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Written Question
Students: Finance
Thursday 25th March 2021

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when his Department plans to publish an update on the Alternative Student Finance product.

Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology

The government is committed to ensuring that all students with the potential to benefit from further and higher education are able to access it. The government will provide a further update on the Alternative Student Finance product when it sets out the full and final conclusion to the Post-18 Review of Education and Funding alongside the next multi-year Spending Review.


Written Question
Special Educational Needs: Autism
Thursday 11th March 2021

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment has he made of the adequacy of the availability of options at GCSE level for children with autism in (a) Batley and Spen constituency, (b) Kirklees, (c) West Yorkshire and (d) England.

Answered by Nick Gibb

During the GCSE reform process from 2011, the Department consulted extensively with schools, colleges and universities, and employers on both the principles for reform and the detail of the content of individual subjects. As part of this, we also carefully considered the effect of the reforms on pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and published Equalities Impact Assessments for all subjects.

In addition to this, examination boards have a duty, under the Equality Act 2010, to make reasonable adjustments for pupils with disabilities who, because of their disability, would otherwise be at a substantial disadvantage when demonstrating their skills, knowledge and understanding. These adjustments are made to remove or reduce disadvantages that such students face compared with students who are not disabled.

Whilst decisions on what GCSEs to offer at a local level are for individual schools to take, all state funded schools have a statutory duty to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, and this is replicated in academy funding agreements.


Written Question
Special Educational Needs: Autism
Thursday 11th March 2021

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the availability of mainstream school places for children with autism in (a) Batley and Spen constituency, (b) Kirklees, (c) West Yorkshire and (d) England.

Answered by Vicky Ford

The majority of children with autism are educated in mainstream settings. Of those children identified with a primary need of autistic spectrum disorder as either requiring special educational needs support (67,867 children) or who have an education, health and care plan (82,847 children), 108,481 are currently educated in mainstream settings in England. This trend is replicated in the Kirklees local authority area, where 328 of 474 children with a primary need of autism are in mainstream settings, and in the Batley and Spen constituency, where the numbers are 75 out of 79 children. [1]

The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places, including for those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), sits with local authorities. We provide funding for all of the places that are needed, based on local authorities’ own data. This is why we have announced nearly £500 million to provide places needed for 2023. This funding is on top of over £8.1 billion to provide places needed from 2015 to 2022 and our investment in the free schools programme.

Published data on school capacity estimates that, as at May 2019, Kirklees still needed to provide a further 300 places by September 2021. Funding is allocated at local authority level and cannot be broken down further. Kirklees has been allocated £53.2 million to provide new school places since 2010.

Under the SEND Code of Practice 2015, all mainstream schools are under a duty to use their best endeavours to support children with special educational needs (whether or not the child has an education, health and care plan). 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 providers.

[1] https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england


Written Question
Children: Reading
Tuesday 9th March 2021

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the importance of reading for pleasure in improving children’s literacy levels.

Answered by Nick Gibb

Reading for pleasure brings a range of benefits. As well as the strong links between reading for pleasure and attainment, there are a number of other positive effects including: improved text comprehension and grammar, positive reading attitudes, pleasure in reading in later life, increased general knowledge and character development.

The National Curriculum states that teachers are expected to encourage pupils to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information. Within the National Curriculum, the programmes of study for English have been developed to make clear the importance of reading for pleasure. The National Curriculum also emphasises the importance of listening to, discussing and – as pupils’ fluency increases – reading for themselves a wide range of stories, poems, plays, and information books.


Written Question
World Book Day
Monday 22nd February 2021

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to support World Book Day 2021.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Department has spoken with World Book Day about plans for the 2021 event, and we are exploring potential opportunities to highlight the importance and benefits of reading for pleasure on the day. The event is an opportunity for young people to celebrate what they most enjoy about reading, and we know that reading for pleasure brings a range of benefits, including: reading attainment and writing ability, text comprehension and grammar, breadth of vocabulary, positive reading attitudes, and pleasure in reading in later life. Further information on reading for pleasure can be found here: https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/reading-pleasure-research-overview/.

Research also suggests that reading for pleasure is more important for children’s educational development than factors such as their parents’ level of education. Further information on this can be found at: https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Readingforpleasurestoppress.pdf. The Department supports reading for pleasure in a number of ways, including through the National Curriculum and the English Hubs programme.

The National Curriculum emphasises the importance of children listening to, discussing and – as their fluency increases – reading for themselves a wide range of stories, poems, plays and information books. The English Hubs programme is a £26.3 million programme dedicated to improving the teaching of reading, particularly for disadvantaged children. Since its launch in 2018 we have invested a further £17 million in this school-to-school improvement programme, which focuses on systematic synthetic phonics, early language and reading for pleasure. The programme has provided appropriate and targeted support to several thousands of schools across England and, in this academic year (2020/21), the programme is providing intensive support to over 850 partner schools.


