Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department takes to calculate compliance costs education-related regulations.

The department assesses education-related regulation compliance costs for businesses and households as per the Better Regulation Framework, which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-regulation-framework.

This typically involves a proportionate assessment of the costs following the steps outlined in the framework:

• Stakeholder consultation.
• Rationale for regulation.
• Options Assessment.
• Economic analysis of the expected compliance costs, including the Small and Micro Business Assessment.
• Development of a regulatory impact assessment (RIA), including the estimated direct costs to businesses and households.

These RIAs are scrutinised by the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) as required and published alongside legislation when laid before Parliament.

The RPC also publishes opinions of the department’s RIAs, all of which in the past ten years have been Green-rated as fit-for-purpose. These can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rpc-opinions-for-department-for-education.

Compliance costs of regulations to public sector services such as local authorities, schools and children’s services are estimated in a similar way. This can involve consultation with impacted stakeholders, analysis of expected administration and adaptation costs, evidence from similar regulations and modelling of potential impacts as appropriate.