,057

30<40%

696

40<50%

217

>=50%

51

Total

20,150

Further information can be found at the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics/2024-25.


Written Question
Breakfast Clubs
Friday 30th May 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department's transparency data entitled Breakfast clubs early adopters: schools in the scheme, published on 24 February 2025 and updated on 22 April 2025, for what reason 79 schools are no longer taking part in the scheme.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

I refer the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to the answer of 6 May 2025 to Question 47782.


Written Question
Apprentices
Wednesday 28th May 2025

Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what number and proportion of Level 7 apprenticeship (a) starts and (b) completions were for people aged (i) under 22 and (ii) 22 or over, in each year for which data is available.

Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The attached file shows level 7 apprenticeship starts and achievements for the 2015/16 to 2023/24 academic years broken down by learner age as requested.