Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support prospective apprentices while apprenticeship opportunities are reduced as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
Apprenticeships will be more important than ever in helping businesses to recruit the right people and develop the skills they need to recover and grow. This government is committed to ensuring people of all ages can continue to benefit from the high-quality training that an apprenticeship offers. Through our ‘Plan for Jobs’, a total of £1.6 billion is to be invested in scaling up employment support schemes, training and apprenticeships.
To help support employers to offer new apprenticeships, employers are now able to claim £2,000 for every new apprentice they hire under the age of 25, and £1,500 for those 25 and over. We have introduced flexibilities to enable apprentices to continue to train during the outbreak and we encourage employers to take advantage of these flexibilities and the new payments. For apprentices who need to find a new employer, due to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, we have launched the Redundancy Support Service for Apprentices, providing clear, accessible advice and guidance to individuals, while supporting their next steps. This includes our vacancy sharing service which works with employers to identify new apprenticeship opportunities which these apprentices can apply for.
We are supporting those who may be interested in an apprenticeship in the future, promoting apprenticeships in schools through our Apprenticeship Support & Knowledge programme, and tripling the scale of our traineeship programme to help young people progress onto an apprenticeship or other employment. We have also announced £101 million for a new offer to give 18 and 19-year-old school and college leavers the opportunity to study high value level 2 and 3 courses when there are not employment opportunities available to them.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure schools are covid-19 secure during winter 2020-21 when ensuring ventilation in classrooms and outdoor socialising for pupils could become more difficult.
Answered by Nick Gibb
On 2 July we published guidance to help schools prepare for all pupils, in all year groups, to return to school full-time from the beginning of the autumn term. The guidance can be viewed at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools.
The above guidance sets out a ‘system of controls’ which provides a framework for school leaders to put in place a range of proportionate protective measures for children and staff, which also ensure that all pupils receive a high quality education that enables them to thrive and progress. Measures include minimising contacts between groups and maintaining distance where possible, encouraging regular handwashing, and enhanced cleaning.
This includes advice that once the school is in operation, it is important to ensure good ventilation and maximising this wherever possible, for example, by opening windows and propping open doors, as long as they are not fire doors, where safe to do so (bearing in mind safeguarding in particular). Arrangements for ventilation will vary in each setting based on individual circumstances.
Advice on this can be found in Health and Safety Executive guidance on air conditioning and ventilation during the coronavirus outbreak available at https://www.hse.gov.uk/coronavirus/equipment-and-machinery/air-conditioning-and-ventilation.htm.
Whilst schools are encouraged to utilise outdoor space, this may be less practical throughout the winter months. The use of outdoor spaces is one element of the protective measures that schools have available to limit the transmission of coronavirus. There cannot be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, and school leaders will be best placed to understand the needs of their schools and communities and to make informed judgments about how to balance delivering a broad and balanced curriculum with the measures needed to manage risk.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support the mental health of students affected by summer 2020’s exam results.
Answered by Vicky Ford
On Monday 17 August, Ofqual confirmed that there no longer would be a standardisation process for AS and A levels or GCSEs. Instead, all students will be awarded the centre assessment grade submitted by their school or college, unless it is lower than their calculated grade, in which case the calculated grade will stand. Unless there is evidence that a processing error has been made, these grades will be final. This means that students can be certain about their grades as a basis for the next steps in their lives.
Individual young people's mental wellbeing is affected in different ways by issues in their lives. It is important that they receive support where they need it, including from their school. The government has provided a wide range of training and resources to schools and colleges to help them support the wellbeing of their pupils. This includes launching the Wellbeing for Education Return programme which is providing £8 million to local authorities to provide schools and colleges all over England with the knowledge and practical skills they need to support teachers, students and parents, to help improve how they respond to the emotional impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. The training materials include examples of supporting students around loss and disappointment, including over exam results.
This is additional to longer term work to improve support, including the new mental health support teams that we are rolling out across the country, linked to schools and colleges.
The Office for Students (OfS) have provided up to £3 million to fund the Student Space platform to bridge gaps in mental health support for students. Student Space is a collaborative mental health resource to support students at English and Welsh universities through the unique circumstances created by the COVID-19 outbreak. It provides a range of information, access to dedicated support services (phone or text), details of the support available at each university, and tools to help students manage the challenges of student life.
The government has also worked closely with the OfS to help clarify that higher education providers can draw upon existing funding to provide hardship funds and support disadvantaged students impacted by COVID-19. Providers are able to use the OfS student premium funding worth around £256 million for 2020-21 academic year starting from August towards student hardship funds, including the purchase of mental health support.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with his Israeli counterpart on reopening schools in that country during the covid-19 pandemic.
