Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to increase the number and proportion of pupils attaining a pass grade in GSCE (a) maths and (b) English by the age of (i) 16 and (ii) 18.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
High and rising school standards are at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best life chances.
The government has established an independent Curriculum and Assessment Review which will seek to deliver, amongst other things, an excellent foundation in core subjects of reading, writing and mathematics. The reformed curriculum will drive high and rising standards in schools, ensuring children are prepared for life, work and the future. The review will look closely at the key challenges to attainment that children and young people face, in particular those with SEND, as it seeks to ensure that all pupils benefit from a broad curriculum. This will also include looking at how the assessment system can be improved.
The review group will publish an interim report in early 2025 setting out their interim findings and confirming the key areas for further work. The final review with recommendations will be published in autumn 2025.
High-quality teaching is the most important in-school factor supporting pupils’ attainment and outcomes. The department is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers in secondary schools, special schools and colleges to drive high standards for children and young people. Our measures will include getting more teachers into shortage subjects, supporting areas that face recruitment challenges and tackling retention issues. Additionally, in October the department introduced a teacher retention incentive of £6,000 for teachers in secondary schools and colleges in shortage subjects including science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The department’s English and Maths Hubs are providing school to school expertise and advice on how to strengthen outcomes in these subjects.
From early 2025, new Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams will support all state schools by facilitating networking, sharing best practice and enabling schools to better access support, including for English and mathematics, and learn from one another. For schools requiring more intensive support, RISE teams and supporting organisations will work collaboratively with their responsible body to agree bespoke packages of targeted support, based on a school’s particular circumstances.
The department considers level 2 English and mathematics to be essential for enabling students to realise their potential, and seize opportunities in life, learning and work. That is why we have the mathematics and English condition of funding (CoF), which enables all students on 16-19 study programmes or T Levels who have not yet attained grade 4+ GCSE (or equivalent) in English and mathematics to access support that leads to the best outcomes for them. A GCSE pass grade includes students with a prior attainment of grade 9-1, but a pass below grade 4 is not a level 2 pass which is why those students are supported by this policy.
The department has announced updates to the CoF requirements to help more students without a level 2 pass to progress in English and mathematics, the updated requirements ensure all students are offered a minimum number of teaching hours for English and/or mathematics. These are three hours for English and four hours for mathematics per week for 2024/25 academic year, and 100 hours for English and 100 hours for mathematics for the 2025/26 academic year. This support must be delivered as in-person, whole class, stand-alone teaching. The 2024/25 requirements are ‘best efforts’, whereas the updates from 2025/26 are mandatory. We also encourage providers to offer an extra 35 hours of mathematics teaching in the 2025/26 academic year, continuing their best efforts in delivering these. We are also reducing the tolerance by which providers may opt out students from these requirements to 2.5% in 2025/26 (from its current level of 5%) so as many students as possible get support for English and mathematics.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to take steps to ensure that pay rates of teachers in sixth form colleges match those of school teachers.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government is committed to ensuring that there is a thriving further education (FE) sector, which is vital to its missions to break down the barriers to opportunity and boost economic growth.
The government is not responsible for, and plays no role in, setting or making recommendations about teacher pay in FE colleges. It is for individual colleges and providers to set the pay of their staff.
At the Autumn Budget, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out an additional £300 million revenue funding for FE in 2025/26 to ensure young people are developing the skills this country needs, as well as £300 million new capital funding to address condition and capacity issues in the FE estate. The department will set out how this funding will be distributed in due course.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing further skills boot camps to help tackle specific sectoral shortages.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Skills Bootcamps remain an important offer in the skills landscape, and in the longer term the department intends to fund Skills Bootcamps through funding Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) and local areas directly. MCAs and the Greater London Authority have the flexibility to use up to 50% of their grants to test Skills Bootcamps in additional sectors. As of the 2024/25 financial year, two trailblazer areas, the West Midlands Combined Authority and Greater Manchester Combined Authority can use 100% of their grants to this effect.
More broadly, the department is introducing Skills England to develop a coherent picture of our national and regional skills needs and to shape the technical education needed to meet that demand. Our levy-funded growth and skills offer will deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers, aligned with the government’s industrial strategy, creating routes into good, skilled jobs in growing industries and helping to address skills shortages.
