Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of SEND support for childcare and the early years on provision in Worcestershire.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
Ensuring children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive the right support when they need it is a priority, including those children and young people in Worcestershire.
Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) re-inspected Worcestershire SEND services on their 12 areas of significant weakness between 1 and 3 November 2021 (letter published 14 December 2021). The inspectors assessed each area of weakness and concluded that the Council had made sufficient progress in addressing eight of the significant weaknesses. Worcestershire Children First produced an Accelerated Progress Plan to address the remaining four areas of significant weakness.
The department is committed to supporting and monitoring progress of the identified areas for improvement and have put in place regular monitoring and challenge meetings with SEND advisers from the department and NHS England.
We are also supporting local authorities through the ongoing delivery of new special and alternative provision (AP) free schools. On 2 March 2023, the department announced a successful bid from Worcestershire County Council to build a new special school that caters for the needs of pupils with autism spectrum disorder in Malvern.
This announcement followed an application that evidenced need for school places for children and involved engagement and support from stakeholders including education providers, health partners, parents and carers and local MPs who have been consistently calling for more provision in the local area.
The new special free school will provide 120 full time places for pupils aged 5-19 with autism, who are able to engage with a mainstream curriculum with extra support and who would also benefit from a specific environment and staff dedicated to a holistic approach.
A final decision on who will run the new school will rest with my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education.
In addition, on 2 March 2023, the department published the SEND and AP Improvement Plan in response to the Green Paper of March 2022. The Improvement Plan sets out how a new, single, national SEND and AP system should deliver consistent, clear, and early support for children and young people with SEND. These new standards aim to make consistent the provision that should be made available across the country for every child and young person with SEND. There will also be new local SEND and AP Partnerships, strengthened accountability and dashboards, and reforms to funding.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made for the number of people who start an apprenticeship but fail to complete it due to the requirements to provide certification for functional skills.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The information requested is not held. The department cannot reliably identify if learners that fail to complete an apprenticeship do so because of a failure to meet minimum requirements for certification in English and maths.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate she has made of when the independent evaluation of the national roll out of the early career framework will be published.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department published interim results as part of the independent evaluation of the national roll out of the Early Career Framework in May 2022. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-career-framework-induction-evaluation.
The Department will be publishing the latest findings shortly.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to ensure that schools have more notice of future rounds of PE and sport premium funding.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is currently considering arrangements for the primary PE and Sport premium for the 2023/24 academic year and beyond and will confirm the position as early as possible.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress his Department has made on the delivery of measures proposed by the Right Support, Right Place, Right Time Green Paper.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) green paper consultation closed on 22 July 2022. The department is currently reviewing the feedback received and using this, along with continued engagement with the SEND system, to inform the next stage of delivering improvements for children, young people and their families.
The department is committed to publishing a full response to the green paper in an Improvement Plan in early 2023.
Ahead of the Improvement Plan being published, we are taking forward two additional measures to support children with SEND. The first is an investment of £21 million into training 400 more educational psychologists, who play a critical role in the educational support available to children with SEND. The second is the extension of a training programme for up to 150 more schools, for teachers to use assistive technology to better support their pupils with SEND.
These measures will continue to support the system in delivering change and continue to improve the outcomes and experiences of children and young people with SEND and those who need AP.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of parents took up the childcare offer (a) for two-year-olds, (b) of 15 hours for three- and four-year-olds and (c) of 30 hours for three- and four-year-olds, in each of the last five years.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
Data relating to government-funded early education and childcare is published in the annual Education provision: children under 5 years of age statistical release: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5.
The figures requested for (a) and (b) can be found at the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/c630228b-c8d7-4fbf-9467-08dacc5b2c16.
The number of children registered for (c) can be found at the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/c212be1a-6230-457c-9468-08dacc5b2c16.
Three to four-year-olds whose parents (or the sole parent in a lone parent household) work at least sixteen hours a week at national minimum wage or living wage, but earn under £100,000 per year, are eligible for this extended offer of thirty hours of childcare. Based on the department’s analyses of data from various surveys, an estimated four in five eligible children took up the offer in the most recent year.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of investing in greater specialist training for the identification of additional needs amongst the early years workforce.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The government is investing up to £180 million in early years COVID-19 recovery. This is a package of training, qualifications and targeted support for the early years sector to support the learning and development of the youngest and most disadvantaged children. This includes a focus on child development, communication and language, early maths and personal, social and emotional development.
The early years Professional Development Programme has already provided 1,300 early years professionals with such training and up to 10,000 more staff will be trained in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years. We will also train up to 5,000 early years staff and childminders to become qualified Special Educational Needs Coordinators.
