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1716635

registered interest
date	08/05/2024
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Overseas Students: China
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that Chinese students in UK universities, particularly those who are linked to China's military, are properly vetted and do not pose a threat to activists and people from Hong Kong based in UK universities who are campaigning against the actions of China and the Chinese Communist Party.
tabling member printed	Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
uin	HL4440
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 22/05/2024 answer text <p>Higher education (HE) in the UK is recognised as world class and attracting the brightest students from around the world is good for UK universities. However, the government takes seriously any concerns about overseas interference in the UK’s HE sector. The department continually assesses potential threats, and takes the protection of individuals’ rights, freedoms and safety in the UK very seriously.</p><p> </p><p>Any attempt by a foreign power to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated. The National Security Act (2023) brings together vital new measures to protect the UK’s national security. The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) has been created to tackle covert influence in the UK.</p><p> </p><p>The Defending Democracy Taskforce is reviewing the UK’s approach to transnational repression to ensure that there is a robust and joined up response across government and law enforcement.</p><p> </p><p>The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 will ensure that universities in England have the tools they need to deal with interference with, and threats to, freedom of speech and academic freedom wherever they originate.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 22/05/2024 15:39:30 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4719 label Biography information for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

1688786

registered interest
date	12/02/2024
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Universities: Research
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of any risk to the UK's status as a location for research presented by the planned closure of the anthropology department of the University of Kent, particularly with regard to ethnobotany; and what broader assessment they have made of any risk posed by the closure of significant numbers of departments and faculties at universities.
tabling member printed	Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
uin	HL2379
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 26/02/2024 answer text <p>Higher education providers are independent, autonomous institutions and are best placed to make decisions about the future focus of their research and their institutional strategy. Where it is necessary to reshape their activities, it is important that universities carefully consider the impact of job losses on staff and students, and the overall sustainability of teaching and research in this country.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 26/02/2024 12:30:13 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4719 label Biography information for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

1668655

registered interest
date	08/11/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Schools: Concrete
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will be providing funding to schools which identified safety issues relating to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and which began or finished the relevant repair work before July to fully cover the cost of such work.
tabling member printed	Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
uin	HL91
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 22/11/2023 answer text <p>It is the responsibility of those who run schools - academy trusts, local authorities and voluntary-aided school bodies - to manage the safety and maintenance of their schools and to alert the department if there is a serious concern with a building. It has always been the case that where the department is made aware a building may pose an immediate risk, immediate action is taken.</p><p>The department will spend what it takes to keep children safe. The department will fund emergency mitigation work needed to make buildings safe, including installing alternative classroom space where necessary.</p><p>The department will fund refurbishment projects, or rebuilding projects where these are needed, to remove RAAC from the school estate. Schools and colleges will either be offered capital grants or rebuilding projects where these are needed, including through the School Rebuilding Programme. The department will set out further details for affected schools and colleges in due course.</p><p>The department will carefully consider claims submitted by responsible bodies for essential RAAC related works, taking into account the particular circumstances of each case.</p><p>The department recognises that some responsible bodies will already have carried out emergency mitigation works, where RAAC was deemed ‘critical,’ based on the advice of the department’s surveys or from other qualified professionals, and in most cases we will reimburse these costs.</p><p>Prior to 31 August 2023, the point at which the department’s advice on the risks of RAAC changed, some responsible bodies or schools may also have chosen to take action on RAAC in their buildings where it wasn’t deemed critical, and others may have chosen to go further and removed RAAC entirely. In these cases, as with any other capital works, the responsible bodies will have taken decisions as part of their own estate strategy, based on their assessment of any professional advice they'd received and the affordability of the project.</p><p>This work would typically have been funded through annual capital funding provided by the department to the sector, or from other sources of funding, such as a responsible body’s reserves. In these cases, the department is not providing additional funding to the funding the responsible bodies will have used to pay for the work.</p><p>In addition to the department’s support on RAAC, the department has committed £1.8 billion of capital funding for the 2023/24 financial year to improve the condition of school buildings, as part of over £15 billion allocated since 2015. Alongside this, the department will transform poor condition buildings at 500 schools and sixth form colleges over the coming decade through the School Rebuilding Programme.</p><p>The department will always put the safety and wellbeing of children and staff in schools and colleges at the heart of its policy decisions. The government has taken more proactive action to identify and mitigate RAAC in education settings than the devolved administrations in the UK, or indeed, governments overseas.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 22/11/2023 17:57:46 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4719 label Biography information for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