Written Question
Free School Meals: Voucher Schemes
Tuesday 26th January 2021

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to continue the contract with Edenred as the provider of Free School Meals vouchers.

Answered by Vicky Ford

The national voucher scheme with Edenred re-opened on Monday 18 January 2021. Schools have begun ordering and families have already begun redeeming supermarket vouchers.

During the period of national lockdown, schools should continue to provide meal options for all pupils who are in school. Meals should be available free of charge to all infant pupils and pupils who are eligible for benefits-related free school meals who are in school.

Schools should also continue to provide free school meal support to pupils who are eligible for benefits related free school meals and who are learning from home. Extra funding will be provided to support schools to provide food parcels or meals to eligible children.

Schools are free to decide the best approach for their free school meal pupils. They can provide lunch parcels, locally arranged vouchers, or they can use the national voucher scheme. Further details are set out in the guidance here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance-for-schools.


Written Question
Schools: Batley and Spen
Monday 23rd November 2020

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of the £85 million of funding for laptops, tablets and 4G dongles, announced in April 2020, has been spent (a) in total and (b) by school in Batley and Spen constituency.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Department has invested over £195 million to support remote education and access to online social care, delivering over 220,000 laptops and tablets during the summer term for disadvantaged children who would not otherwise have access to a digital device.

The Department is adding to this support by making over 340,000 additional laptops and tablets available to support disadvantaged children that might experience disruption to their education. Since September 2020, over 100,000 of these have been delivered to schools.

This scheme is not directly providing funding. It is providing a number of offers to support remote education, including laptops and tablets, 4G wireless routers, other internet offers and support for schools to access education platforms.

Data about the number of laptops and tablets delivered to local authorities and academy trusts over the summer term can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/912888/Devices_and_4G_wireless_routers_progress_data_as_of_27_August_2020.pdf.

Data about the number of laptops and tablets delivered or dispatched to Local Authorities or trusts since 1 September can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/929064/Ad-hoc_stats_note_shipped_data_231020_FINAL.pdf.


Written Question
Educational Institutions: Coronavirus
Thursday 24th September 2020

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to support youth educational organisations resume courses that include overnight stays during the covid-19 outbreak.

Answered by Nick Gibb

As of 4 July, providers offering out of school activities to children, such as youth educational organisations, have been able to open for both indoor and outdoor provision with safety measures in place. Providers are also able to resume non-overnight domestic educational visits, and the Department has updated our protective measures guidance for these providers to support them to do so as safely as possible. The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protective-measures-for-holiday-or-after-school-clubs-and-other-out-of-school-settings-for-children-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak.

The Department continues to advise against domestic overnight or overseas educational visits, and residential provision, for the time-being. This is consistent with the latest government guidance for accommodation providers, which advises that you should not stay overnight away from your home with members of more than one other household. The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-19-advice-for-accommodation-providers. We continue to keep this position under review; and will continue to be guided by the best scientific and medical advice, to ensure that the right decisions are taken at the right time.

The Government has also made financial support available to employers and the self-employed, including sole traders and limited company directors. Youth educational organisations that have been adversely affected by COVID-19 can find out what financial support is available for their business at: https://www.gov.uk/business-coronavirus-support-finder. They may be eligible for tax relief, loans or cash grants depending on their circumstances.


Written Question
Private Education: Assessments
Thursday 10th September 2020

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what procedure is in place to allow privately- educated students who had their Centre Assessed Grades rejected by exam boards to seek recourse.

Answered by Nick Gibb

Where schools and colleges had accepted entries from external candidates (students who they did not teach themselves because they were home-educated, followed distance-learning programmes or studied independently), those students should have been taken account of in the process of producing centre assessment grades, where the head teacher or principal was confident that they and their staff had seen sufficient evidence of the student’s achievement to make an objective judgement.

Not all external candidates were able to be awarded centre assessed grades this summer because they were not able to provide sufficient evidence to enable their exam centre to include them in their centre assessment grades and rankings. Students in this position will need to sit exams to get their grades, either in the autumn or in summer 2021.

Students wishing to enter for autumn exams should do so via the school or college where they were due to sit their exams in the summer. The exception is students who did not achieve a grade 4 or above in english or maths GCSE. These students will take those exams at their post September institution.


Written Question
Music: Coronavirus
Wednesday 15th July 2020

Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance the Government plans to provide for (a) singing and (b) wind instrument teachers to enable them to safely return to work as covid-19 lockdown restrictions are eased.

Answered by Nick Gibb

The Department has published detailed guidance for schools to prepare for all children and young people to return to full-time education from September 2020. The guidance published on 2 July outlines that there may be an additional risk of infection in environments where you or others are singing, chanting, playing wind or brass instruments or shouting, and provides further information on steps that schools should take to keep staff and pupils safe. The guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/schools-and-colleges-to-reopen-in-full-in-september.