Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress she has made on implementing the Parent Pledge outlined in the 2022 Schools White Paper.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The parent pledge set out the commitment that any child who falls behind in English or mathematics will receive targeted and evidence based support to help them catch up.
The Department will continue to focus on supporting all pupils to recover from the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through multi year recovery funding of almost £5 billion, including the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) and the Recovery Premium. Since the NTP began in November 2020, over 3 million courses have started to support pupils who have fallen behind to catch up. The Department has also provided £1 billion to extend recovery premium funding for a further two academic years in 2022/23 and 2023/24 so that schools can deliver evidence based interventions based on pupil need.
More broadly, the pledge to support children to catch up is underpinned by ensuring high quality teaching and a strong curriculum. In September 2022, the Department established Oak National Academy as an Arm’s Length Body to provide high quality, adaptable and optional support, reducing workload for teachers and enabling pupils to access a high quality curriculum. As part of our teacher development reforms, the Department also introduced a fully funded new suite of National Professional Qualifications based on the best available research and evidence.
The Department continues to fund schools to further improve outcomes for all pupils. Overall, the core schools’ budget is rising by over £3.9 billion this year alone, compared to the 2022/23 financial year, on top of a £4 billion cash increase last year. That’s a 16% increase in just two years. Next year, school funding will be more than £59.6 billion, which is the highest ever level in real terms per pupil.
The Department welcomes the work that many schools are doing to strengthen parental engagement, for example through Parent Teacher Associations, to actively involve parents in supporting their child’s education.
Asked by: Andrew Lewer (Conservative - Northampton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of (a) refocussing the National Tutoring Programme to reach those children who need the most help and (b) ringfencing specific funding to support early intervention and expert literacy work to help close the attainment gap for pupils.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Since 2020, the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) has delivered over 3 million courses of tutoring to pupils most in need of catch up following the effect of COVID-19. There is extensive evidence that tutoring is one of the most effective ways to accelerate academic progress. This is why the Department is investing more than £1 billion in tutoring, so that pupils can catch up through accessing high quality tuition.
The Department’s guidance for the NTP in 2022/23 sets out that schools are expected to prioritise their Pupil Premium cohort to receive tutoring, in line with the programme’s objective of supporting disadvantaged pupils. Schools are best placed to understand the needs of their pupils and so may also consider offering tuition to other pupils, where appropriate. Since the programme was launched in 2020, the Department estimates that 49.8% of pupils who have received tuition through the NTP have been eligible for free school meals in the past 6 years.
The NTP allows schools to have autonomy in deciding what subjects to deliver tutoring in. In primary schools, a high proportion of tutoring is delivered in English and mathematics. Schools are also able to choose how best to provide tutoring for their pupils, either through academic mentors, outsourced tuition partners or school led tutoring.
Closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is a priority for the Department. A large majority of school leaders across all three tutoring routes reported that the NTP was having a positive effect on reducing the attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils, including 85% of those doing school led tutoring, which is the most popular route under the NTP.
In addition, the Department has funded £17 million to deliver the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme, improving the language skills of Reception age pupils. The programme targets pupils needing extra support with their speech and language development and is proven to help them make approximately three months of additional progress. Over two thirds of eligible mainstream primary schools are taking part in this evidence based programme, benefitting around 90,000 children who are most in need of language support.
The Department has committed that from 2024, tutoring will be embedded across schools in England. The Department is expecting tutoring to continue to be a staple offer from schools, with schools using their core budgets, including Pupil Premium, to fund targeted support for those pupils who will most benefit.
Asked by: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment the Government has made of the impact of covid-19 on the (a) health and (b) education of this year's cohort of (i) GCSE and (ii) A Level students; and what steps the Government is taking to help ensure that this year's (A) GCSE and (B) A-level exams reflect that impact.