1662214

registered interest
date	20/09/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Schools: Buildings
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what is the minimum expected lifespan of new schools currently being constructed.
tabling member printed	Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
uin	HL10342
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 16/10/2023 answer text <p>All new educational buildings delivered by the department are designed to a robust specification that includes minimum expected lifespan of all components of the building, both externally and internally, based on current construction industry standards.</p><p>The current specification requires the minimum building life expectancy to be 50 years for the key structural components. Most buildings however last much longer with regular maintenance and proper oversight. The school estate has many excellent functioning buildings performing well as education settings from the last 150 years.</p><p> </p><p> </p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 16/10/2023 09:46:08 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4719 label Biography information for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

1651485

registered interest
date	10/07/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Schools: Ethnic Groups
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of schools with codes on hairstyles that adversely affect school participation among students from ethnic-minority backgrounds; and what plans they have to ensure that all such codes are abolished.
tabling member printed	Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
uin	HL9198
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 24/07/2023 answer text <p>Every school in England has existing legal obligations not to discriminate unlawfully on the grounds of a protected characteristic. It is for the governing board of a school to decide whether there should be a school uniform policy and if so, what it should be.</p><p>The department has not made an assessment of the number of schools with codes on hairstyles.</p><p>The department has published non statutory guidance to help schools to consider their equalities responsibilities in relation to uniform policies. The guidance is available at: <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-uniform/school-uniforms" target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-uniform/school-uniforms</a>.</p><p>In addition, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with support from the Race Disparity Unit in the Cabinet Office, have produced guidance, which can be found here: <a href="https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/preventing-hair-discrimination-schools" target="_blank">https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/preventing-hair-discrimination-schools</a>.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 24/07/2023 12:09:38 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4719 label Biography information for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

1644868

registered interest
date	14/06/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children and Young People: Asylum
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what restrictions there are on the provision of free school, and other public, transport to children and young people who are from asylum-seeking families.
tabling member printed	Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
uin	HL8471
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 28/06/2023 answer text <p>The department’s school travel policy aims to ensure that no child of compulsory school age is unable to access education because of a lack of transport. Children of families seeking asylum in the UK are eligible for free home to school travel on the same basis as UK citizens. Their immigration status is not taken into account.</p><p>Local authorities must arrange free travel to school for children aged 5 to 16 who attend their nearest school and cannot walk there due to the distance, route safety, or as a result of special educational needs, disability or mobility problems. There are additional rights to free travel for low-income families aimed at helping them exercise school choice.</p><p>Fares, concessions and operating criteria for public transport are set by transport operators themselves. The criteria, including the age at which any discount or concessions are made available for children and young people, are decided locally.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 28/06/2023 11:25:02 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4719 label Biography information for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

1613043

registered interest
date	20/04/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Teachers: Training
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what funds are specifically allocated to, or are available for, the training of industry specialists to become teachers and further education lecturers.
tabling member printed	Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
uin	HL7330
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 04/05/2023 answer text <p>For those starting initial teacher training (ITT) in the 2023/24 academic year, the department is offering bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000 to encourage talented trainees to apply to train in key subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics, and physics.</p><p>The department is exploring new ways to recruit trainee teachers in subjects where there is a shortage. For example, we are introducing a new scholarship to attract the most talented language graduates to the profession.</p><p>Alongside our financial levers, the department is continuing to invest in attracting the best teachers where they are needed most. For example, we have rolled out a new ITT course designed to support more engineers to teach physics. The department also awarded a contract of approximately £3 million to Now Teach in 2021 for the delivery of a National Career Changer Programme. Now Teach supports experienced professionals with significant previous employment and industry experience, who may not otherwise consider teaching, to transfer their skills to the classroom during ITT and their first year as an Early Career Teacher.</p><p>Teachers in the further education (FE) sector are often ‘dual professionals’ who have valuable experience and expertise from industry and business. To support the recruitment of more such specialists into FE teaching roles, our flagship Taking Teaching Further Programme offers fully funded early career support, including a teacher training qualification, mentor support, and a reduced timetable in the first two years of teaching, worth up to £18,200 per trainee. In addition, the Taking Teaching Further Programme offer has been enhanced with the trialling of a new financial incentive, worth £6,000 per trainee, over two years, targeted at the most hard-to-fill vacancies. Backed by up to £15 million of investment across the next two years, 710 Taking Teaching Further places will be available, with up to half attracting the new financial incentive.</p><p>Bursaries worth up to £29,000 each, tax-free, are available to those training to teach in a range of priority subjects in the FE sector, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Relevant professional experience is taken into account when assessing candidates’ eligibility for these bursaries, making them appropriate for people with industry expertise looking to retrain as teachers. The bursaries programme for the 2023/24 academic year is now open for applications.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 04/05/2023 15:45:14 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4719 label Biography information for Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle