Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many ministerial red boxes belonging to her Department have been reported (a) lost and (b) stolen in each of the last three years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
There is no record of any ministerial red boxes from the department having been either reported missing or stolen in the last three years.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether any refurbishments have been made to ministerial offices in her Department in each of the last two years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The department is undertaking a maintenance project in its London office. The works were initiated in 2019, as part of much wider government programme to reduce the number of civil servants based in London and to shrink the physical footprint of office accommodation in Whitehall and reduce the burden on the taxpayer. This is primarily essential work to replace the end of life mechanical and electrical systems, bring the building up to a suitable standard, and enable the department to consolidate its occupation. This will enable the building to become a Government Property Agency hub and provide vacant space to be used by other governmental departments.
As part of the consolidation, Ministers will be required to move to another floor. The work to enable this move is underway and due to complete in spring 2024.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many settlement payments her Department issued following claims of (a) bullying, (b) harassment and (c) discrimination in the (i) 2019-20, (ii) 2020-21, (iii) 2021-22 and (iv) 2022-23 financial years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The table below shows the number of settlement payments the department has made following claims of bullying, harassment and/or discrimination for the last four financial years.
| 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 |
Bullying | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Harassment | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Discrimination | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether there have been any power cuts on their Department's property in each of the last three years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The department’s estate is managed on its behalf by the Government Property Agency (GPA). GPA records indicate that Cheylesmore House, Coventry experienced a power cut in 2022 and Sanctuary Buildings, London experienced power cuts in 2022 and 2023. In both cases, this resulted from a local power outage. There were no other recorded outages on other department estate properties.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support she provides to local authorities to help provide post-adoption support.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to improving the support available to adopted children and their families to help them make the most of life’s opportunities.
Since 2015, the Adoption Support Fund (ASF) has provided funds to local authorities and Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs) to support eligible adoptive and special guardianship order families. The ASF helps children and their families access assessments to support understanding of their needs and a range of therapeutic interventions related to their attachment and trauma. The department has provided over £345 million in ASF funding to local authorities to provide post-adoption support to over 46,000 children since 2015.
The department is providing funding worth £5 million between 2023 to 2025 to support RAAs to develop Centres of Excellence with the aim of providing better wraparound care for adoptive children and their families. Centres of Excellence include teams of health, education and adoption support services, providing joint packages of care for adopted children. The funding is being used to develop new projects in seven RAA areas and participating local authorities will benefit from shared approaches to assessment and support.
The department is also committed to ensuring that adopted children are supported to succeed in education. Previously looked after children attract Pupil Premium Plus at a rate of £2,530 per year and they have top priority in school admissions. All maintained schools and academies must appoint a designated teacher to act as the central point of contact for adoptive families about their child’s progress in school. In addition, local authorities must appoint a virtual school head to give schools and adoptive families expert advice on the education needs of adopted children, including how best Pupil Premium Plus funding can be used to support them.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Answer of 26 October 2023 to Question 203895 Teachers: Recruitment, what estimate her Department has made of the (a) number and (b) proportion of new teacher sign ups that is attributable to the Get Into Teaching advertising campaign.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Several methods are used to assess the Get Into Teaching campaign’s impact. They include regular brand tracking studies and other market research; econometric modelling to identify and quantify the factors affecting sign ups to the Get Into Teaching service; analysis of the flow of candidates between Get Into Teaching and the Find and Apply services; and tracking of site traffic to the Get Into Teaching website.
The teaching recruitment campaign tracks a number of behavioural and attitudinal metrics to give a rounded picture of campaign impact.
Key Performance Indicators for the teaching recruitment campaign are the consideration of teaching as a career amongst our target audience and the number of new, unique sign-ups to the Get Into Teaching service. The campaign also measures the proportion of sign-ups attributed to the advertising campaign, through econometric modelling. Recent econometric analysis shows that in July 2023, 42% of sign-ups to the Get Into Teaching website were attributable to paid advertising.
There are many factors affecting the number of teachers recruited in any given recruitment cycle, including levels of financial support, predicted demand for new teachers, the size of pool of new graduates and other economic factors.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to monitor unregistered schools.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Unregistered schools are settings that operate as an independent school without having registered with the department. It is a criminal offence under section 96 of the Education and Skills 2008 Act for a person to operate an unregistered independent school. Where the department finds evidence that a school is operating unlawfully, the department will seek to take action by working with Ofsted, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service as necessary.
