Asked by: Luciana Berger (Liberal Democrat - Liverpool, Wavertree)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many meetings his Department held with stakeholders to explore the opt-in requirement for universities to have permission to share information on student mental health with parents or a trusted person since June 2018.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
Work on supporting students in making the transition into university and on exploring disclosure agreements has continued to progress in the period since formal announcement of these policy areas was made in June.
Stakeholders from across the sector have been involved in this work and will continue to be called on to contribute in the specific areas where their expertise can add most value.
We shall also be working with parents and carers, and legal and health experts as well as sector partners in the specific area of developing advice on disclosure and consent, as highlighted in the suicide prevention guidance published on 5 September by Universities UK.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has estimated the number of hate crimes reported on university property in the 2016-17 academic year.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The government takes all forms of hate crime extremely seriously. There is no place in our society - including within higher education – for hatred or any form of harassment, discrimination or racism.
Information on the number of hate crimes on university property in the 2016-17 academic year is not held centrally.
The Universities UK Harassment and Hate Crime Taskforce, which was set up in September 2015 at the government’s request, makes a number of recommendations on tackling harassment and hate crime on campus, including on improving reporting rates and mechanisms for disclosure in higher education providers. These include, that relevant internal and external support should be signposted, and that reporting procedures should be centralised, accessible, and allow for anonymity if preferred, as well as enabling accurate data to be captured to determine the scale of a problem and track year on-year trends. The government expects higher education providers to take these recommendations seriously and to have robust policies and procedures in place to investigate and address hate crime.
To support providers in implementing the Taskforce’s recommendations, the Office for Students is supporting and evaluating over 100 safeguarding projects to the value of £4.5 million. This includes 63 projects to improve responses to hate crime and online harassment on campus, and 11 to tackle religious-based hate crime.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many leak enquiries his Department has undertaken in the last two years.
Answered by Anne Milton
The leak of any government information or material is not acceptable and the government takes such incidents very seriously.
It has been the policy of successive governments not to comment on security matters other than in exceptional circumstances when it is in the public interest to do so.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many non-disclosure agreements his Department has signed with employees in each of the last five years for which figures are available.
Answered by Anne Milton
The Department for Education has not signed any non-disclosure agreements with its employees in the last five years.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the answer to the Freedom of Information request, FOI: 2018-0002247 CRM:0741007, whether any of the three grammar schools which contacted his Department enquired about a site in a different local authority area from the main school building.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The locations of the three schools that contacted the Department were withheld under Section 36(2)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act. Disclosure of the information would be likely otherwise to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs. A public interest test was carried out and the decision to withhold this information is maintained.
One of the three schools that contacted the Department suggested a specific site for an annex. This was on land adjacent to the current school site and within the same local authority area.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the answer to the Freedom of Information request, FOI: 2018-0002247, CRM:0741007 if he will publish the distances between the main school sites and the proposed annex sites of each of the three grammar schools.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The locations of the three schools that contacted the Department were withheld under Section 36(2)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act. Disclosure of the information would be likely otherwise to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs. A public interest test was carried out and the decision to withhold this information is maintained.
One of the three schools that contacted the Department suggested a specific site for an annex. This was on land adjacent to the current school site and within the same local authority area.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to his Department's response to FOI request FOI: 2018-0002247 CRM:0741007, if he will publish the location of the three grammar schools which contacted his Department in January and February 2017 to enquire about expansion onto a separate site from the existing school.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The locations of the three schools that contacted the Department were withheld under Section 36(2)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act. Disclosure of the information would be likely otherwise to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs. A public interest test was carried out and the decision to withhold this information is maintained.
One of the three schools that contacted the Department suggested a specific site for an annex. This was on land adjacent to the current school site and within the same local authority area.
Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of reports by university students of sexual assaults taking place on campus; and how many such reports there have been in (a) 2015, (b) 2016 and (c) 2017 to date.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The department does not hold information regarding the number of reports by university students of sexual assaults taking place on campus.
Government takes any form of violence and sexual harassment, including in higher education, extremely seriously. That is why we asked Universities UK (UUK) to set up a sexual violence and harassment taskforce. The Taskforce published their report ‘Changing the Culture’ in October 2016: http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2016/changing-the-culture.pdf.
Government expects institutions to take a proactive response to sexual harassment and ensuring that students feel confident and able to report any issues.
The Taskforce also undertook a review of the ‘Zellick Guidelines’ on how higher education institutions should handle student misconduct which may constitute a criminal offence and published new guidelines alongside the report: http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2016/guidance-for-higher-education-institutions.pdf.
The Taskforce’s report raises that underreporting of harassment incidents can often be an issue and clearly sets out the need for institutions to break down barriers to reporting, and ensure that clear, accessible and robust reporting mechanisms are in place. As the report makes clear, low numbers of disclosures do not necessarily mean that incidents do not occur, and this is a factor to consider when making judgments on any changes in levels of disclosure.
To support this work, the department has asked the Higher Education Funding Council to prioritise working with UUK in 2017-2018 on these important issues, including surveying the sector’s progress to make sure universities are doing all they can to protect the safety and security of their students. This will be reported on in due course.
Meanwhile, they have provided over £4 million funding for projects to tackle harassment and hate crime. This includes £2.45 million for projects addressing concerns about sexual violence and harassment.
Asked by: Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many concurrent planning arrangements for children have been authorised in each of the last five years, for each local authority.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
The department does not collect data separately on the number of concurrent planning arrangements for looked after children. These are combined in the department’s data collection with fostering for adoption placements. The number of concurrent planning or fostering for adoption placements for looked after children at 31 March of the last three years is given in the attached table. This information was collected for the first time in 2015 and so earlier data is not available. Local council level information has not been provided to prevent disclosure of small numbers. This information is taken from Table A2 of the statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoption: 2016 to 2017’ at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2016-to-2017.
Asked by: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how the monies paid to trustees of multi-academy trusts are monitored.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
It is essential that we have the best people to lead our schools to raise standards. The responsibilities of school leaders have changed significantly in recent years, with many now running several academies in a multi-academy trust.
Academy trusts are free to set their own salaries for staff and the Department would expect this to reflect the size and complexity of the trust, as they must deliver value for money.
The 2017 Academies Financial Handbook, attached, emphasises that decisions about levels of executive pay must follow a robust evidence-based process and are reflective of the individual’s role and responsibilities.
Trusts must disclose senior staff pay annually in their audited accounts. The academies’ sector annual report and accounts we have published means there is now more information available than ever about academy trusts’ finances. The Education and Skills Funding Agency follow up where non-compliance is identified. Disclosure must include:
The number of employees earning more than £60k, set out in £10k bands.
Names of all trustees who received remuneration in each band, and the amounts they received. This will consist of the salaries of the principal in a single academy trust and the chief executive in a multi academy trust, unless in the exceptional case they have chosen not to be a trustee.
Payments by academy trusts to their trustees must be disclosed in the trust’s annual accounts. These are independently audited and published for transparency. The disclosures will comprise payments to those staff who are also trustees, paid in their capacity as staff not as trustees. In addition, Charity Commission approval would be required if an academy trust wished to pay an individual for acting as trustee.