Written questions by Bishop.

What assessment she has made of (a) trends in the level of child morning hunger across early years, primary and secondary school settings and (b) the potential impact of child morning hunger on school readiness and attendance in the Forest of Dean constituency.

The government is committed to tackling child poverty and delivering meaningful action to support children and families. We recognise the importance of a healthy breakfast at the start of the day for pupils and the impact this can have on attendance and readiness to learn. This is why we are rolling out free breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary-aged pupils in England, so all children, regardless of background, can have the best start in life.School leaders report that free breakfast clubs are improving punctuality, attendance, behaviour and concentration. Since April 2025, the programme has delivered seven million meals and offered places to almost 180,000 pupils across the country, with two of our early adopter schools located in the Forest of Dean constituency.We are investing a further £80 million to fund approximately 2,000 additional schools between April 2026 and March 2027. We have also committed to continued funding of breakfast provision from September 2026 for secondary schools in disadvantaged areas which are currently participating in the National School Breakfast Programme.

Whether her Department plans to review the eligibility criteria for pupil premium funding so that all children from families receiving Universal Credit are entitled to support.

This government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity so that all our children have the freedom to achieve and thrive in education. We are providing over £3 billion of pupil premium funding in financial year 2025/26 to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England. Pupil premium is allocated on the basis of economic disadvantage, using free school meals claims, and to support children looked after or previously looked after by their local authority Pupil premium will continue to be allocated using the current free school meals threshold of £7,400 for financial year 2026/27. Over the longer term, we are reviewing how we allocate pupil premium and related funding to schools and local authorities to ensure it is targeted to those who need it most, while maintaining the overall amount we spend on these funding streams.

What steps her Department is taking to help ensure that schools and teachers are well supported to deliver effective media and digital literacy education in the new curriculum.

Following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November, the department will update the national curriculum to prepare young people for life and work in a changing world, including media and digital literacy. Content will be shaped through expert engagement, with a public consultation on draft proposals next year.To support schools and teachers, we will provide high quality, free digital resources through Oak National Academy (Oak) and curriculum support through our National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE). Oak will help schools to understand and implement changes, reducing teacher workload.Currently, media literacy is taught through citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing, whilst digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE. To support teachers now, Oak provides adaptable resources for computing and citizenship, the Educate Against Hate website offers media literacy materials to counter extremist narratives and the NCCE delivers free courses on digital literacy and artificial intelligence.

What steps she is taking to help ensure that pupil premium funding effectively supports the children it is provided for.

The pupil premium is additional funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England.This government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity so that all children have the freedom to achieve and thrive in education. Pupil premium supports the aim of narrowing the gap between the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and their peers. This will help to break the link between children’s outcomes and those of their parents.We are providing over £3 billion of pupil premium funding in the 2025/26 financial year. Schools must use pupil premium funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, and the approaches they use should be informed by evidence.We want to support all schools to use the wealth of evidence of what works, evaluated by the Education Endowment Foundation, to use pupil premium funding effectively to drive high and rising standards for disadvantaged pupils.Schools must spend their pupil premium in line with the department’s 'menu of approaches' which is informed by evidence of how best to improve disadvantaged pupils’ attainment.We are reviewing how we allocate pupil premium funding in the longer term, while maintaining the overall amount we spend on tackling the challenges faced by children with additional needs. We will provide more information in due course.

What steps her Department is taking to monitor the administration of CPR training in schools.

All state-funded schools in England are required to teach their pupils first aid training, which includes basic first aid and dealing with common injuries, within their statutory health education provision. In addition, pupils in secondary schools are taught further first aid, for example, how to administer CPR and the purpose of defibrillators.The department does not monitor the administration of CPR training in schools. When undertaking their first aid needs assessments, schools should consider the needs of their staff, pupils and other non-employees such as visitors, and put in place appropriate provision, including in relation to training, as recommended by the Health and Safety Executive and the department’s first-aid guidance for schools

With reference to the University of Manchester's blog entitled Addressing the UK’s heritage skills crisis: why we must act now, published on 23 January 2025, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of including (a) heritage skills and (b) the Sloyd method in the national curriculum.

