Asked by: Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data she used to help inform her guidance entitled Mobile phones in schools, published on 19 February 2024.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The ‘Mobile phones in schools’ guidance is informed by data from various sources. These include the department’s ‘National Behaviour Survey: Findings from Academic Year 2021/22’ and the ‘School Snapshot Survey: Winter 2019’, Ofcom’s ‘Children’s Media Use and Attitudes’ and the Office for National Statistics’ report ‘Online bullying in England and Wales: year ending March 2020’.
The guidance was also informed by the ‘UNESCO Global education monitoring report, 2023: technology in education: a tool on whose terms?’ and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health’s ‘The health impacts of screen time – a guide for clinicians and parents’. A review of academic research relating to the use of mobile phones in education settings and amongst children and young people was also conducted to inform the development of the guidance.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, whether he has held discussions with his counterparts in the Middle East on the potential merits of developing a plan to support orphaned children in Gaza.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
From our £60 million of committed aid, we have provided targeted support for children through our £5.75 million contribution to UNICEF. Our funding is supporting their work to amongst other things, assist over 5,800 children with severe malnourishment and 853,000 children, adolescents and caregivers affected by the conflict, to receive emergency and child protection services, including mental health and psychosocial support.
The UK is a founding member and key donor to Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. ECW is supporting education preparedness work in Gaza. We continue to support the wider delivery of education in Gaza, including through NGOs, UN partners, the World Bank, and the Global Partnership for Education.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, how much has been spent on helping Afghan girls to study maths and science since 2021; and how much money has been allocated for that purpose for the next five years.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Providing girls with 12 years of quality and equitable education is a global FCDO priority. FCDO does not disaggregate our education spend by subject. The UK Government strongly condemns the restrictions the Taliban have imposed on Afghan women and girls, and we are working with the international community to press the Taliban to reverse their restrictive decisions on girls' education. We continue to support the delivery of education in Afghanistan, including through NGOs, UN partners, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Education Cannot Wait, and the Global Partnership for Education. Our bilateral support has enabled 125,000 children, of which 83,700 are girls, to access education between September 2022 and June 2023.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, what discussions he has had with NGOs in Afghanistan on STEM teaching for girls in that country.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Girl's education globally is a priority for the FCDO. The UK has not specifically engaged with NGOs in Afghanistan on STEM teaching for girls. Our support focuses on foundational learning, which includes numeracy, literacy and socio-emotional skills. We are working with the international community to press the Taliban to reverse their restrictive decisions on girls' education, while we continue to support the delivery of education, including through NGOs, UN partners, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Education Cannot Wait, and the Global Partnership for Education. Our bilateral support has enabled 125,000 children, of which 83,700 are girls, to access education between September 2022 and June 2023.
Asked by: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve the effectiveness of UK aid programmes in (a) reducing poverty, (b) increasing literacy rates and (c) increasing life expectancies.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The International Development White Paper sets out the UK's agenda to re-energise progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, including the central aim of eliminating extreme poverty. To this end, the UK aims to spend at least 50 per cent of our bilateral ODA in the Least Developed Countries.
The FCDO has developed two new programmes that will measure and assess literacy rates, among other objectives. The Scaling Access and Learning in Education programme will help transform the effectiveness of education spending in low- and lower middle-income countries and improve learning outcomes, including on literacy. The Data for Foundational Learning Programme will help track children's learning outcomes globally; generate more learning data nationally; and ensure these data are used.
We are making good progress against the Global Health Framework, which outlines the UK's work on Global Health to support a positive impact on health and wellbeing and thus life expectancy. For example, we announced £5 million of additional funding to TB Alliance to support more effective drug resistant treatment with fewer side effects and £370 million to strengthen global health security at United Nations General Assembly September 2023.
Furthermore, the FCDO is committed to improving the effectiveness of all UK aid. FCDO's Programme Operating Framework maximises the impact of aid through consideration of economy, efficiency, effectiveness and equity. Programmes undergo an annual review of effectiveness, using a results framework. These are published to the Development Tracker website (https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk), which further supports aid effectiveness by providing information to inform other donors spending decisions.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, whether his Department is providing support for unaccompanied children in Gaza.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
From our £60 million of committed aid, we have provided targeted support for children through our £5.75 million contribution to UNICEF. Our funding is supporting their work to amongst other things, assist over 5,800 children with severe malnourishment and 853,000 children, adolescents and caregivers affected by the conflict, to receive emergency and child protection services, including mental health and psychosocial support.
The UK is a founding member and key donor to Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. ECW is supporting education preparedness work in Gaza. We continue to support the wider delivery of education in Gaza, including through NGOs, UN partners, the World Bank, and the Global Partnership for Education.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, what discussions he has had with international counterparts on the content of education funded through multilateral organisations; and whether that funding includes provisions for teaching maths and science to girls.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK is committed to supporting foundational learning (literacy, numeracy, socio-emotional skills) for all. Foundational learning is critical for achieving higher order skills and effective understanding of STEM subjects from an early age. The UK is a leading donor to the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait and uses its influence on their governing boards to ensure foundational learning and education for marginalised girls are priorities. It is not possible to directly track the use of UK core funding to multilateral organisations, such as UNICEF and the World Bank.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, if he will take steps to help ensure access to education for children in Gaza.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK is a founding member and key donor to Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. ECW is supporting education preparedness work in Gaza. We continue to support the wider delivery of education in Gaza, including through NGOs, UN partners, the World Bank, and the Global Partnership for Education.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that measures to reduce legal migration do not damage the reputation of the UK’s university sector or imperil their financial sustainability.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
An Impact Assessment was produced and considered in developing the student package of reforms. We regularly engage with a range of stakeholders when developing policy.
In March 2019, the Government published the International Education Strategy: global potential, global growth. It set out two key ambitions to achieve by 2030: to increase education exports to £35 billion and to increase the numbers of international higher education students studying in the UK to 600,000. This has been achieved earlier than planned over the last two years.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of trends in the level of the population of Nigeria on the UK's aid budget in the next 10 years.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
Nigeria's rapid population growth will put additional pressures on areas such as healthcare, education and food security. FCDO's Official Development Allowance allocations are regularly reviewed to respond to changing global needs and decisions are informed by a range of data and information sources, including poverty levels, humanitarian need, geopolitical prioritisation and the ability of a country to make effective use of aid and to self-finance poverty reduction.