Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether Special Educational Need schools are eligible for split school site funding.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or in alternative provision receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.
Special schools for children with SEND are not funded using the same funding formula as mainstream schools. The extra costs of operating a special school across more than one site can be covered through the combination of place funding at £10,000 per place and top-up funding in respect of individual pupils attending the special school.
Our guidance, ‘High needs funding arrangements’, explains that the top-up funding determined by local authorities for a special school should not only reflect the costs of additional support to meet the individual pupil’s needs, but can also reflect costs that relate to the facilities required to support all the pupils at the school, including factors such as the school being on a split site. The guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-needs-funding-arrangements-2025-to-2026.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many students who were non-high needs and aged between 16 and 19 years old received the band (a) five and (b) 4a national funding rate in the 2022-23 academic year.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department does not hold the information in the format requested, or publish data split by funding band.
The department identifies high needs students in the Individual Learner Record and School Census data to allocate the appropriate funding. When calculating the number of funded students per band, the department does not distinguish between those with high needs and others, for this funding stream.
Therefore, the figures below include students in both high needs and non-high needs categories.
In 2022/2023, the total number of funded students in 16 to 19 allocations were:
*The allocations figures recorded by the department do not separate the number of funded students in Bands 4a and 4b, since this is not necessary for the calculation, as both bands attract the same funding rate.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the East of England APPG and EELGA entitled Levelling Up in the East of England - the Region’s Progress towards the Government’s Twelve Levelling Up Missions, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the recommendation in that report for a review of the funding formula that applies to rural schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department recognises the essential role that rural schools play in their communities. The National Funding Formula accounts for the particular challenges faced by small schools in rural areas through the lump sum and sparsity factor.
In recent years, the Department has made changes to the sparsity factor that have seen the total amount it allocates increase from £26 million in the 2020/21 financial year to £95 million in 2022/23. It will increase again to £97 million in 2023/24.
From 2022/23, the Department began measuring schools’ remoteness more accurately, by road distances, and this led to a significant increase in the number of schools eligible for sparsity funding to over 2,500 schools in total.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the East of England APPG and EELGA entitled Levelling Up in the East of England - the Region’s Progress towards the Government’s Twelve Levelling Up Missions, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the recommendations in that report in respect of overall quality of training, access to training and a better alignment of training with employer need.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department is investing £3.8 billion more in further education and skills over the Parliament to ensure people can get onto the ladder of opportunity and access high-quality training and education that leads to good jobs, addresses skills gaps, boosts productivity and supports levelling up.
Careers education, information, advice and guidance is a crucial first step to supporting individuals to access excellent education and skills training. Driven by the internationally recognised Gatsby Benchmarks, secondary schools and colleges are embedding career learning in the curriculum and providing young people with tailored advice and guidance, including more opportunities to learn about skills and apprenticeships.
Through our National Careers Service digital campaigns, such as Get the Jump, we are bringing information about education and training courses into one place. Users can also search where to take courses.
Additionally, the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge (ASK) programme continues to raise awareness of apprenticeships, traineeships, and T Levels in schools and colleges.
Employers have been central to the design and delivery of our skills policies such as through apprenticeships, T levels, and Institutes of Technology. The department set out in the Skills for Jobs: Lifelong Learning for Opportunity and Growth White Paper that we want to build on these successes, giving employers a key role in our skills system. By 2030, almost all technical courses will be on employer-led standards, ensuring that the education and training people receive are directly linked to the skills needed for jobs.
Employer-led Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) are forging stronger, more dynamic and direct working arrangements between employers, skills providers, and local leaders. By embedding greater employer engagement in local skills systems, LSIPs will bring the demand and supply sides closer together. This will enable a coherent ‘whole system’ approach to skills planning and help people develop the skills they need to get good jobs and increase their prospects.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the East of England APPG and East of England Local Government Association entitled Levelling Up in the East of England: the Region’s Progress towards the Government’s Twelve Levelling Up Missions, published on 13 December 2022, if she will take steps to implement the recommendations in that report on delivering more in-work education provision and participation in (a) further education and (b) skills training for adults.
Answered by Robert Halfon
Workplace activity is already a key element of our skills programmes. This includes apprenticeships, which give employees hands-on training to start and progress in work and offer a high quality alternative to academic and classroom-based qualifications. We are increasing investment in apprenticeships to £2.7 billion by 2024/25.
New T Levels are high quality, technical qualifications and every T Level student must complete a mandatory industry placement of a minimum of 45 days. This must take place with an external employer. We will be investing up to £500 million extra a year for T Levels once they are fully rolled out.
The department is investing £1.6 billion through the National Skills Fund across the 2022 to 2025 financial years. This includes up to £550 million to significantly expand Skills Bootcamps and Level 3 Free Courses for Jobs, so that more adults across all regions of the country can access the training. New Skills Bootcamps are free, flexible courses of up to 16 weeks for adults aged 19 or over, which give adults the opportunity to build valuable, sector-specific skills, based on local employer demand and provide a direct path to a job on completion.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the East of England APPG and EELGA entitled Levelling Up in the East of England - the Region’s Progress towards the Government’s Twelve Levelling Up Missions, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the recommendation in that report for opportunities for greater local oversight of skills funding and coordination across local partnerships.
Answered by Robert Halfon
In the current academic year, the government has devolved approximately 60% of the Adult Education Budget (AEB) to nine Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) and the Greater London Authority (GLA), which are responsible for the provision of AEB-funded adult education for their residents and allocation of the AEB to providers. This includes Cambridgeshire and Peterborough MCA which received £11.9 million devolved AEB in the 2022/23 financial year to enable it to address the skills needs of the area.
