Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to use his Department’s covid-19 recovery funding to increase participation in competitive sports in schools.
Answered by Robin Walker
In addition to the department’s ambitious wider spending review settlement for schools and 16-19 settings; since June 2020 nearly £5 billion in education recovery funding to support children and young people recover from the COVID-19 outbreak has been announced. The department’s recovery programmes allow early years, school and college leaders to support those pupils most in need to help them catch-up. This includes the catch-up premium in the 2020/21 academic year and the recovery premium in the 2021/22 academic year. Using evidenced based interventions, this funding can also be used to tackle non-academic barriers to success in school, such as enrichment activities like arts and sport.
The department has also committed £200 million for secondary schools to deliver face-to-face summer schools in summer 2021, giving secondary pupils access to enrichment activities, such as games, music, drama and sports that they have missed out on over the COVID-19 outbreak. Almost 2,800 secondary schools across England signed up to host a summer school, this will have helped to support physical and mental health and wellbeing.
The government is committed to high-quality education for all pupils, and integral to this are the arts and music. The department provides significant funding for a range of cultural education programmes, including music, which schools can access – over £620 million between 2016 to 2021, additional to core school budgets. We confirmed £80 million funding for this financial year, 2021-22, for music programmes; and we continue to provide just over £4 million for a set of tailored arts programmes. We will continue to invest around £115 million per annum in cultural education over the next three years, though our music, arts and heritage programmes, working closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Arts Council England and others.
Alongside this, schools have continued to receive their core funding throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. The recent spending review announced that core funding for schools will rise by a further £4.7 billion by 2024-25, compared to previous plans, this builds on the largest school funding increase in a decade at the 2019 spending round.
Collectively, this will support schools to deliver a broad and ambitious curriculum and enrichment activities.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to use his Department’s covid-19 recovery funding to increase participation in music in schools.
Answered by Robin Walker
In addition to the department’s ambitious wider spending review settlement for schools and 16-19 settings; since June 2020 nearly £5 billion in education recovery funding to support children and young people recover from the COVID-19 outbreak has been announced. The department’s recovery programmes allow early years, school and college leaders to support those pupils most in need to help them catch-up. This includes the catch-up premium in the 2020/21 academic year and the recovery premium in the 2021/22 academic year. Using evidenced based interventions, this funding can also be used to tackle non-academic barriers to success in school, such as enrichment activities like arts and sport.
The department has also committed £200 million for secondary schools to deliver face-to-face summer schools in summer 2021, giving secondary pupils access to enrichment activities, such as games, music, drama and sports that they have missed out on over the COVID-19 outbreak. Almost 2,800 secondary schools across England signed up to host a summer school, this will have helped to support physical and mental health and wellbeing.
The government is committed to high-quality education for all pupils, and integral to this are the arts and music. The department provides significant funding for a range of cultural education programmes, including music, which schools can access – over £620 million between 2016 to 2021, additional to core school budgets. We confirmed £80 million funding for this financial year, 2021-22, for music programmes; and we continue to provide just over £4 million for a set of tailored arts programmes. We will continue to invest around £115 million per annum in cultural education over the next three years, though our music, arts and heritage programmes, working closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Arts Council England and others.
Alongside this, schools have continued to receive their core funding throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. The recent spending review announced that core funding for schools will rise by a further £4.7 billion by 2024-25, compared to previous plans, this builds on the largest school funding increase in a decade at the 2019 spending round.
Collectively, this will support schools to deliver a broad and ambitious curriculum and enrichment activities.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to use his Department’s covid-19 recovery funding to increase participation in drama and theatre in schools.
Answered by Robin Walker
In addition to the department’s ambitious wider spending review settlement for schools and 16-19 settings; since June 2020 nearly £5 billion in education recovery funding to support children and young people recover from the COVID-19 outbreak has been announced. The department’s recovery programmes allow early years, school and college leaders to support those pupils most in need to help them catch-up. This includes the catch-up premium in the 2020/21 academic year and the recovery premium in the 2021/22 academic year. Using evidenced based interventions, this funding can also be used to tackle non-academic barriers to success in school, such as enrichment activities like arts and sport.