The national curriculum focuses on the key knowledge that must be taught to children aged 5 to 16 years-old in maintained schools. The national curriculum provides a broad framework which ensures schools have flexibility to organise the content and delivery of the curriculum to meet the needs of their pupils.The government has established an independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, covering ages 5 to 18, chaired by Professor Becky Francis CBE.The Review seeks to deliver a curriculum that ensures children and young people leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work, building the knowledge, skills and attributes needed to thrive.The Review Group has now published a well-evidenced, clear interim report, which sets out its interim findings and confirms the key areas for further work. This highlights the successes of the current system, making clear that the most trusted and valued aspects of our system will remain, whilst setting a positive vision for the future. The report can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/curriculum-and-assessment-review-interim-report.The government will consider any changes it wishes to make to curriculum, assessment and qualifications whilst the Review is conducted, and will respond to the final recommendations in autumn 2025.

What steps her Department is taking to ensure that funding for early years services meets the financial needs of providers.

The department has been clear in our commitment to the early years as our number one priority. It is our ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, improving the life chances for every child and the work choices for every parent. That also means ensuring the sector is financially sustainable and confident as it continues to deliver the entitlements and high-quality early years provision going forward.That is why, despite tough decisions to get our public finances back on track, the department is continuing to prioritise and invest, supporting early education and childcare providers with the costs they face.In the 2025/26 financial year alone, this government plans to spend over £8 billion on early years entitlements and we announced the largest ever uplift to the early years pupil premium, increasing the rate by over 45%, compared to 2024/25 financial year, equivalent to up to £570 per eligible child per year. On top of this we are providing further supplementary funding of £75 million for the early years expansion grant to support the sector as they prepare to deliver the final phase of expanded childcare entitlements from September 2025, recognising the significant level of expansion needed and the effort and planning this will require.We are also providing £25 million through the forthcoming National Insurance contributions grant for public sector employers in the early years.

What steps she plans to take to increase recruitment in SEND services.

The department knows that children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) frequently require access to additional support from a broad specialist workforce across education, health and care, including speech and language therapy and educational psychologists.This is why the department introduced the speech and language degree apprenticeship, which is now in its third year of delivery and offers an alternative pathway to the traditional degree route into a successful career as a speech and language therapist.The department is working closely with NHS England to improve access to community health services, including speech and language therapy, for children and young people with SEND.The department is also investing a further £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists from 2024, in addition to the £10 million currently being invested in the training of over 200 educational psychologists, who began their training in September 2023.

Whether she plans to utilise (a) audiobooks and (b) audio resources in the Curriculum and Assessment Review.

The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review will support the innovation and professionalism of teachers, enabling them to adapt how they teach the curriculum to their students’ lives.The Review Group will publish an interim report in early spring setting out its interim findings and confirming the key areas for further work, and publish its final report with recommendations this autumn.The department respects the autonomy of teachers in terms of what resources they choose to use or recommend to their individual pupils, based on individual need in their own educational context and circumstances.

What steps she is taking to improve educational opportunities for young people in the Forest of Dean.

