Written questions by McVey.

Pursuant to the answer on 12 March 2026 to question 117273, if she will provide financial assistance to schools to accommodate pupils from nearby private schools that have closed.

School funding is increasing by £1.7 billion in 2026/27, meaning that core school budgets will total £67 billion, an increase on the £65.3 billion provided in 2025/26.In 2026/27, the most deprived schools have, on average, attracted the largest per pupil funding amounts through the schools National Funding Formula.

What assistance her Department will offer to parents at independent schools that are closing to help them take over the running of the school.

It is for private schools, as private businesses, to manage their operations and take decisions on closure. All children of compulsory school age are entitled to a state-funded school place, should they need one. The department continues to support local authorities to ensure sufficient places for pupils.

Whether comparisons of the cost of maintained and independent special school placements take account of differences in (a) pupil needs, (b) placement complexity, and (c) length of placement.

Comparisons of the average cost of placements in different types of special school can be made at national level. The data collected on relevant local and central government expenditure is not differentiated on the basis of pupil needs, placement complexity or length of placement.

What (a) methodology and (b) data the Department uses to (i) calculate and (ii) compare the average cost of maintained special school placements and independent school placements.

For maintained special schools and special academies, the department uses local authorities’ actual expenditure on high needs top-up funding, to which is added the £10,000 per place funding using pupil numbers from the January school census, divided by those pupil numbers to produce an average placement cost.For independent special schools (ISS), the department cannot disaggregate this expenditure from that including non-maintained special schools (NMSS), so creates a combined average placement cost by adding spending on ISS fees, top up funding for NMSS and the total £10,000 per place funding for NMSS (using the number of pupils with education, health and care (EHC) plans at NMSS), and dividing by the number of pupils with EHC plans at both ISS and NMSS.

What assessment her Department made of the adequacy of the use of single unique identifiers for schools, in the context of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Provision in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to introduce a single unique identifier (SUI) for children is based on extensive user research, including engagement with schools and education settings. Our 2023 report, ‘Improving multi-agency information sharing’, highlighted that while schools use identifiers such as the unique pupil number (UPN), these are not recognised across other agencies that process and share information relating to safeguarding and welfare, creating fragmentation and risk.To address this, the department began pilot activity in April 2025 to test the feasibility of using the NHS number as a consistent identifier within health and children’s social care. Future piloting will test this across wider safeguarding partners, including education. The intention is not to replace identifiers that are currently used in education, but to design how the SUI can work alongside existing identifiers to improve information sharing and strengthen safeguarding.

What consultation her Department undertook with parents of home educated children on the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes a proposal for compulsory Children Not in School registers and an accompanying duty on parents to give information for these registers. The department consulted on this proposal as part of its ‘Children Not in School’ consultation, which ran between April and June 2019. The consultation received almost 5,000 responses, 74% of which were from parents and young people.

What steps her Department is taking to ensure provisions in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill maintain data protection requirements.

The department recognises its responsibility to ensure the highest standards of data privacy and transparency in respect of personal data, and we are ensuring that this is prioritised as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill progresses.We are ensuring that measures outlined in the Bill align with data protection principles, as set out in the Data Protection Act 2018, UK General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR) and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.The department has met its obligation under Article 36(4) of UK GDPR to consult with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on all measures involving the use of personal data. We continue to engage with the ICO for measures relating to the single unique identifier and the children not in school.The department is engaging with the ICO to ensure that data protection risks identified are properly mitigated and will publish summaries of the assessments once they are complete.

Pursuant to the Answer of 4 September 2025 to Question 69839 on Schools: Employers' Contributions, how much and what proportion of the cost of the increase in employers' National Insurance Contributions will be covered by the £1 billion additional funding that will be provided.

The department is providing mainstream schools and high needs settings with over £930 million to support with the increases to employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) from April 2025. We are also providing £25 million in respect of schools with early years provision and £155 million for post-16 schools and academies and further education colleges. Taken together, this is an increase of over £1.1 billion. This funding is designed to provide schools with support to manage NICs pressures. We recognise that the balance between funding and costs will vary between schools.The amount of public sector support was based on an estimate of the proportion of employer NICs receipts paid by public sector organisations, using the Office for National Statistics (ONS) classification of the public sector boundary. HM Treasury routinely uses the ONS classification of the public sector boundary, for example in relation to public sector spending, borrowing and debt.This funding was then allocated to departments based on a weighted average of the headcount and wage/salary data that all departments submitted to HM Treasury.Our funding system is not designed so that every school and college receives funding that fully matches their precise spending, as spending, including NICs costs, varies across institutions because of the decisions each takes on its staffing.

With reference to the Answer of 4 September 2025 to Question 69839 on Schools: Employers' Contributions, how the the £1 billion of support o schools was calculated; and what the total current cost is of the increase in employers' National Insurance contributions to date.

The department is providing mainstream schools and high needs settings with over £930 million to support with the increases to employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) from April 2025. We are also providing £25 million in respect of schools with early years provision and £155 million for post-16 schools and academies and further education colleges. Taken together, this is an increase of over £1.1 billion. This funding is designed to provide schools with support to manage NICs pressures. We recognise that the balance between funding and costs will vary between schools.The amount of public sector support was based on an estimate of the proportion of employer NICs receipts paid by public sector organisations, using the Office for National Statistics (ONS) classification of the public sector boundary. HM Treasury routinely uses the ONS classification of the public sector boundary, for example in relation to public sector spending, borrowing and debt.This funding was then allocated to departments based on a weighted average of the headcount and wage/salary data that all departments submitted to HM Treasury.Our funding system is not designed so that every school and college receives funding that fully matches their precise spending, as spending, including NICs costs, varies across institutions because of the decisions each takes on its staffing.

What estimate she has made of the cost to schools of increases in employers' National Insurance contributions over the next four years.

The department is providing almost £1 billion to support schools with the increases to employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) from April 2025. The department publishes the schools’ costs technical note, which provides an annual assessment of schools’ costs and funding, including the impacts of employer NICs. The most recent publication covers the 2024/25 and 2025/26 financial years, and later financial years will be included in future publications.

How many staff network events took place in her Department in May 2025; and what the names of those events were.

Staff networks are collaborative volunteer networks, organised by staff themselves rather than the department. As a result, events are organised by staff themselves, not the department. We are aware of the following events that these networks organised in May 2025.In May 2025, four staff network events were held in the department as part of Dementia Week. The events were:Supporting Jewish People with Dementia.Self-Advocacy and Dementia.Reframing Dementia, Enabling Others.Faith, Love, and Dementia.

Whether her Department has updated guidance on the use of single-sex facilities in response to the Supreme Court judgement in the case of For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers of 16 April 2025.

The department will review and update policy wherever necessary to ensure it complies with the latest legal requirements. We aim to ensure appropriate facilities are available for all staff.