The department has also committed £200 million for secondary schools to deliver face-to-face summer schools in summer 2021, giving secondary pupils access to enrichment activities, such as games, music, drama and sports that they have missed out on over the COVID-19 outbreak. Almost 2,800 secondary schools across England signed up to host a summer school, this will have helped to support physical and mental health and wellbeing.
The government is committed to high-quality education for all pupils, and integral to this are the arts and music. The department provides significant funding for a range of cultural education programmes, including music, which schools can access – over £620 million between 2016 to 2021, additional to core school budgets. We confirmed £80 million funding for this financial year, 2021-22, for music programmes; and we continue to provide just over £4 million for a set of tailored arts programmes. We will continue to invest around £115 million per annum in cultural education over the next three years, though our music, arts and heritage programmes, working closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Arts Council England and others.
Alongside this, schools have continued to receive their core funding throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. The recent spending review announced that core funding for schools will rise by a further £4.7 billion by 2024-25, compared to previous plans, this builds on the largest school funding increase in a decade at the 2019 spending round.
Collectively, this will support schools to deliver a broad and ambitious curriculum and enrichment activities.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment has he made on the impact of school closures on the long term financial prospects of school children.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department continually reviews the evidence base on the potential economic impact of the time pupils have spent out of the classroom as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak and are aware of a wide range of estimates which are based on little or no mitigation measures.
The department has commissioned an independent research and assessment agency to provide a baseline assessment of catch-up needs for pupils in schools in England and monitor progress over the course of the 2020/21 academic year. The latest findings from the research were published on gov.uk: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1029841/Understanding_progress_in_the_2020-21_academic_year_Report_4_October2021.pdf. The department is currently exploring options to assess progress over the course of the current academic year.
The department’s latest evidence suggests that pupils are showing some degree of recovery in education loss. In summer 2021, primary pupils were on average around 0.9 months behind in reading and 2.8 months behind in maths compared to where they would otherwise have been in a typical year. This is an improvement since spring 2021, where primary pupils were around 2 months behind in reading and 3.1 months behind in maths. For secondary pupils, they were on average around 1.8 months behind in summer 2021.
That is why the department is investing nearly £5 billion on measures to support further recovery such as the National Tutoring Programme, teacher development, and the recovery premium to support teachers to implement evidence-based interventions to address education gaps. This is in addition to a strong core funding settlement which will see core schools funding rise by £4.7 billion by the 2024/25 financial year compared to existing plans.
Asked by: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has made contingency plans to support students in secondary education who were affected by exam cancellations in the last year.
Answered by Robin Walker
Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, the department has acted swiftly to help minimise the impact on pupils’ education and provided extensive support for schools.
Whilst we believe that exams are the fairest way of judging students’ performance, the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak meant we could not guarantee all students would be in a position to fairly sit their exams either in 2020 or 2021. Teachers were best placed to determine grades for GCSE, AS and A level qualifications in the absence of exams, as they have a good understanding of their students’ performance.
Given that some students have suffered more disruption than others, students were only assessed on the content they had been taught. Teachers were able to use evidence from across the duration of a student’s course to determine their grade.
Parents and pupils can have confidence in the grades awarded this summer. Supported by thorough guidance and a robust quality assurance process, the department trusted teachers’ judgements as they were best placed to understand the content students have covered and their students’ performance. Further to this, an appeals system was also in place as a safety net to fix any genuine errors that were not identified earlier on, and the Joint Council for Qualifications published detailed guidance to centres setting out the process for appealing results.
The department also encouraged schools and colleges to support students to take autumn exams if they have the capacity. In addition, we helped schools and colleges to offer autumn exams to students by assisting with additional space and invigilators where required, as well as covering fee deficits to ensure that exam fees are not passed on.
