Robert Buckland

The Government recognises the range of tactics which could be employed to spread mis- and disinformation and the threat that these can pose. DSIT’s National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT) analyses coordinated attempts to artificially manipulate the online information environment, working with a range of partners, including social media platforms, civil society groups, academia, and international partners, to tackle it.

Digital astroturfing, amongst other techniques sometimes used by state actors to interfere with UK society, will be captured by the Foreign Interference Offence. This has been added as a priority offence in the Online Safety Act and will capture a wide range of state-sponsored disinformation and state-backed operations. Companies will have a legal duty to take proactive action to prevent users from encountering material that amounts to an offence of Foreign Interference, which could include content linked to digital astroturfing, and minimise how long any such content is present on their services.

Under the Act, Ofcom’s Disinformation Advisory Committee is empowered to conduct research and build understanding on mis- and disinformation related issues, which may include the threats posed by digital astroturfing. In addition, Ofcom’s updated statutory duty to promote media literacy includes specific duties to raise the public’s awareness of how to keep themselves and others safe online, including by understanding the nature and impact of mis- and disinformation. This could include initiatives related to specific malicious tactics.

UK applicants will be able to participate in the full Horizon Europe programme and UK entities are eligible to receive grant funding through all instruments of the European Innovation Council. The UK is not part of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund – which provides equity finance support to EIC Accelerator projects.

Given the proximity of the Safety Summit to the European AI, Data and Robotics Forum on 8 and 9 of November, the Government will not be sending any Ministers or officials to the event. However, both UK Government Ministers and officials participate in European technology-focused events, with an SCS-led official delegation attending the IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) Europe Data Protection Conference this November, which will seek to facilitate our EU data objectives.

Religious education (RE) is an essential part of a school’s curriculum and remains a compulsory subject in all state funded schools, including academies, to all pupils up to the age of 18. RE develops an individual’s knowledge and understanding of the religions and beliefs which form part of contemporary society, as well as serving to inform their own values and behaviour.

The department is offering a £10,000 bursary for RE trainee teachers starting Initial Teacher Training courses in the 2024/25 academic year. The department has published this information on the ‘Get Into Teaching’ website and will be marketing the offer to prospective teachers through other channels.

The mandatory Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Core Content Framework (CCF) sets out a core minimum entitlement for all trainees of what should be covered during their teacher training. While all ITT courses must encompass the CCF in full, it remains for accredited ITT providers to design their full course curricula in a way that is appropriate to the needs of trainees and for the subject, phase, and age range that the trainees will be teaching, which for some ITT courses, would include religious education training.

To be awarded Qualified Teacher Status, trainee teachers must demonstrate that they satisfy all of the Teaching Standards at the appropriate level, including Part Two of the standards, which requires all teachers to demonstrate consistently high standards of personal and professional behaviour.

The department has publicly committed to reviewing the ITT CCF and Early Career Framework (ECF) alongside each other. Building on lessons learned from the first few years of CCF implementation and ECF delivery, the department plans to revise the CCF and ECF into a more closely combined framework, or set of frameworks, which cover the first three years or more at the start of a teacher’s career articulating what trainee and new teachers need to know and need to know how to do.

This underpins a joined-up sequence of training and development over at least the first three years of new teachers’ careers to support them at the start of their new career. The department aims to ensure that what new teachers learn across these early years of their career delivers continuous, coherent and complementary learning for all trainees and new teachers, and provides the confidence and skills for a lifelong career in teaching.

I refer my right hon. Friend, the Member for South Swindon to the answer of 25 September to question 199770.

Swimming and water safety are compulsory in the primary National Curriculum for Physical Education (PE) and Sport.

The PE and Sport Premium can be used by primary schools to support swimming and water safety lessons, including funding teacher training and additional swimming lessons for pupils not able to meet National Curriculum expectations after their PE and Sport lessons. On 8 March 2023, the Government announced a total of over £600 million across the next two academic years for the PE and Sport Premium.

The Department also provides up to £300,000 a year to a consortium grant to improve opportunities for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities to take part in PE and Sport. This includes a focus on swimming and water safety. A new inclusion hub on the Swim England website has been created to provide resources for schools and swimming teachers.

