Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish any centrally-owned workforce planning documents for early years provision.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The early years workforce is at the heart of this government’s mission to give every child the best start in life and deliver our Plan for Change. We will continue to drive forward our progress on our 2028 Plan for Change target for a record proportion (75%) of children starting school ready to learn. To achieve this, we will work in partnership with the sector, reforming training and supporting the workforce to drive up standards and offer sustained professional development. We will test new approaches to achieve the common goal of giving every child the best start in life.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent on programmes aimed at recruiting (a) primary and b) secondary education teachers in each of the last five years, broken down by (i) programme and (ii) region and nation.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
High quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child or young person’s outcome in schools and colleges. Recruiting and retaining more qualified, expert teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost the life chances for every child.
As part of the government’s Plan for Change to deliver 6,500 additional new expert teachers across secondary and special schools and colleges, the department funds initiatives across the teacher training and recruitment pipeline in England, based on available evidence of what works best. In the 2024/25 financial year, the department spent just over £600 million to support school teacher training, recruitment and retention.
We are already seeing positive signs that our investment is starting to deliver: the workforce has grown by 2,346 full-time equivalent teachers between 2023/24 and 2024/25, in secondary and special schools, the schools where they are needed most. This includes 1,435 more secondary school teachers and 911 more special and pupil referral unit teachers compared to last year.
Our future school teacher pipeline is also growing. As of May 2025, there are 11% more trainees who have accepted offers to train as secondary subjects, including in priority subjects such as Physics, where we have seen a 43% increase in acceptances compared to last year.
The table below provides detail of the spending on programmes supporting recruitment and retention of the teacher workforce. All programmes are targeted and focused on school specific need. Data on spending by region is not available.
| 2020/21 financial year | 2021/22 financial year | 2022/23 financial year | 2023/24 financial year | 2024/25 financial year |
Initiative | Budget | Budget | Budget | Budget | Budget |
(£ million) | (£ million) | (£ million) | (£ million) | (£ million) | |
Recruitment Financial Lever | 332.1 | 249.1 | 140.2 | 193.4 | 242.3 |
Retention Financial Lever | 5.5 | 70.4 | 98.1 | 189 | 194.5 |
Recruitment Non-Financial Lever | 35.9 | 48.3 | 49.3 | 44.3 | 47.1 |
Retention Non-Financial Lever | 21 | 22.8 | 28.5 | 27.3 | 23.6 |
Continuing Professional Development | 34.8 | 19.4 | 44.9 | 61.2 | 93 |
Covid and Tutoring | 91.9 | 23.3 | 240 | 185 | 0 |
TOTAL | 521.25 | 419.9 | 601 | 700.2 | 600.5 |
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many early years professionals were recruited following the introduction of the £1000 tax-free cash incentive.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The early years workforce is at the heart of the government’s mission to ensure every child has the best start in life. Early education and childcare is delivered by a mixed market of private, voluntary and independent provision who recruit and employ their staff depending upon their business and local need. We are supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders to join the workforce by creating conditions for improved recruitment and new routes into the workforce.
Financial incentives are an important part of this plan, and the government has been running two schemes testing incentives in 26 local authorities. New starters and returners needed to meet certain eligibility criteria and to have started in an eligible provider in one of these 26 local authorities to be eligible to receive a £1000 payment.
The financial incentives pilot ran from April 2024 to March 2025 in 20 local authorities and tested whether the offer of an incentive payment would increase recruitment.
The financial incentives live test ran from November 2024 to March 2025 in an additional 6 local authorities. This tested the use of a new online portal as a possible delivery mechanism.
Delivery on both schemes ended in March 2025. The pilot is currently being evaluated and we will set out the results in due course.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent on its scheme to offer £1000 sign-on incentives to help recruit early years professionals.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The early years workforce is at the heart of this government’s mission to give every child the best start in life and deliver the Plan for Change. We have set a milestone of a record proportion of children starting school ready to learn in the classroom. We will measure our progress through 75% of children at the end of reception reaching a good level of development in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile assessment by 2028.