For those students who need support in catching up on lost education, we have announced education recovery funding of nearly £5 billion. Our latest investment of £1.8 billion is targeted at those we know will need it most, delivering a universal uplift of hours for those with the least time left in education, in 16-19 colleges and an additional £1 billion to extend the recovery premium for disadvantaged pupils for the next two academic years.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what comparative assessment he has made of the educational disadvantage caused by covid-19 school closures to (a) those eligible for the pupil premium and (b) other pupils; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Robin Walker
Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 disruption on the attainment and progress of all pupils is a key research priority for the government. The department has commissioned an independent research and assessment agency to provide a baseline assessment of catch-up needs for pupils in schools in England and monitor progress over the course of the 2020/21 academic year. This research is based on assessments that schools are already using and adds no additional burden on teachers. Initial findings from the research were published on gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupils-progress-in-the-2020-to-2021-academic-year-interim-report. The department is currently exploring options to assess progress over the course of the current academic year.
The latest evidence suggests that, in Summer 2021, primary pupils were on average around 1 month behind in reading and around 3 months behind in maths compared to where we would expect them to be in a ‘normal year’. Secondary pupils were behind in reading by around 2 months.
Once adjusted for historic differences in pupil progress, pupils who are currently eligible for free school meals or had been within the last six years, were on average around half a month further behind in primary reading and maths, and 1.7 months further behind in secondary reading compared to their more advantaged peers in Summer 2021. Education loss estimates for pupils who are being looked after by a local authority, or who have left care, are not available due to data limitations. However, education loss estimates of children in need, some of whom are also eligible for pupil premium, show that they were on average 1.2 months behind in primary reading and 3.3 months behind in secondary reading.
This government is committed to ensuring children and young people can make up for education lost during the COVID-19 outbreak, especially those most in need. The department has announced funding of almost £5 billion since June 2020 to support education recovery for children and young people in schools, 16-19 colleges and early years. This will have a material impact in closing gaps that have emerged.
The department’s recovery programmes have been designed to allow early years, school and college leaders the flexibility to support those pupils most in need, including the most disadvantaged - with many programmes specifically targeted at disadvantaged pupils.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to increase the (a) number of students taking and (b) funding for foreign language subjects at A-Level and GCSE.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department’s focus is on increasing the uptake of languages at GCSE, which is why GCSEs in all modern and ancient languages are part of the English Baccalaureate performance measure for secondary schools. There are no specific plans to increase the number of pupils entered for language A levels, although an increase in GCSE uptake in languages is expected to lead to an increase in A level uptake in the longer-term.
The total number of pupils in state-funded schools in England entered for examinations in at least one language GCSE has increased from 231,224 in 2010 to 253,379 in 2019. This amounted to an increase among all key stage 4 pupils of 7 percentage points from 40% in 2010 to 47% in 2019. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, the GCSE examinations are due to re-commence for summer 2022, and we will return to publishing, as far as possible, our usual range of English Baccalaureate entry and attainment measures.
The department also carried out a consultation earlier this year on proposed changes to the subject content for French, German and Spanish GCSEs. The intention is that more pupils will want to study languages at GCSE level and encourage them to continue with this study to post-16 and beyond. The department plans to respond to the consultation later this year.
There is no ring-fenced funding for schools and colleges for the teaching of languages at GCSE and A level. Schools are expected to use their core funding to teach pupils a broad and balanced curriculum to the end of key stage 4, while 16 to 19 core funding is used to cover the teaching and related costs for post-16 students in schools and colleges whatever their study programme. Core school funding increased by £2.6 billion in 2020-21 and is increasing by £4.8 billion and £7.1 billion in 2021-22 and 2022-23 respectively, compared to 2019-20. The government has recently made significant increases in 16 to 19 funding, with an extra £400 million for 2020-21 awarded in the 2019 spending review, and a further £291 million on top of this in 2021-22. This enabled an increase in total programme funding per 16-19 student of nearly 10% between 2019/20 allocations and 2020/21 allocations and the increased funding rates have been maintained for 2021/22.