A range of swimming and water safety resources and guidance documents have been developed by sector organisations and are available online for teachers and parents.

In May 2022, the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Green Paper set out the government’s assessment of the challenges the SEND and AP system faces, including assessments and education, health and care (EHC) plans.

In March this year, the government published its proposals to deliver improvements through developing reformed templates and guidance to deliver a nationally consistent EHC plan process, which makes greater use of digital technology, with the aim to increase consistency and the speed with which support is put in place.

The government continues to support local authorities, with their core budgets increased to £60 billion for the next financial year. Local authorities have the flexibility to spend according to local needs and priorities, including undertaking EHC needs assessments.

Apprenticeships offer great opportunities for people of all backgrounds to get the skills that they need to begin, or progress in, a rewarding career. The department recognise that apprenticeship achievement brings huge advantages in terms of future earnings and employment prospects, and we are committed to supporting more learners who have declared a learning difficulty or disability (LDD) to start and achieve apprenticeships.

The department is working with the Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network to explore the barriers that disabled apprentices face in accessing and achieving apprenticeships. The Network published its latest annual report in February 2023, which contains useful information for employers to help them better support apprentices with LDD and can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1135471/ADCN_Annual_Report_2022_to_2023.pdf.

In addition, our Disabled Apprentice Network, in partnership with Disability Rights UK, provides valuable insight and evidence on how to attract and retain people with disabilities into apprenticeships. The Network’s latest annual report considers what works well for disabled apprentices based on their experiences and will help government, employers and training providers to improve how apprenticeships are delivered. The department has also improved it’s Find an Apprenticeship service, to allow people to identify Disability Confident Employers offering opportunities.

In addition, the department continue to pay employers and providers £1,000 when they take on apprentices under 25 years old with an education, health and care plan, and provide monthly financial support to providers to help them make reasonable adjustments for eligible apprentices with LDD.

The department is also taking a broader range of actions to drive up apprenticeship quality and achievements for all apprentices, including neuro-divergent apprentices.

We are supporting employers through our Employer Quality Roadmap which provides guidance on what employers need to be doing at each stage of the apprenticeship, and Ofsted will be fully inspecting all apprenticeship providers by 2025. A new exit feedback tool has also been launched for apprentices who have withdrawn, alongside a new feedback tool for existing apprentices to provide feedback on their training provider. The department will use this feedback to inform further improvements.

The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Green Paper consultation closed in July last year. The department is currently reviewing the feedback received and using this, along with continued engagement with the system, to inform the next stage of delivering improvements for children, young people, and their families.

The department will be publishing a full response to the paper in an Improvement Plan imminently.

We will continue to support the system in the immediate term to deliver change, and to improve the experience and outcomes for children and young people with SEND and those who need AP.

The department does not hold or plan to gather information on the number of education professionals who have training specifically on autism.

Once teachers qualify and are employed in schools, headteachers and school staff use their professional judgement to identify any further training, including specific specialisms, for individual staff that is relevant to them, the school, and its pupils. Schools do not report information to the department on additional specialist training of this nature. However, all teachers are teachers of students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and we are committed to ensuring that all pupils can reach their potential and receive excellent support from their teachers.

Consideration of SEND underpins both the initial teacher training (ITT) core content framework (CCF) and early career framework (ECF), which were both produced with the support of sector experts.

ITT courses must be designed so that teacher trainees can demonstrate that they meet all of the Teachers' Standards at the appropriate level, including the requirement in Standard 5, that all teachers must have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils.

The government invested £74 million into the first year of our new National Autism Strategy, published in July 2021 and extended to children and young people for the first time. It aims to improve the lives of people with autism, for example through improving access to quality education. We will publish our second implementation plan this year.

In February, the department announced funding which includes nearly £12 million for the new Universal Services contract, to deliver SEND-specific continuing professional development to the school and further education workforce. This will help schools and colleges to support children and young people with SEND, including autism, and includes specific support on the needs of autistic children and young people.