As set out in the Levelling Up White Paper, devolution of adult education funding has been a core part of all MCA devolution deals to date. The department has committed to devolving adult education functions and the associated core AEB to new areas from 2025/26, as part of new devolution deals.
Over recent months, the department has been working with six new geographic areas, including Norfolk County Council and Suffolk County Council to support them with the announcement of their devolution deals. The government will fully devolve the AEB to Norfolk County Council and Suffolk County Council from the 2025/26 academic year, subject to readiness conditions and parliamentary approval of the required secondary legislation conferring the appropriate functions.
Apprenticeships funding is already devolved to employers across the country who decide which apprenticeships they offer. Funding for 16 to 19 education and training has not been devolved because it is different to adult education. It is a core part of the compulsory education and training system. Young people have a duty to participate up to the age of 18. It enables young people to choose from a set of high-quality options which will support them into an apprenticeship, into other work, or into additional learning such as higher education or higher technical programmes. As such it is important to maintain a national offer which is consistently high-quality across the country and promotes social mobility.
The National Skills Fund (NSF) is not devolved but uses a range of funding mechanisms to ensure a good range of adult skills provision is delivered across the country. Skills Bootcamps are being delivered online or across multiple areas of England. Funding includes £70 million to MCAs and the GLA and other local areas to deliver Skills Bootcamps that specifically meet local skills.
The department is currently making funding and accountability reforms, aiming to create a simpler and more effective system that spreads opportunity across England, focused on delivering good outcomes for learners, employers, and the taxpayer. We want to ensure that the funding system actively supports further education providers to work collaboratively with other local providers, local employers, and other key stakeholders. Two public consultations were ran, with the second one closing on 12 October 2022. A formal response to the second consultation will be published in spring 2023.
The Strategic Development Fund awarded the East of England £10.1 million to develop new courses and facilities in sectors identified as having the greatest skills challenges. Building on this, Employer Representative Bodies are now leading on the development of Local Skills Improvement Plans across the region. The plans will set out priority changes to provision and associated funding will help enable providers to adapt their curriculum offer.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the East of England APPG and East of England Local Government Association entitled Levelling Up in the East of England: the Region’s Progress towards the Government’s Twelve Levelling Up Missions, published on 13 December 2022, if she will take steps with Cabinet colleagues to implement the recommendations in that report on improving alignment of her Department's policies with those of other Departments on (a) health, (b) the economy and (c) income and benefits.
Answered by Nick Gibb
To facilitate cross-Government working on the Levelling Up agenda, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities leads a group including ministers from all Departments. The group provides support, challenge, and accountability to drive progress on the missions.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the East of England APPG and East of England Local Government Association entitled Levelling Up in the East of England: the Region’s Progress towards the Government’s Twelve Levelling Up Missions, published on 13 December 2022, if she will take steps to implement the recommendations on (a) improving and (b) extending (i) early years (A) support, (B) education and (C) special educational needs.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
The department is committed to ensuring that every child in an early years setting, regardless of their background, where they live, or any additional needs they may have, receives high quality education and care. In 2021, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework was reformed. The EYFS framework sets the standards and requirements that all early years providers must follow, to ensure that every child has the best start in life and is prepared for school. The reforms aim to improve outcomes for all children, particularly disadvantaged children, and to reduce the amount of paperwork so that practitioners and teachers can spend more time supporting children through rich curriculum activities.
The department has built up a significant early education and childcare offer to parents. In 2010, to support children to develop social skills and prepare them for school, the government extended free early education and care for all three and four-year-olds, regardless of parental income or working status, from 12.5 hours a week to 15 hours a week.
In 2013, the department introduced 15 hours of free early education and care for disadvantaged two year-olds, which aims to support improved educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged children, who are the least likely to take up formal childcare, but who stand to benefit from it the most.
In 2017, the department introduced an additional 15 hours, providing a total of 30 hours of free early education and care for working parents of three and four-year-olds, if they earn the equivalent of 16 hours a week at national minimum or living wage and under £100,000 per year. This can help save working parents up to £6,000 a child per year.
Getting this right is fundamentally important for parents and children, and the department continues to look at all options to improve the cost, flexibility and availability of childcare, and crucially, outcomes for children.
The department is providing a package of training, qualifications, expert guidance and targeted support for the early years sector, to support learning and recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the youngest and most disadvantaged children. This includes funding training of up to 5,000 early years Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) resulting in an accredited Level 3 Early Years SENCO qualification. The Level 3 Early Years SENCO training became available in October 2022 and will run until August 2024. SENCOs working in group-based and childminder settings are eligible for this package of support, which is nationally available, with targeting in specific areas based on levels of disadvantage.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 1 December 2022 to Question 101099 on Further Education Expenditure, how much and what proportion of the £6.5 billion made available to 16-19 education has been spent in the 2022-23 academic year.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department does not specifically track the spending by each institution against the allocated 16-19 budget. Colleges, school sixth forms and other providers can determine how and when to spend this funding in each academic year to best support their students.
Details of the funding allocations by institution for 16-19 year olds (or up to 25 years with an education health and care plan) in the 2022/23 academic year can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/16-to-19-allocation-data-2022-to-2023-academic-year.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the spend on 16-19 education in the current financial year.
Answered by Robert Halfon
Funding is allocated to institutions for education and training for 16 to 19-year-olds and young people aged up to 25 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) by academic year. For the 2022/23 academic year the department has made available £6.5 billion.
The Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021 made available an extra £1.6 billion for 16 to 19 education in 2024/25 compared with financial year 2021/22. This is the biggest increase in 16 to 19 funding in a decade. This will help to fund the additional students anticipated in the system, 40 extra hours per student, and provide an affordable increase in funding rates per student. This includes an up-front cash boost which will see the national rate of funding increase by over 8% in academic year 2022/23, from £4,188 to £4,542 per student.