Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of SEND provision in schools in (a) Suffolk and (b) Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by David Johnston
The department shares the ambition that children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) should receive the vital support they need.
Where local authorities are failing to deliver consistent outcomes for children and young people with SEND, the department works with them using a set of improvement programmes and SEND specialist advisors to address weaknesses.
In March 2024, the department announced Unity Schools Partnership would run a new special education free school in Suffolk for pupils with severe learning difficulties. This is in addition to the six open special free schools in Suffolk already.
The department is opening over 200 special free schools and, in total, providing over 21,000 places for pupils with special educational needs. Over 10,000 of these places have already been delivered.
A joint local area SEND inspection was undertaken by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission in November 2023. The local area partnership received an outcome of ‘widespread and/or systemic failings leading to significant concerns’. The inspection report was published on 30 January 2024. The Local Area Partnership has since produced a Priority Action Plan which sets out how they will address the two Areas for Priority Action and has also updated its strategic SEND Improvement Plan.
Total high needs funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is over £10.5 billion in the 2024/25 financial year, which represents an increase of over 60% from the 2019/20 allocations. Of this, Suffolk County Council is due to receive a high needs funding allocation of £113.9 million in the 2024/25 financial year, which is a cumulative increase of 31% per head over the three years from 2021/22. This funding will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with SEND.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help increase childcare provision in (a) Suffolk Coastal constituency and (b) Suffolk.
Answered by David Johnston
The department is providing over £4.1 billion by 2027/28 to fund 30 hours of free childcare per week, or 38 weeks per year, for working parents with children aged 9 months to 3 years in England. This will remove one of the biggest barriers to parents working by vastly increasing the amount of free childcare that working families can access. Already, over 200,000 two year olds are now confirmed to have places for 15 hours a week of free childcare, as part of the largest ever expansion of childcare in England, and the rates for the new entitlements have been independently confirmed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) to be above market rates. The take up nationwide for the validation codes already stands at 87.8%.
Funding will be key to delivering the existing and expanded childcare entitlements, so the department has substantially uplifted the hourly rate paid to local authorities to increase hourly rates paid to childcare providers. In 2024/25 alone, the department expects to provide over £1.7 billion to support local authorities and providers deliver the expansion to the early years entitlements, on top of over £400 million additional funding to deliver a significant uplift to the hourly rate paid to local authorities for the entitlements. Furthermore, to ensure local authorities are fully supported in delivering the new entitlements, the department is funding local authorities an additional four weeks in 2024/25, at an estimated cost of £120 million, for the under 2s working parent entitlement starting in September 2024.
The department’s methodology and the uplift to the rates are informed by data it receives from providers and parents to ensure the department is meeting the pressures faced by the sector. The department regularly surveys a nationally representative sample of over 9,000 providers to gain insights into how they run their provision and the challenges they face. The department also regularly surveys over 6,000 parents to understand their usage of childcare.
For 2024/25, the department’s hourly funding rates for Suffolk are £10.52 for under 2s, £7.74 for 2 year olds and £5.50 for 3 to 4 year olds.
To support the workforce, on 2 February 2024, the department launched ‘Do something Big, work with small children’, which is a new national recruitment campaign to support the recruitment and retention of talented staff to support the expansion of the 30 hours offer. This campaign will raise the profile of the sector, support the recruitment of talented staff and recognise the lifelong impact those working in early years and childcare have on children and their families.
The department is ensuring a phased implementation of the expansion to the 30 hours offer to allow the market to develop the necessary capacity. The department will continue to monitor the sufficiency of childcare places across the sector. The department’s ‘Childcare and Early Years Provider Survey’ shows that both the number of places available and the workforce has increased since 2022.
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and where needed support the local authority with any specific requirements through its childcare sufficiency support contract. Suffolk has not reported any sufficiency challenges.
The department will continue to work closely with the sector on the implementation of these reforms as it delivers this substantial expansion.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many teachers there were in Suffolk Coastal constituency in (a) 2019 and (b) 2024.
Answered by Damian Hinds
Information on the school workforce, including the number of teachers in each school, is published in the ‘School workforce in England’ statistical publication. The publication can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.
As at November 2022, and according to the latest data available, there were over 468,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state funded schools in England, which is an increase of 27,000 (6%) since 2010. This makes the highest number of FTE teachers since the School Workforce Census began in 2010.
As at November 2019, there were 570 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state funded schools in the Suffolk Coastal constituency.
School workforce figures for 2024 have not been collected yet. In November 2022, and according to the latest data available, there were 568 full-time equivalent teachers in state funded schools in the Suffolk Coastal constituency. Figures for November 2023 will be published in June 2024.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the transparency data entitled School rebuilding programme: schools in the programme, update on 8 February 2024, how much funding her Department has (a) allocated and (b) distributed to each school selected in Suffolk Coastal constituency in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Damian Hinds
There is one school selected for the School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) in the Suffolk Coastal constituency. This is Farlingaye High School.
The SRP is a centrally delivered programme. Therefore, no funding is allocated or distributed directly to schools. Once contracts are awarded for building works, they are published on the Contracts Finder within 30 calendar days. The Contracts Finder can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of foster care placements in (a) Suffolk Coastal constituency and (b) Suffolk.