All young people should have every opportunity to succeed, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Through our work to deliver the Opportunity Mission, the department will improve opportunities and life chances across the country, including for young people in the Forest of Dean, breaking the unfair link between background and success.The department is committed to helping all young people to achieve and thrive at school and to build skills for opportunity and growth, ensuring that every young person can follow the pathway that is right for them.High and rising standards in every school are at the heart of this mission. The department aims to deliver these improvements through excellent teaching and leadership, a high- quality curriculum and a system which removes the barriers to learning that hold too many children back.As one of our first steps for change, the department is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers. Additionally, we have launched an independent, expert-led Curriculum and Assessment Review which seeks to deliver an excellent foundation in the core subjects of reading, writing and maths. The Review also seeks to deliver a curriculum which is rich and broad, inclusive and innovative, readying young people for life and work, reflecting the diversities of our society.The department has also introduced the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to give every family the certainty that they will be able to access a good local school for their child, where they can achieve and thrive, regardless of where they live.The government is developing a comprehensive strategy for post‐16 education and skills, to break down barriers to opportunity, support the development of a skilled workforce in all areas, including the Forest of Dean, and drive economic growth through our Industrial Strategy.This includes the establishment of Skills England to ensure we have the highly trained workforce needed to deliver the national, regional and local skills needs of the next decade. It will ensure that the skills system is clear and navigable for individuals, for both young people and older adults, strengthening careers pathways into jobs across the economy.The Forest of Dean benefits from colleges such as ​Hartpury College, which is delivering ​£16.7 million​ of FE and skills provision. The college is delivering T Levels in agriculture related subjects.The Autumn Budget 2024 provided an additional £300 million revenue funding for further education (FE) for the 2025/26 financial year to ensure young people are developing the skills this country needs. £50 million of this funding has been made available to FE colleges and sixth-form colleges for the period April to July 2025. This one-off grant will enable colleges, such as Hartpury College, to respond to current priorities and challenges, including workforce recruitment and retention. Schools and academies will also continue to get grant funding for their 16 to 19 provision over this period.Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) support the department’s long term priority to drive local economic growth by reshaping the skills system to better align provision of post-16 technical education and training with local labour market needs.The Gloucestershire LSIP, which includes the Forest of Dean, recognises local challenges, such as the net exportation of young people and a declining working-age population, and identifies key skills needs in priority local sectors, including agriculture, agritech and land management, construction, and digital industries. The plan proposes a range of actions to resolve issues, such as enhancing careers advice for young people in education and developing new provision through quality apprenticeships, T Levels and full time 16 to 19 study programmes, as well as via routes including Boot Camps and adult education budget programmes. The LSIP also advocates better signposting and guidance for employers to increase awareness of local existing provision which may already meet skills needs.The department is developing new foundation apprenticeships to give more young people a foot in the door at the start of their working lives whilst supporting the pipeline of new talent that employers will need to drive economic growth and could benefit young people in the Forest of Dean. This signals an important step towards realising a youth guarantee, which brings together a range of existing and new entitlements and provision so that 18 to 21-year-olds can access training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work in England. The department and the Department for Work and Pensions are developing the guarantee with mayoral authorities to provide local, tailored support and will work with local areas on future expansion.

What funding mechanisms she is considering to support primary schools in (a) installing and (b) maintaining library facilities.

I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Forest of Dean to the answer of 7 January 2025 to Question 21170.

What steps she is taking to encourage reading for pleasure by (a) primary and (b) secondary school pupils.

I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Forest of Dean to the answer of 16 December 2024 to Question 19139.

What assessment she has made of the potential impact of SEND funding allocations on children in kinship care.

The department recognises the importance of children in kinship care getting the support they need to thrive in school. Where children have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), the department would expect them to receive appropriate support from their school and, for those with complex SEND, also from the relevant local authority.Following the Autumn Budget 2024, the department is providing an increase of almost £1 billion for high needs budgets in England in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to £11.9 billion.In addition, since September 2024, the role of virtual school heads (VSH) has been expanded to include championing the education, attendance, and attainment of children in kinship care, ensuring that more children in kinship care receive the help they need to thrive at school.The department anticipates all children in kinship arrangements, which is estimated to be over 130,000, will benefit from the adaptation of the strategic VSH role.This could include ensuring different kinds of kinship arrangements are visible in training for schools and working with education settings to strengthen how they address barriers to educational progress for kinship children.

If she will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending eligibility for Pupil Premium Plus to (a) children who have not been looked after and (b) other children in kinship care.

The department is providing over £2.9 billion of pupil premium funding in 2024/25 to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged pupils in England.The criteria for pupil premium eligibility are:Pupils who are recorded as eligible for free school meals or who have been eligible in the past six years.Pupils who have been adopted from care or have left care.Children who are looked after by the local authority.The portion of funding for looked after children and previously looked after children is often referred to as pupil premium plus and these pupils attract funding at a higher rate.Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils and schools do not have to spend this funding so that it solely benefits pupils who meet the funding criteria. Schools can direct spending where the need is greatest, including to pupils with other identified needs, such as children in kinship care. Schools can also use pupil premium on whole class approaches that will benefit all pupils such as, for example, on high-quality teaching.The department will continue to keep eligibility under review to ensure that support is targeted at those who most need it.