As a first step, this will include shorter duration and foundation apprenticeships in targeted sectors, helping more people learn new high-quality skills at work, fuelling innovation in businesses across the country, and providing high-quality entry pathways for young people. Skills England is currently engaging with employers over this autumn on how these apprenticeships can support them to develop their workforces and fill skills gaps. We will receive their findings in the new year which will help to inform our offer, and we will set out more detail on the offer in due course.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to collate a national register of pupils with (a) parents and (b) primary carers in prison.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department knows growing up with a parent or primary carer in prison can have a devastating impact on a child’s life chances. The government has a key mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child, which is why the department has committed to identifying children of prisoners and ensuring they get the support they need to thrive.
The department acknowledges the complexities of this issue and the wide range of family circumstances there may be. We must consider the implications the imprisonment of a child’s primary carer has on the child, regardless of whether they have legal responsibility for the child and/or are a blood relative. This is why the Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) programme report, published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in July this year, used multiple data sources to capture the breadth of parental relationships.
The MoJ is leading on the work to better identify children with a parent or primary carer in prison. At present, alongside the department, the MoJ is working to determine how to effectively identify these children so they are provided with the support they need to thrive. Parental imprisonment is a sensitive issue, and we are working with a range of stakeholders to ensure this is handled in the most child-centred, trauma-informed and age-appropriate way. Exact details of how this will work in practice are to be confirmed.
The department will make sure it considers how best to support all children affected by this issue as part of its wider reforms to children’s social care. We are clear that the support these children receive should be based on their individual needs, not solely the characteristic of having a parent or primary carer in prison.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding her Department plans to provide for level seven apprenticeships in each of the next three financial years; and on what categories of apprenticeship this funding will be spent.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Spending on apprenticeships, including the categories of apprenticeship, is demand led as apprenticeships are a job with training and therefore employers and their needs determine which opportunities are available to learners.
The government will be asking more employers to step forward and fund level 7 apprenticeships themselves, outside of the levy-funded growth and skills offer. This will enable better targeting of funding and help more people to get on at the start of their working lives instead of subsidising qualifications for those already established in their careers. The department will set out more detail in the new year.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to issue revised guidance to schools on requirements for developing individual health care plans for pupils with epilepsy.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Statutory guidance, ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’, recommends the use of individual healthcare plans as good practice. They can help schools support pupils with medical conditions, providing clarity about what needs to be done, when and by whom. The school, healthcare professionals and parents should agree, based on evidence, when a healthcare plan would be appropriate. ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’ can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ce6a72e40f0b620a103bd53/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions.pdf.
The department will keep the statutory guidance under review as we take forward the commitment to delivering an inclusive mainstream system.
The department engages closely with school leaders and their representative organisations on a wide range of issues, including supporting pupils with medical conditions.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many pupils are in state education per year group in England.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The most recently published statistics on the number of pupils at schools in England are from the January 2024 school census and can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics.
The table at the following link gives the number of state-funded school pupils by national curriculum year group as of that census: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/c9d612cd-f178-4ca0-a02a-08dcedcd278c.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) teachers, (b) teaching assistants and (c) other staff are employed in state schools in England.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Information on the school workforce, including the headcount and full-time equivalent number of teachers, teaching assistants, and other support staff in state-funded schools, is published in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical publication available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.
The specific information requested is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/db9348ac-a1d5-453e-1737-08dcedc9c179.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of children are home schooled in each local education authority area.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department publishes information on children in elective home education (EHE), which can be accessed here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/elective-home-education.
The number of children in EHE, at any point in the 2022/23 academic year, by local authority can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/3a87f0ae-7cfd-4b6c-b8de-08dcab23db45.
Please note that approaches to recording of EHE vary across local authorities. This is a new data collection since 2022/23 and, as such, the department expects the quality of the data returns from local authorities to continue to improve over time. In the latest term, data was received from 95% of local authorities. The data is adjusted for non-response and combined with population data for comparable ages to produce the national rate of EHE published in the release, which was 1.1% in autumn 2023.
The Children’s Wellbeing Bill will legislate for local authority registers of children not in school. This will include a duty on parents to provide the necessary information for these registers if their child is eligible, which would improve the accuracy of data and ensure that fewer children slip under the radar when they are not in school.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department has taken to implement the recommendations of the Twenty-Seventh Report of the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2022-23 on Evaluating innovation projects in children’s social care, HC 38, published on 22 November 2022.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The recommendations from the Twenty-Seventh Report of the Committee of Public Accounts rightly highlighted that the innovation projects in children’s social care needed to be fully evaluated and that the subsequent learning from previous innovation work should be sufficiently scaled and spread.
The department is committed to ensuring that evaluation and learning drive how it sets the direction for practice in children’s social care. Whilst the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee have been enacted, there is more that will be done to work with the sector, key stakeholders and those with lived experience, to ensure that this learning translates into improvements for children, young people and their families.