Answered by Nick Gibb
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has not had discussions with his Israeli counterpart on reopening schools in that country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is important during this pandemic that we engage internationally and learn from each other on shared challenges in education. Official-level discussions are continuing to take place with counterparts in other countries on all aspects of the education response to the pandemic. However, each country will make their own decisions based on a range of local information, including infection rates and the structure of their education system.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to help ensure that student renters and university accommodation providers reach agreement to refund rental payments where students have not been in residence in that accommodation as a result of the covid-19 lockdown.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
As both my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have made clear, the government will do whatever it takes to support people affected by Covid-19.
The government urges universities and private hall providers to be fair in their decisions about rent charges for this period. A number of universities and large companies have waived rents for the summer term or released students early from their contracts. Students who are tenants with individual private landlords can discuss with them the possibility of an early release from their tenancy agreement.
It is important to stress that accommodation providers should not have instructed any student to return home. If any accommodation provider did formally instruct a student to leave the property then it would be unacceptable to continue to charge student rents.
Students will continue to receive scheduled payments of loans towards their living costs for the remainder of the current 2019/20 academic year. Government guidance makes clear that tenants should continue to pay rent and abide by all other terms of their tenancy agreement to the best of their ability during the Covid-19 outbreak.
If a student thinks that their accommodation provider is treating them unfairly, they can raise a complaint under the accommodation codes of practice as long as their provider is a code member. The codes can be found at: https://www.thesac.org.uk/; https://www.unipol.org.uk/the-code/how-to-complain and: https://www.rla.org.uk/about/nrla-code-of-practice.shtml.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to monitor the welfare of vulnerable children who are not attending school during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Vicky Ford
As both my right hon. Friends, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have made clear, the government will do whatever it takes to support people affected by COVID-19.
Our latest guidance on supporting vulnerable children is available here:
We are committed to ensuring the safety and protection of vulnerable children and young people, particularly during the current period. Schools and other educational settings remain open for these children and local authorities are maintaining contact with them. Our guidance explains how education providers can support vulnerable children, including to monitor and encourage attendance.
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State has written to all educational establishments and Directors of Children’s Services in England to encourage attendance for these children. He also stressed the need for schools, local authorities and social workers to maintain contact and support services throughout this period. Officials in the department and re-deployed Ofsted Inspection teams are working with local authorities directly to ensure systems and processes for maintaining contact with vulnerable children are robust in every local authority in England, and to share good practice. We have asked local authorities and educational settings to ensure every vulnerable child knows that their setting is there to support them.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to allocate additional (a) funding and (b) resources to special educational needs provision in (a) Suffolk and (b) England.
Answered by Vicky Ford
As part of the boost to school funding, announced at the spending round last year, mainstream schools in Suffolk will attract £433.1 million this coming year, which will help them provide resources for their pupils with special educational needs. In England the overall increases for schools will be £14.6 billion over 3 years - £2.6 billion in 2020-21, £4.8 billion in 2021-22 and £7.1 billion in 2022-23.
For 2020-21, these overall increases include £780 million additional high needs funding, bringing the total funding for children and young people with the most complex needs to £7.2 billion. Every local authority will see an increase in high needs funding of at least 8% per head of population aged 2 to 18. Suffolk county council will receive £75.5 million of high needs funding in 2020-21, 11.1 million more than in 2019-20. This increase will help the council and other local authorities with the resources they need to support those young people who need the most support, including those with education, health and care plans.
Allocations for high needs in 2021-22 and 2022-23 will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that teacher training courses provide for an adequate understanding of special educational needs.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The quality of teaching is the most important in-school factor for improving the educational achievements for all children and that this is particularly important for pupils with additional needs.
The new Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework ( ITT CCF), published on 1 November 2019, has been designed to ensure the training of teachers includes the support for all pupils to succeed, including those pupils identified within the four areas of need set out in the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) code of practice. The ITT CCF is based on the best evidence of what works. The framework therefore deliberately does not detail approaches specific to particular additional needs, but what makes the most effective teaching.
When developing the framework, the Department held stakeholder consultations, events and meetings, including SEND themed events. While there were a range of views about things that could or should be included in the framework, there was consensus that our approach of ‘quality-first teaching’, would be the best way to improve outcomes for all children, particularly those with special educational needs.
In addition to the mandated minimum set out in the ITT CCF, the Department expects ITT providers and their partners to continue to tailor their curricula to the needs of their trainees and the children in the schools where they train and will work.