In addition, we have invested £17 million in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention, improving the language skills of an estimated 90,000 children in reception classes. This proven, evidence-based programme targets children needing extra support with their speech and language development and is proven to help them make around 3 months of additional progress. Two thirds of primary schools (over 11,000) signed up, and the majority of those had Free School Meal rates above the national average.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure the viability of upper tier authorities charged with supporting the needs of high needs pupils.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
Following the additional funding increases announced in the Chancellor’s recent Autumn Statement, local authorities’ high needs funding will be rising to £10.1 billion in 2023/24, an increase of over 50% from the 2019/20 allocations. This extra funding will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
The department recognises that a number of local authorities have struggled to manage their high needs systems sustainably in recent years, and have accrued Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficits as a result. Following investment through the Spending Review 2021, the department is running three programmes aimed at helping local authorities with the financial sustainability of their high needs systems., Support and intervention is tailored to the severity of the problems authorities are facing. Those with the highest percentage DSG deficits have been invited to the Safety Valve intervention programme. Those with substantial, but less severe deficits, have been invited to join the Delivering Better Value (DBV) programme. Other local authorities are being contacted by the Education and Skills Funding Association.
In 2020, the government also introduced a statutory override which separates local authorities’ DSG deficits from their wider financial position. The statutory override was put in place for a period of three years, up to March 2023, and meant that local authorities’ DSG deficits could be separated from their wider accounts.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities understand that a decision on the DSG statutory override needs to be communicated to the sector as soon as possible to provide certainty for the next – and future - financial years. An announcement will be made shortly.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children have been out of school for a year or more due to not being able to find a setting to meet their needs in (a) England and (b) Worcestershire.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Local Authorities hold the duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996 to identify children of compulsory school age in their area who are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise. Between 6 October and 4 November this year, the Department requested Local Authoritoes aggregate data on Elective Home Education and Children Missing Education to improve its understanding of these cohorts. This data is currently being analysed and will be published in due course.
It is also the responsibility of Local Authorities to ensure there are sufficient school places for all pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The Children and Families Act 2014 requires Local Authorities to keep the provision for children and young people with SEND under review, including its sufficiency, working with parents, young people, and schools.
In March 2022, the Department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations (HNPCA) amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment. This funding is to support Local Authorities to deliver new places for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision. Worcestershire received a total of just over £10.7 million through the HNPCA. Prior to that, the Local Authority received just over £1.5 million through its 2021/22 HNPCA funding, announced in April 2021.
Asked by: Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what capital grants for buildings repairs and maintenance her Department has given to (a) primary schools, (b) secondary schools and (c) colleges in Worcester in each of the last four years.
Answered by David Laws
Capital maintenance funding for maintained schools is calculated at local authority level, and provided directly to the authority. Schools also receive a small amount of devolved capital funding directly to allow them to pay for minor maintenance and repair works. It is for the local authority to decide on the priorities for their funding, according to local need and the Department for Education does not hold data on how local authority allocations are prioritised.
Allocations to Worcestershire since 2011 have been as follows:
Worcestershire | 11-12 | 12-13 | 13-14 | 14-15 | Total |
Devolved Formula Capital | £2,062,422 | £1,684,786 | £1,516,962 | £1,410,980 | £6,675,150 |
Maintenance | £11,392,278 | £8,793,810 | £7,096,726 | £6,617,555 | £33,900,369 |
Funding for academies is provided separately via the Academies Capital Maintenance Fund (ACMF), a bidding process to which academies apply for specific works. 4 schools in Worcester have received funding under ACMF since 2011:
School Name | Phase | 11-12 | 12-13 | 13-14 | 14-15 |
Bishop Perowne CofE College | Secondary | £0 | £158,050 | £311,400 | £0 |
Christopher Whitehead Language College | Secondary | £0 | £150,297 | £0 | £396,922 |
Nunnery Wood High School | Secondary | £0 | £2,941,440 | £0 | £0 |
Warndon Primary School | Primary | £0 | £0 | £0 | £328,858 |
A further £11,252,093 has been provided to academies across Worcestershire more widely over the same period. All academies also receive the small devolved allocation, the same as maintained schools.
The following grants have been made to Sixth Form Colleges in Worcester over the same period. Worcester Sixth Form College received funding through a devolved allocation similar to those given to maintained schools and academies, and via the Building Condition Improvement Fund, a bidding process similar to the Academies Capital Maintenance Fund. New College Worcester received a small amount of capital funding support as an independent special provider:
11-12 | 12-13 | 13-14 | 14-15 | |
Worcester Sixth Form College | £1,069,034 | £1,005,972 | £1,540,387 | £186,065 |
New College Worcester | £0 | £6,465 | £169 | £4,236 |