The Department also provides funding for a number of specific language education programmes to improve teaching quality and take-up in specific languages. These are:
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of pupils engaged with (a) academic teaching and (b) enrichment activities as part of the 2021 summer school activity programme in York.
Answered by Robin Walker
In total, over 2,800 secondary schools in England signed up to the participate in the summer schools’ programme. This is 74% of all eligible mainstream secondary schools and it means that over 500,000 pupils will have been invited to take part. The aims were to help recover education lost as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak and to give pupils the confidence they needed to start the new academic year.
Through the £200 million made available by the government, schools have been able to fund provision based on the needs of their pupils. Summer schools needed to offer a blend of both academic and enrichment activities, although the precise proportions of each and the detail of the programme were for schools to decide.
As part of the government’s commitment to developing a long term education recovery plan, understanding the effectiveness and success of the 2021 summer schools programme is a key priority for the department. We have designed and released a research study to help us to better understand the perceived impact of summer schools on both children’s wellbeing, transition to secondary school, and academic recovery. An independent research agency will carry out the analysis and reporting of this important research for the department. Substantive figures will be available in October and a full evaluation will be published on gov.uk.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of pupils who had received free school meals by the end of the 2020-21 summer term in York; and how many of those pupils were in receipt of food support during the 2021 school summer holidays through their (a) school and (b) local authority.
Answered by Will Quince
The number of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) in England is published as part of the annual ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ statistical release available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2021.
The number of pupils eligible for and claiming FSM in the York local authority in January 2021 is 3,349.
This data includes pupils at state-funded nursery and primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, pupil referral units, alternative provision academies and free schools.
The Department for Education funded Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, which has provided healthy food and enriching activities to disadvantaged children, has been expanded to every local authority across England this year, backed by up to £220 million. It builds on previous programmes, including last summer’s, which supported around 50,000 children across 17 local authorities.
York Council has been allocated a maximum of £436,010 to deliver HAF programmes over Easter, summer and Christmas 2021.
The Department for Work and Pensions have also distributed further funding through the Covid Local Support Grant which supports the hardest hit families and individuals with food and essential utility costs.
Asked by: Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what processes his Department has established to monitor levels of child hunger in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools in England and Wales.
Answered by Vicky Ford
Schools are now fully open, and all children should be able to access a nutritious meal at school, free to those that are eligible for free school meals (FSM), helping to ensure they are well-nourished, develop healthy eating habits, and can concentrate and learn.
FSM eligibility is monitored through school census data. Currently, under the benefits-related criteria, 1.7 million of the most disadvantaged pupils are eligible for and claiming a FSM. An additional 1.3 million infants enjoy a free, healthy and nutritious meal at lunchtime following the introduction of the Universal Infant FSM policy in 2014.
Where pupils eligible for benefits-related FSM are required to stay at home due to COVID-19, schools should continue to work with their school catering team or food provider to offer good quality lunch parcels.
During 2021 the department is investing up to £220 million in our Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme. Taking place in schools and community venues across the country, delivery began at Easter, has run across the summer and will run in the Christmas holidays. This programme supports disadvantaged pupils and their families with enriching activities, providing them with healthy food, helping them to learn new things and improving socialisation and well-being.
Beyond this, the Covid Local Support Grant continues to be available until the 30 September. This is being run by local authorities in England to support the hardest hit families and individuals with food and essential utility costs.
Since June 2020, the department has announced more than £3 billion to support education recovery, including over £950 million in flexible funding to schools and £1.5 billion for a national tutoring revolution. This will have a material impact in closing gaps that have emerged.
Recovery programmes have been designed to allow early years, school and college leaders the flexibility to support those pupils most in need, including the most disadvantaged and expand our reforms in two areas where the evidence is clear our investment will have a significant impact for disadvantaged children - high quality tutoring and great teaching.
Education is devolved, and it will be for the Welsh administration to respond regarding the position in Wales.