Early education is delivered by a mixed market of providers who recruit staff depending on business need. The department is supporting providers by creating conditions for improved recruitment. Funding breakdowns by region are not held.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent on programmes to help recruit early years professionals in each of the last five years, broken down by (a) programme and (b) region and nation.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The early years workforce is at the heart of this government’s mission to give every child the best start in life and deliver the Plan for Change. We have set a milestone of a record proportion of children starting school ready to learn in the classroom. We will measure our progress through 75% of children at the end of reception reaching a good level of development in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile assessment by 2028.
Early education is delivered by a mixed market of providers who recruit staff depending on business need. The department is supporting providers by creating conditions for improved recruitment. Funding breakdowns by region are not held.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of early years professionals required in each region in each of the next five years.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
To meet the additional demand placed on the childcare sector by expanding government funded entitlements to childcare, the department estimates that around 35,000 additional staff (headcount) nationally are needed above the 31 December 2023 baseline for autumn 2025. This represents approximately a 10% increase.
We have seen a strong response from the sector so far. 2023 to 2024 saw around 20,000 more staff working in early years nationally, over 1.5 times the level of growth seen between 2022 to 2023.
Responsibility for ongoing market sufficiency rests with local authorities, who are required by legislation to provide sufficient childcare places for children in their local area. We are in regular contact with each local authority, and have a delivery support contractor, Childcare Works, in place to support them, including with analysing workforce demand in their area.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many early years teachers there are in each region.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department does not hold data on staff qualification levels by region.
In 2024, 42% of staff within school-based providers and 11% of staff within group-based providers held graduate-level qualifications, as per the 2024 Early Years Provider Survey.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many social workers there are by gender in each region.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Information on child and family social workers, including breakdowns by worker characteristics, is published annually in the Children’s Social Work Workforce Official Statistics release. This can be accessed at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-s-social-work-workforce/2024. The number of full-time equivalent and headcount child and family social workers at 30 September 2024 by region and sex can be accessed at the following link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/de240ca3-343f-4d8c-1fa1-08dd8e2f6934.
Note that since 2024, data has been collected on the sex of workers, whereas previously data was collected on gender.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 11 April 2025 to Question 36463 on Free School Meals, what arrangements are in place for transitional protections on free school meal entitlements for the 2025-26 financial year.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
As with all government programmes, including free school meals, we keep our approach under continued review. Support for children to access free school meals, has additionally been considered as part of the Child Poverty Taskforce’s consideration of how to:
1. Support households to increase their income including considering social security reforms that support people into work and alleviate poverty.
2. Help to bring down essential household costs, build savings and tackle problem debt.
3. Alleviate the negative experience of living in poverty, including through supporting families and the role of public services.
No pupil will see any change because of changes to traditional protections until after the summer and the department will communicate further with schools before that time.
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information other Department holds on the number of (a) primary, (b) secondary and (c) SEND school places there were in (i) Telford constituency and (ii) Telford and Wrekin Council in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Data on state-funded school places is published at national, local authority and school level in the annual School Capacity statistics publication. Data is available for academic years 2009/10 to 2023/24. Data on special educational needs provision was collected as part of the School Capacity Survey for the first time in 2023 and is available for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years.
School capacity data are not published at constituency level. However, data is published at school level that can be combined with information from ‘Get Information About Schools’ (GIAS) to identify parliamentary constituency. The data can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-catalogue/data-set/bf165de6-3b9a-4014-83b5-232454343797.
The number of primary and secondary mainstream state-funded school places in Telford and Wrekin local authority at 1 May of each year between 2014 and 2024, can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/a6913939-ccb4-4dbe-7d54-08dd7ece5be0.
The number of state-funded special schools and special school places in Telford and Wrekin local authority at 1 May of each year between 2023 and 2024, can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/4cc1f815-cec7-41af-d97b-08dd800922cb.
The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places sits with local authorities.