Answered by David Johnston
The department is investing over £36 million this Parliament to deliver a fostering recruitment and retention programme, so that foster care is available for more children who need it. This will boost approvals of foster carers, as well as taking steps to retain the foster carers we have.
Suffolk County Council is participating in this programme and is working in a regional cluster group, ‘Foster East’, which is led by Norfolk.
Greater financial support for foster carers will help improve the experiences of all children in care. For the second year running, the department is uplifting the National Minimum Allowance (NMA) above the rate of inflation. For 2024/25, the NMA will increase by 6.88%. This is on top of a 12.43% NMA increase in 2023/24.
In addition, the department estimates that changes to tax and benefit allowances will give the average foster carer an additional £450 per year, as well as simplifying the process for self-assessment returns for most foster carers.
The department will also build on its investment since 2014 of over £8 million to help embed the Mockingbird programme, which is an innovative model of peer support for foster parents and the children in their care where children benefit from an extended family environment.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase nursery staff in Suffolk, in the context of the Government's plans to expand the number of free childcare places.
Answered by David Johnston
The department has launched a range of new workforce initiatives to boost early years staff numbers. The department's £6.5 million-backed recruitment campaign ‘Do something BIG. Work with small children’ is raising the status of early years to boost recruitment of talented staff. The department has also launched Skills Bootcamps for Early Years, which enables learners across the country, including in Suffolk, to progress on an accelerated Level 3 Early Years Educator Apprenticeship.
On top of this, the department has launched a pilot to test whether financial incentives help to boost recruitment, and have made it easier for managers to make the most of the skills of their existing staff through changes to the Early Years Foundation Stage, including the removal of the Level 2 maths requirement for staff to count in Level 3 child to staff ratios. A link to the statutory framework can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-foundation-stage-framework--2.
Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. The department has regular contact with each local authority in England, including Suffolk, about the sufficiency of childcare in their area, including their work to support Early Years (EY) workforce recruitment and retention.
The department will continue to monitor the recruitment of EY staff alongside the sufficiency of childcare provision and are committed to continuing to work with the sector to understand how the department can further support EY workforce recruitment and retention.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many free childcare places were provided through childminders in (a) Suffolk Coastal constituency, (b) Suffolk and (c) England in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by David Johnston
The number of childminders and state-funded nursery schools delivering government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 in Suffolk and in England in each year from 2018 to 2023 can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/d229a86f-25c9-4388-af45-08dbfa4e7cea.
Statistics relating to government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 are published in the annual ‘Education provision: children under 5 years of age’ National Statistics publication which can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5. The latest statistics containing January 2023 data were published in July 2023 and the next release containing January 2024 data is expected to be published in June 2024.
Figures at parliamentary constituency level are not readily available.
The department does not centrally hold figures on the number and proportion of free childcare places that are available in nurseries and childminders during out of school term times.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of nurseries that provide access to free childcare in (a) Suffolk Coastal constituency, (b) Suffolk and (c) England.
Answered by David Johnston
The number of childminders and state-funded nursery schools delivering government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 in Suffolk and in England in each year from 2018 to 2023 can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/d229a86f-25c9-4388-af45-08dbfa4e7cea.
Statistics relating to government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 are published in the annual ‘Education provision: children under 5 years of age’ National Statistics publication which can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5. The latest statistics containing January 2023 data were published in July 2023 and the next release containing January 2024 data is expected to be published in June 2024.
Figures at parliamentary constituency level are not readily available.
The department does not centrally hold figures on the number and proportion of free childcare places that are available in nurseries and childminders during out of school term times.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of childminders that provide access to free childcare in (a) Suffolk Coastal constituency, (b) Suffolk and (c) England.
Answered by David Johnston
The number of childminders and state-funded nursery schools delivering government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 in Suffolk and in England in each year from 2018 to 2023 can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/d229a86f-25c9-4388-af45-08dbfa4e7cea.
Statistics relating to government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 are published in the annual ‘Education provision: children under 5 years of age’ National Statistics publication which can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5. The latest statistics containing January 2023 data were published in July 2023 and the next release containing January 2024 data is expected to be published in June 2024.
Figures at parliamentary constituency level are not readily available.
The department does not centrally hold figures on the number and proportion of free childcare places that are available in nurseries and childminders during out of school term times.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many free childcare places were provided through nurseries in (a) Suffolk Coastal constituency, (b) Suffolk and (c) England in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by David Johnston
The number of childminders and state-funded nursery schools delivering government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 in Suffolk and in England in each year from 2018 to 2023 can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/d229a86f-25c9-4388-af45-08dbfa4e7cea.
Statistics relating to government funded early years provision for children aged 2 to 4 are published in the annual ‘Education provision: children under 5 years of age’ National Statistics publication which can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5. The latest statistics containing January 2023 data were published in July 2023 and the next release containing January 2024 data is expected to be published in June 2024.
Figures at parliamentary constituency level are not readily available.
The department does not centrally hold figures on the number and proportion of free childcare places that are available in nurseries and childminders during out of school term times.