Whether she plans to (a) renew the and (b) extend eligibility for kinship families to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund.

We will shortly be finalising business planning decisions on how we will allocate the department’s budget for the next financial year. All decisions regarding the adoption and special guardianship support fund are being made as part of these discussions.An announcement will be made as soon as possible.

What steps her Department is taking to ensure the needs of children placed with kinship carers are fully assessed and supported especially in cases of (a) trauma and (b) disrupted care.

The government is determined to give every child the opportunities they deserve, and kinship carers play a crucial role in delivering this.In October 2024, the department published the new Kinship Care statutory guidance for local authorities, setting out the support and services local authorities should provide to kinship families, including reaffirming the requirement to publish their local offer of support in a clear, accessible way.The guidance makes it clear that children and young people should receive the support that they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare. There is no limit on the level of support, including financial support, that local authorities can provide. All local authorities should have in place clear eligibility criteria in relation to the provision of support services.Regulation 11 of the Special Guardianship statutory guidance states that, in the case of a child who was looked after immediately prior to the making of a Special Guardianship Order (SGO), the child, special guardian or parent has a right to receive an assessment by the local authority for support services, which may include financial support.In the context of kinship foster carers, when considering whether a relative, friend or other connected person should be approved as a foster carer, account must be taken of the needs, wishes and feelings of the child, and the capacity of the carer to meet those particular needs. The child’s placement plan will set out in detail how the placement is intended to contribute to meeting the child’s needs and should make clear any support or services that the kinship foster carer needs in order to meet the needs of the child.The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund helps children who were previously looked after and are now in kinship care under a SGO or a Child Arrangements Order and their families access therapeutic interventions related to trauma and attachment.

What steps she is taking to improve the (a) quality and (b) safety of social care services for children at home.

Reforming children’s social care is critical to giving hundreds of thousands of children and young people the start in life they deserve. In November, through the ‘Keeping children safe, helping families thrive’ policy statement, this government set out its plans for the biggest overhaul to children’s social care in a generation. This includes ensuring that every child is safe inside and outside of their home and have access to the right help at the right time.This government wants to shift the focus of the children's social care system to early support. We will continue to deliver whole-system reform to help families to overcome challenges, stay together and thrive, where appropriate, and to keep children safe and in stable loving homes, including when they cannot stay with their family. This includes through roll out of the families first for children pathfinder and family networks pilot, which includes multi-agency child protection reforms. The ‘Local Government Finance Settlement’ policy statement also sets out an additional £250 million through the Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant, which will enable investment in prevention activity.We have also set out our vision to ensure children are kept safe through changes to the existing legislative framework which are set out in the Children’s Wellbeing and School Bill. This includes improving information sharing across and within agencies through the use of a single unique identifier for children, strengthening protecting children from harm through integrated multi-agency child protection teams, placing a new duty on safeguarding partners to ensure education is sufficiently involved in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, and requiring parents to obtain consent from their local authority if they wish to home educate children where there are child protection concerns.

What steps she is taking to financially support (a) nurseries and (b) early years providers for increases to (i) the National Minimum Wage and (ii) employer National Insurance contributions.