The Department for Education, in consultation with the Ministry of Justice and others, is in the process of developing proposals for the review of redress and complaint arrangements for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. The review will consider:

1. Whether the amended mediation arrangements set out in the Act provide parents and young people with a way of having their complaints considered in a holistic way and whether they reduce the number of appeals to tribunals.
2. How successful the new assessment and EHC planning process itself is at resolving disagreements.
3. If health and social care complaint arrangements are working for parents and young people.
4. What role the Tribunal might play in hearing appeals and complaints across education, health and social care.

Running parallel to the review will be pilots to test an expansion of the powers of the first tier tribunal to make recommendations about the health and social care elements of EHC Plans. We estimate that the pilots will begin in the spring of 2015 as the first appeals about the new Education, Health and Care Plans begin to be heard and that the pilots will last for two years as they build up the evidence on which to base any recommendations.

The Secretary of State for Education and the Lord Chancellor must lay a report on the outcome of the review before Parliament within three years of any of the provisions of Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 coming into force in September 2014. Interim findings from the pilots could be published before the final report on the review.

The Department for Education, in consultation with the Ministry of Justice and others, is in the process of developing proposals for the review of redress and complaint arrangements for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. The review will consider:

1. Whether the amended mediation arrangements set out in the Act provide parents and young people with a way of having their complaints considered in a holistic way and whether they reduce the number of appeals to tribunals.
2. How successful the new assessment and EHC planning process itself is at resolving disagreements.
3. If health and social care complaint arrangements are working for parents and young people.
4. What role the Tribunal might play in hearing appeals and complaints across education, health and social care.

Running parallel to the review will be pilots to test an expansion of the powers of the first tier tribunal to make recommendations about the health and social care elements of EHC Plans. We estimate that the pilots will begin in the spring of 2015 as the first appeals about the new Education, Health and Care Plans begin to be heard and that the pilots will last for two years as they build up the evidence on which to base any recommendations.

The Secretary of State for Education and the Lord Chancellor must lay a report on the outcome of the review before Parliament within three years of any of the provisions of Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 coming into force in September 2014. Interim findings from the pilots could be published before the final report on the review.

The Department for Education, in consultation with the Ministry of Justice and others, is in the process of developing proposals for the review of redress and complaint arrangements for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. The review will consider:

1. Whether the amended mediation arrangements set out in the Act provide parents and young people with a way of having their complaints considered in a holistic way and whether they reduce the number of appeals to tribunals.
2. How successful the new assessment and EHC planning process itself is at resolving disagreements.
3. If health and social care complaint arrangements are working for parents and young people.
4. What role the Tribunal might play in hearing appeals and complaints across education, health and social care.

Running parallel to the review will be pilots to test an expansion of the powers of the first tier tribunal to make recommendations about the health and social care elements of EHC Plans. We estimate that the pilots will begin in the spring of 2015 as the first appeals about the new Education, Health and Care Plans begin to be heard and that the pilots will last for two years as they build up the evidence on which to base any recommendations.

The Secretary of State for Education and the Lord Chancellor must lay a report on the outcome of the review before Parliament within three years of any of the provisions of Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 coming into force in September 2014. Interim findings from the pilots could be published before the final report on the review.

The Department for Education, in consultation with the Ministry of Justice and others, is in the process of developing proposals for the review of redress and complaint arrangements for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. The review will consider:

1. Whether the amended mediation arrangements set out in the Act provide parents and young people with a way of having their complaints considered in a holistic way and whether they reduce the number of appeals to tribunals.
2. How successful the new assessment and EHC planning process itself is at resolving disagreements.
3. If health and social care complaint arrangements are working for parents and young people.
4. What role the Tribunal might play in hearing appeals and complaints across education, health and social care.

Running parallel to the review will be pilots to test an expansion of the powers of the first tier tribunal to make recommendations about the health and social care elements of EHC Plans. We estimate that the pilots will begin in the spring of 2015 as the first appeals about the new Education, Health and Care Plans begin to be heard and that the pilots will last for two years as they build up the evidence on which to base any recommendations.

The Secretary of State for Education and the Lord Chancellor must lay a report on the outcome of the review before Parliament within three years of any of the provisions of Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 coming into force in September 2014. Interim findings from the pilots could be published before the final report on the review.