Answered by Nick Gibb
GCSE, AS and A level exams in England have largely returned to pre-pandemic arrangements this summer. These arrangements are the best and fairest way of assessing what students know and can do. There will be some support in place for pupils in recognition that they have experienced some disruption to their education as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ofqual has confirmed a return to pre-pandemic grading in 2023, but with protection in place for GCSE and A level cohorts because of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Where national performance is found to be lower than it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, senior examiners will make allowances when setting grade boundaries.
GCSE mathematics, physics and combined science students have been provided with formulae and equation sheets, to support them in these subjects. The GCSE, AS and A level exam timetable has been designed to space out exam papers in the same subject. This will give pupils more time to revise between papers than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of the almost £5 billion made available to support children and young people to catch up on missed education, we are providing £1 billion through the Recovery Premium in 2022/23 and 2023/24 to allow schools to continue to focus on evidence based approaches and activities that support pupils, including those in exam cohorts. The Department has nearly doubled the premium rate for mainstream secondary schools to £276 per eligible pupil, reflecting evidence of need.
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) is central to the Department’s £5 billion education recovery programme, which includes up to £1.5 billion on tutoring. This support is especially focused on helping the most disadvantaged, vulnerable or those with the least time left in education, wherever they live. The NTP makes available subsidised tutoring to boost progress of pupils who most need to catch up on education lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is extensive evidence that tutoring is one of the most effective ways to accelerate academic progress. Since November 2020 over 3 million courses have been started through the programme.
The Department has set the subsidy rate for the NTP for the next academic year at 50%. This change is in response to schools’ concerns over previously announced funding arrangements, which included a 25% subsidy rate. The 50% subsidy rate announced on 23 May means that schools now need to contribute less of their core funding to provide tutoring.
From September 2022, full time students in 16 to 19 education will be entitled to an average of 40 additional hours of education. A proportionate increase in hours will be offered to part time students. This is to ensure those with the least time left in education catch up on the vital education they missed during the pandemic. The Department has allocated over £800 million until 2024/25 to fund this.
Regarding student health, the Department publishes annual State of the Nation reports, which draw together the best available published evidence on the wellbeing of children and young people aged 5 to 24. The findings from this series of reports inform work across government to support young people's wellbeing. The most recent report was published in February 2023 and can be accessed at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1134596/State_of_the_nation_2022_-_children_and_young_people_s_wellbeing.pdf.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of school closures during lockdown on the attainment of pupil premium students.
Answered by Nick Gibb
To understand the effect of COVID-19 disruption on the attainment and progress of pupils, the Department conducted research into academic progress over the 2020/21 and 2021/22 academic years with Renaissance Learning and the Education Policy Institute. This was published on 28 March 2022 and included data from the first half of the 2021/22 autumn term. The findings from this research are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupils-progress-in-the-2020-to-2022-academic-years.
The research found that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, those eligible for free school meals at some point over the last 6 years, had on average experienced a greater effect on their academic progress than their non-disadvantaged peers.
The Department knows that the education of disadvantaged children has been particularly affected by the impacts of COVID-19 and the Department is committed to helping these pupils to recover and to close the attainment gap. For this reason, recovery programmes, such as the Recovery Premium, the National Tutoring Programme and 16-19 Tuition Fund, are especially focused on helping the most disadvantaged. In total, the Department has made available almost £5 billion for a multi year education recovery plan to support pupils to catch up on missed education.
Further to the recovery funding, the Department continues to provide schools with the pupil premium, which is additional funding for state funded schools to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged 5–16 year olds in England. Pupil premium rates have increased by 5% for the 2023/24 financial year, taking total pupil premium funding to £2.9 billion.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Education Policy Institute report COVID-19 and Disadvantage Gaps in England 2021, published in December 2022, which found that Gypsy and Traveller pupils were the only ethnic groups whose attainment fell further behind in 2021, whether they will extend the Pupil Premium to cover all Gypsy and Traveller pupils.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Pupil premium eligibility will be kept under review, to ensure that funding is targeted at those who most need it.