Since July, this government has had to take some tough decisions to get our public finances back on track, but we are continuing to invest in the early years sector, supporting the delivery of the entitlements and recognising the vital role the sector plays in giving children the best start in life.The department expects to provide over £8 billion for early years entitlements in the 2025/26 financial year, which is a more than 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as the department continues to rollout the expansion of the entitlements to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months.On 10 December, the department published details of local authorities’ early years entitlements funding for 2025 to 2026. The funding rates for 2025/26 include funding to reflect the national living wage announced at the Autumn Budget 2024.HM Treasury are also increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,500 and expanding this to all eligible employers, meaning some smaller providers may pay no National Insurance at all in the 2025/26 financial year. The government has confirmed that public sector employers, including those in the early years sector, will be compensated for the increase in their National Insurance contributions.On top of over £8 billion through the core funding rates, the department is also providing an additional £75 million in an expansion grant for 2025/26 to support the sector in this pivotal year to grow the places and the workforce needed to deliver the final phase of expanded childcare entitlements from September 2025. This is in addition to the largest ever uplift in the early years pupil premium, increasing rates by over 45% to up to £570 per eligible child per year. This unprecedented increase is an investment in quality early education for those children who need it most, in the areas that need it most to tackle childcare deserts and give children the support they need to be ‘school ready’ at age 5 and go on to achieve and thrive.The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and, where needed, supports the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract.

What steps she is taking to ensure that early education and care providers are adequately supported to provide places for 70,000 more children by autumn 2025.

Giving children the best start in life is key to the government’s Opportunity Mission. Good parenting and high quality early education provide the foundation for children to achieve and thrive. This government is determined to ensure that parents have access to high quality, affordable and flexible early education and childcare.The department is rolling out more government-funded childcare entitlements to help millions of families, working hand in hand with the early years sector to build a system that works for them, parents and, above all, children. This includes delivering 3,000 new and expanded school based nurseries to make high quality childcare accessible and available. As a first step, primary schools can now apply for up to £150,000 of £15 million capital funding, with the first stage of the plan set to support up to 300 new or expanded nurseries across England. High quality, school-based nursery provision is popular with parents, especially families with multiple children. It can help schools upgrade spare space whilst also providing early support to children and families, supporting their transition into primary school. School-based nursery settings have proportionally higher qualified staff and see lower staff turnover, providing more consistency of care for children. Proportionally, school-based nurseries also look after more children with special educational needs and disabilities and offer a higher proportion of places in the most deprived areas.In 2024/25, early years providers are set to benefit from over £2 billion extra investment compared to last year, to support the rollout of 30 hours of government-funded early education from next September, rising in 2027/28 to over £4.1 billion. As announced in the Autumn Budget 2024, we expect to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements in 2025/26, which is around a 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as we continue to deliver the expansion to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months.The planned September 2025 childcare rollout of 30 funded hours per week will go ahead, but there will be challenges, including providers securing enough staff and places to meet demand, with the capacity needed varying across the country. The department is supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders to join the workforce by creating conditions for improved recruitment. We are urging the public to ‘do something BIG’ and start a career working with small children through our national recruitment campaign. Our dedicated website also helps people find out more about gaining qualifications and search for existing job vacancies. In 20 local authorities, we are piloting initiatives to understand whether £1,000 in financial incentives will boost recruitment in early years alongside a childminder start-up grant scheme.Skills Bootcamps for the early years are available and lead to an accelerated apprenticeship, and we are funding Early Years Initial Teacher Training as a route for new and existing staff to gain Early Years Teacher Status. To support childminders to join and stay in the profession, we have implemented new flexibilities to work with more people and spend more time working from non-domestic premises.We are working closely with local areas and the early years sector to do everything we can to ensure there are enough places and the sector has the workforce it needs to provide those places and to bridge local gaps ahead of September 2025.

Whether they are taking steps to financially support individuals who have already completed a university degree to retrain in another area at university.

Currently, the Equivalent or Lower Qualification (ELQ) rules prevent those studying for a second higher education course, at a level lower or equivalent to their first qualification, from receiving either tuition fee loans or maintenance loans for that course.There are some exceptions for students who want to retrain in teaching, architecture, social work, medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and healthcare. Students on these courses may qualify for some support, even if they already have an ELQ. The support received will depend on the course studied and, in some cases, the mode of study.However, the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will launch in January 2027, giving new learners access to a loan entitlement equal to four years of full-time tuition funding. This is currently equal to £38,140 based on fee rates for the 2025/26 academic year. Returning learners who have previously received government support will have a reduced entitlement, depending on previous funding received.Under the LLE, ELQ rules will be removed, thereby enabling more people to retrain and upskill throughout their working lives.