Since those responsible for conducting unregistered schools are committing an offence, they do not generally inform the department about the school’s operation, it is therefore not possible to monitor such settings.
However, the department and Ofsted continue to investigate any setting where there is evidence to suggest that an unregistered independent school is operating. Ofsted has powers under section 97 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 that allows for unannounced inspections of settings believed to be operating in breach of the registration requirement.
Ofsted publishes statistics on the number and outcomes of investigations carried out into unregistered schools. Statistics published for the period 1 January 2016 to 31 August 2023, show that 767 inspections of suspected unregistered independent schools took place. Joint work between the department and Ofsted has led to 180 of these settings changing their provision to no longer operate unlawfully, in breach of the 2008 Act. In that time six successful prosecutions have been brought against those responsible for conducting illegal settings.
More information and a link to the Education and Skills Act 2008 can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/25/contents.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to tackle bullying in schools.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The government has sent a clear message to schools that bullying, for whatever reason, is unacceptable. Bullying can have a devastating effect on individuals, harm their education and have serious and lasting consequences for their mental health.
All schools are legally required to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying. Schools have the freedom to develop their own anti-bullying strategies that are appropriate to their environment and are held to account by Ofsted.
The department is providing over £3 million of funding, between 10 August 2021 and 31 March 2024, to five anti-bullying organisations to support schools to tackle bullying. This includes projects targeting bullying of particular groups, such as those who are victims of hate-related bullying and homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying.
In November 2018, the department published ‘Educate Against Hate’, a self-review and signposting tool to support schools to develop a whole-school approach which promotes respect and discipline. This can combat bullying, harassment and prejudice of any kind, including sexual bullying and sexual harassment. It will help schools to identify the various elements that make up a whole school approach, consider gaps in their current practice, and get further support. ‘Educate Against Hate’ is available at: https://www.educateagainsthate.com/school-leaders/?filter=guidance-and-training-school-leaders.
The department is also making sure that all children in England will learn about respectful relationships, in person and online, as part of new mandatory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE). These subjects are designed to give pupils the knowledge they need to lead happy, safe and healthy lives, as well as to foster respect for other people and for difference. RSHE also includes teaching about online safety and harms.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of two hours of wraparound care for reception age children.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
In the Spring Budget 2023, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a transformative set of childcare reforms aimed at increasing labour market participation. This included the largest ever investment in childcare, including expansions of early years entitlements and wraparound childcare.
The government is investing £289 million in a new wraparound childcare programme to support local authorities to work with primary schools and providers, including childminders, to set up and deliver more wraparound childcare before and after school in the term time. The government’s ambition is for all parents of primary school children, including reception age children, to be able to access childcare in their local area from 8am to 6pm when they need it.
Parents should expect to see an expansion in the availability of wraparound care from September 2024, with every parent who needs it able to access term-time wraparound childcare by September 2026. Programme funding allocations for local authorities were announced on 27 October 2023.
As part of the programme, local authorities will make an assessment of the supply and demand of wraparound care in their areas to ensure that there is adequate provision for the needs of parents.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data their Department holds on the (a) number and (b) total cost of replacing (i) laptops, (ii) mobile phones, (iii) memory sticks and (iv) external hard drives that have been (A) lost and (B) stolen in the last year.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The following table includes the number of lost / stolen devices in the Department for Education in the last year, as per our corporate IT asset register.
| 1 Nov 2022 to 31 Oct 2023 | Unit Replacement Cost | Total Replacement Cost |
Laptops | 57 | £960.66 | £54,757.62 |
Mac’s | 3 | £2,084.00 | £6,252.00 |
Mobile phones | 73 | £314.00 | £22,922.00 |
Memory sticks | 10 | £100.00 | £1,000.00 |
External Hard Drives | 0 | n/a | £0 |
All Departmental IT is fully security encrypted. The Departmental security unit records and investigates each reported loss from the Department. If appropriate, the police are invited to undertake further inquiries. Any mobile device reported as lost is immediately and remotely deactivated and the contents deleted. The user account on any laptop reported as lost is immediately and remotely locked. There has been no data loss or compromise as a result of these losses.