The department is committed to helping children and young people, including those from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, to catch-up and recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In England, the primary and secondary school attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has grown between 2019 and 2022, having narrowed between 2011 and 2019. The disruption to education caused by the pandemic has affected disadvantaged students more than their peers.
We are supporting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils, including those from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups, through pupil premium funding, which is increasing to almost £2.9 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. In addition, the department has made available almost £5 billion of funding to support education recovery, including through the recovery premium, National Tutoring Programme and the 16-19 Tuition Fund. The department does not design education policy that exclusively targets certain groups of pupils based on ethnicity.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department plans to take to reduce the attainment gap for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds at (a) Year 6, (b) GCSE and (c) A Level.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Reforms to support schools and drive improved attainment were set out in the Schools White Paper.
The Department is funding 55 Education Investment Areas (EIA), of which 24 are Priority Education Investment Areas (PEIA). In each of the 24 PEIAs, the Department will make further investment available in addition to the significant support available to all EIAs. PEIAs will receive a share of around £40 million of funding to address local needs, and priority access to a number of other programmes offered by the Department.
This is in addition to the targeted support provided by the pupil premium to help schools raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. Since its introduction, total pupil premium funding has increased from £600 million in the 2011/12 financial year to over £2.6 billion in the 2022/23 financial year. Per pupil funding rates are increasing by 2.7% in 2022/23, to their highest ever levels in cash terms.
The education of disadvantaged children has been particularly affected by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department is committed to helping these pupils to recover and help close the attainment gap. That is why recovery programmes are focused on those most in need.
The Department is providing £1 billion to extend recovery premium funding over the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years. This will help schools deliver evidence based approaches to support disadvantaged pupils. It builds on the nearly £1 billion in flexible funding delivered to schools in the 2020/21 and 2021/22 academic years, through the catch up and recovery premia.
The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) is helping pupils receive additional targeted support, including those who have been hit by disruption to their education as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the NTP began in November 2020, nearly 3 million courses have been started on the Programme.
The 16-19 Tuition Fund offers courses to accelerate the progression of lower attaining students. Eligibility in the 2021/22 academic year was broadened to include economic disadvantage in addition to low prior attainment. For the 2022/23 academic year, the Department has broadened this eligibility further to allow more students to benefit from the funding.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent (a) discussions she has had with her Zimbabwean counterpart on taking steps to, (b) Official Development Assistance funding her Department has made available and (c) other steps her Department has taken to help improve access to education for women and girls in Zimbabwe.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
Minister Ford discussed girls' education with the Zimbabwean Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Hon. Dr. Evelyn Ndlovu on 23 May 2022. They discussed the UK's bilateral support and progress in implementing the Government of Zimbabwe's commitments to the Kenyatta Declaration, including allocating 20 percent of the budget to education and allowing girls to return to school after pregnancy.
The UK is the largest bilateral donor to the education sector in Zimbabwe, investing £241 million since 2012. Despite significant challenges in the sector, this has supported 190,000 girls and boys in Zimbabwe to get a decent education.
The UK support is channelled through three programmes. The Teacher Effectiveness and Equitable Access for Children Programme (TEACH) (£39.8 million from 2019-2025) supports school improvement grants, teacher development and girls' education. The Zimbabwe Girls Secondary Education Programme (£39.6 million from 2012-2023) has supported over 57,000 marginalised girls to attend and complete their secondary education and provided over 5,100 bicycles so girls can travel safely to and from school. The UK's Girls Education Challenge fund (£44 million from 2017-2023) has piloted catch-up materials to support the lost learning time caused by COVID-19. The UK is also a major funder of the Global Partnership for Education, which has provided $75.7 million to Zimbabwe since 2013.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to help ensure pupils whose learning was impacted by the covid-19 pandemic are able to access post-16 catch-up support while in education and apprenticeships.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The department recognises that many young people in 16 to 19 education will have lost learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and we are therefore providing targeted support to help them to catch up.
