Asked by: Joshua Reynolds (Liberal Democrat - Maidenhead)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to introduce standardised digital literacy guidance for schools to teach children critical evaluation skills for assessing the reliability of online information.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November, the department will update the national curriculum to prepare young people for life and work in a changing world. In line with the Review’s recommendations, refreshed programmes of study will include critical thinking skills, in addition to digital and media literacy and artificial intelligence.
To ensure consistency, we are legislating so that academies will be required to teach the refreshed national curriculum alongside maintained schools. Content will be shaped through expert engagement, with a public consultation on draft proposals next year.
Currently, media literacy is taught through citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing, whilst digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE. To support teachers now, the department-funded National Centre for Computing Education provides free resources and continuing professional development, including materials on messaging in digital media, the credibility of sources and identifying ‘fake’ news and edited images.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Hinckley and Bosworth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the patterns of social engagement by young men about issues concerning (a) anabolic steroids and (b) image and performance enhancing drugs are captured as part of improving men's health literacy.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 19 November 2025, to coincide with International Men’s Health Day, we published the first ever Men’s Health Strategy for England. The strategy includes tangible actions to improve access to healthcare, provide the right support to enable men to make healthier choices, develop healthy living and working conditions, foster strong social, community, and family networks, and address societal norms. It also considers how to prevent and tackle the biggest health problems affecting men of all ages, which include mental health and suicide prevention, respiratory illness, prostate cancer, and heart disease.
We are taking a range of actions to improve men’s health literacy. For example, our landmark partnership with the Premier League will bring together football clubs and the Government to improve health literacy, particularly around mental health and suicide prevention. We are also ensuring health literacy improvements are embedded at the community level, building the evidence base on heath literacy in men, and identifying ways to build media literacy skills in men to help them critically assess health information and protect against misinformation that harms health.
We will consider the impacts on young men in the implementation of the strategy. The strategy sets up a strong foundation for improving how we think and act on men's health and we will learn, iterate, and adapt as new challenges emerge. As a first step, we will work with the Men's Health Academic Network and the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector to develop and publish a one-year-on report, highlighting the improvements made and where future efforts will need to be targeted.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to teach young people from disadvantaged backgrounds about (a) finance, (b)employment and (c) other life skills.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
On 5 November, the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review published its final recommendations for a refreshed curriculum and assessment system in England.
The government’s response to the report includes a commitment to commits to strengthening pupils’ foundational understanding of financial education in maths and citizenship, with digital resources to support teaching. New statutory citizenship at key stages 1 and 2 will also ensure that primary aged children are introduced to key content on media literacy, financial literacy, law and rights, democracy and government and climate education. These principles will be extended to the secondary core content to reflect the age range of pupils and will focus on more complex content, particularly digital elements of financial literacy.
The department expects schools to develop and improve their careers provision to be inclusive for all young people in line with the world-class Gatsby Benchmarks, including benchmark 3, which focuses on addressing the individual needs of each pupil.
Asked by: Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many primary teachers they plan to train to teach citizenship as a statutory subject at Key Stages 1 and 2, and whether additional funded training routes are planned to meet that need.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Recruitment to citizenship initial teacher training courses is unrestricted, enabling providers to recruit to increased demand. All trainees on a tuition fee-funded course can apply for a tuition fee loan and maintenance loan to support their living costs. Additional funding is available depending on individual circumstances, such as the Childcare Grant.
The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report was published on 5 November 2025. In line with the Review’s recommendation, the government will look for the earliest opportunity to make citizenship a new statutory requirement for key stages 1 and 2, and ensure that the programme of study is tightly focused on the essential content pupils should know at primary and secondary. The secondary curriculum will both mirror and follow from this core content, encompassing the vital threads of government, law and democracy, climate education, financial and media literacy.
Asked by: Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in the light of the recommendations in the Curriculum and Assessment Review published on 5 November, what steps they are taking to increase the number of specialist citizenship teachers in England.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Recruitment to citizenship initial teacher training courses is unrestricted, enabling providers to recruit to increased demand. All trainees on a tuition fee-funded course can apply for a tuition fee loan and maintenance loan to support their living costs. Additional funding is available depending on individual circumstances, such as the Childcare Grant.
The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report was published on 5 November 2025. In line with the Review’s recommendation, the government will look for the earliest opportunity to make citizenship a new statutory requirement for key stages 1 and 2, and ensure that the programme of study is tightly focused on the essential content pupils should know at primary and secondary. The secondary curriculum will both mirror and follow from this core content, encompassing the vital threads of government, law and democracy, climate education, financial and media literacy.
Asked by: Baroness Grey-Thompson (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to promote multimodal literacy as part of the new curriculum rollout.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This government’s ambition is for every child and young person to receive a rich, broad, inclusive and innovative education.
The department agrees with the Curriculum and Assessment Review that building the skills for young people to critically engage with and assess information from a range of sources, including multi-modal texts, is increasingly important.
The reformed English programme of study and English language GCSE will expose students to the study of a wider range of text types and genres, including transient texts, supporting them to analyse and challenge arguments, building media literacy.
Media literacy is an increasingly important skill to enable young people to identify “fake news” and to spot different types of mis- and disinformation, especially online.
Secure, well-founded knowledge is essential for students to understand how arguments are constructed across different types of media and to recognise the various ways in which language can be used to persuade.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the new media and digital literacy curriculum is adapted to support children with special educational needs and disabilities to sufficiently learn media and digital literacy skills and knowledge.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.
On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.
The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.
To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.
In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how media and digital literacy education in the new curriculum will be kept up-to-date with trends in technologies and emerging threats.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.
On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.
The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.
To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.
In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they plan to take to support children’s media and digital literacy education in the period before the curriculum is updated in 2028.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.
On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.
The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.
To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.
In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to ensure that teachers are provided with up-to-date, relevant and engaging resources to feel confident to teach media and digital literacy in the new curriculum.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.
On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.
The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.
To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.
In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.