We introduced the 16-19 Tuition Fund in 2020, giving access to one-to-one and small group tuition for students to catch up on their core subjects. This academic year we have provided £102 million for the fund and will provide a further £222 million to continue the fund for an additional two years from the 2022/23 academic year. In addition, and to ensure that those with the least time left in education have the opportunity to progress, we have given providers of 16 to 19 education the option to offer students in year 13 (or equivalent in further education settings) the opportunity to repeat up to one more year of their studies in the 2021/22 academic year, where they had been particularly severely affected by the pandemic.
The department is also delivering an extra £1.6 billion boost for 16 to 19 year olds’ education across the next three financial years (2022/23 to 2024/25). Within this total investment, £800 million will be provided to fund 40 additional learning hours per student each year in 16 to 19 education settings to help them catch up on the vital teaching and learning they need to progress.
We also recognise that many apprentices were impacted by the pandemic, and this is why we introduced a number of flexibilities to ensure that apprenticeship training and assessments could continue. For example, where it was not possible and practicable for the apprentice to continue training, a break in learning could be used to allow the apprentice to return to learning at a future date and complete their apprenticeship. We also encouraged providers and assessment organisations to deliver training and assessments flexibly, to support apprentices in completing their apprenticeships.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to help ensure that school pupils with SEND are receiving sufficient catch-up support to achieve their full potential following the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Will Quince
In total the department has announced almost £5 billion for an ambitious, multi-year education recovery plan to support young people to catch up on education lost.
The department has consistently prioritised children who attend specialist educational settings by providing additional uplifts both in the catch-up premium in the 2020/21 academic year and the recovery premium in the 2021/22 academic year, in recognition of the significantly higher per pupil costs they face. We are also providing £1 billion to extend the recovery premium funding for academic years 2022/23 and 2023/24. Alongside this, in Summer 2021, specialist educational settings were given an uplift to deliver summer schools, where they wanted to, at three times the normal rate.
The school-led tutoring element of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) also gives schools flexibility, enabling them to select those tutors most suitable to support pupils with SEND. On 31 March 2022, the department announced that we will allocate all tutoring funding through the NTP directly to schools next year, which will give them the freedom and flexibility to develop a tutoring offer that works best for their pupils.
The 16-19 Tuition Fund also continues to support students with SEND as well as 19-24 year olds with an education, health and care (EHC) plan through the provision of one to one and small group tuition. To ensure 16 to 19 year old students with high needs, and those up to age 25 with an EHC plan can benefit, institutions have greater flexibility in how they deliver additional hours for these students.
The Schools White Paper published on 28 March 2022 sets out our vision for a school system that helps every child to fulfil their potential, including SEND pupils. The Parent Pledge included in the White Paper will be an essential part of this, promising that any child who falls behind in English or maths will receive the right evidence-based targeted support, appropriate to their needs, to help them get back on track.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on supporting disabled children and families to recover from the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Will Quince
The department continues to work closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on supporting disabled children and their families. Since June 2020, we have announced £4.9 billion to support education recovery. This includes support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Our recovery programmes have the flexibility to support those pupils most in need, including children with SEND. We have also provided additional funding for those interventions that the evidence tells us will have a significant impact on high quality tutoring and great teaching.
We have consistently prioritised children who attend specialist settings by providing additional uplifts both in the 2020 Catch-up Premium and in the 2021 Recovery Premium, and providing the flexibility to deliver provision based on pupils’ needs. Specialist settings also received an uplift to deliver the summer schools programme.
We have ensured that settings have the flexibility to target this to meet the needs of their pupils and students. In addition, the department continues to work hard to ensure children and young people are given access to therapies and equipment so that the right support is in place for all children and families, including addressing the backlog in assessments.
We are providing over £42 million in financial year 2021-22 to continue funding projects to support children with SEND. This investment will ensure that specialist organisations around the country can continue to help strengthen local area performance, support families, and provide practical support to schools and colleges. This includes £27.3 million to the Family Fund in financial year 2021-22 to support over 60,000 families on low incomes raising children and young people with disabilities or serious illnesses.