Tag: William Wragg

The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-06-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what were the 10 foreign languages most spoken by pupils for whom English is listed as an additional language in the annual school census in (a) 2000 and (b) 2015; and how many pupils were recorded as speaking each of those languages in each of those years.

Nick Gibb

The Department does not hold pupil level data on languages for the year 2000. In the January 2015 school census, the most common languages to which pupils of compulsory school age and above are exposed outside school and the number and proportion of pupils exposed to them are given in the table below.

Language	Number of Pupils (1)	Percentage of all pupils
English	5,634,349	82.1
Urdu	123,530	1.8
Panjabi	91,406	1.3
Polish	90,506	1.3
Other than English (not specified)	84,139	1.2
Bengali	74,635	1.1
Somali	46,361	0.7
Arabic	41,951	0.6
Gujarati	40,735	0.6
Portuguese	29,759	0.4
Tamil	29,634	0.4
Believed to be other than English (not specified)	29,221	0.4
French	26,290	0.4

Source: School Census January 2015
(1) Includes sole and dual main registered pupils of compulsory school age and above. Includes pupils in all state-funded schools excluding general hospital schools and local authority alternative provision.

The languages recorded in the school census only indicate a pupil’s exposure to a non-English language outside of school. They are not a measure of English speaking proficiency, an indication of the language spoken in school, or a direct measure of immigration.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-06-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the average cost to the public purse of an additional (a) school place and (b) classroom in each of the next three years.

Edward Timpson

New school places and classrooms are delivered through a variety of programmes across England. The Department does not centrally collect data on the cost of building primary or secondary schools across all local authorities. The cost of building new places and classrooms varies significantly depending on local factors including: the size of the project; forecasts of construction inflation; and regional variations in the cost of construction. All of these are subject to change over time.

Local authorities report the cost per place of providing new school places through the annual School Capacity data collection. For primary schools this data has been used to produce basic need scorecards. The scorecards detail the cost per place, including for new schools, for each local authority. The latest published scorecards are for the academic year 2013/14 and can be accessed on GOV.UK at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/primary-school-places-local-authority-basic-need-scorecards-2014.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to require clinical commission groups to start collecting data on the number of children who have been abused and need therapeutic support.

Nicola Blackwood

We are investing in new data sources on both mental health prevalence and service use. From January 2016, the new Mental Health Services Dataset began to collect data for both adults and children, including data on outcomes, length of treatment, the source of referral, location of appointment and demographic information. This includes seeking to improve available data on the prevalence of child abuse and related mental health issues, using the national children and adolescent mental health survey, as well as data collection specifically on the prevalence of child sexual abuse. This collection will start in targeted settings where people who are sexually abused are more likely to be seen: for example in children and adolescent mental health service, adult mental health, maternity and public health services (contraceptive and sexual health clinics, substance misuse, school nurses, and health visiting).

NHS Digital is working with Departmental officials and with clinicians to develop the technical capability and data collection will start to be rolled out from the beginning of the next financial year. The data collection will help clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to better plan services for people who have been abused.

All CCGs have already produced Local Transformation Plans (LTPs) to transform their local offer to improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. These Plans cover the full spectrum of mental health issues; from prevention and improving access to support and care for existing and emerging mental health problem to ensuring that inpatient services are available for those who need them, including therapeutic support for children who have been abused. From 2016-17 children and young people’s mental health is being mainstreamed as part of the normal NHS England planning cycle so that LTPs are integrated into the wider Sustainability and Transformation Planning process.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2015-11-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that local education authorities do not specify the designs of building extensions when attributing funding from the Education Funding Agency to schools for building projects, as in relation to the case of Greave Primary School in Hazel Grove.

Edward Timpson

School building baseline designs were introduced in October 2012 to help finalise briefs for school building projects and for discussion with local planning departments. It is for contractors to develop them into detailed schemes, or propose alternatives. Guidance on the designs is available online[1].

Officials from the Department have had regular dialogue with the local authority, the school and its representatives as part of ongoing work to monitor and progress the project.

While there has been no representation, the Secretary of State and the Department will work with all parties to support the successful delivery of this school’s expansion project.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/baseline-designs-for-schools-guidance

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-03-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what provisions his Department has put in place to improve rolling stock as part of the rail franchise package for the North West.

Andrew Jones

The new Northern and TransPennine Express franchises commenced on the 1^st April. By the end of 2019, they will have introduced significant improvements in Rolling Stock.

The Northern franchise will deliver:-

• 281 new carriages including 55 new Diesel and 43 new Electric trains – the first ever new trains specified for the Northern franchise
• Additional diesel units cascaded from other franchises – refurbished to ‘as new’ standard
• Removal of all Pacer trains by October 2019
• All retained trains will be refurbished as new including Wi-Fi, media servers, passenger information systems, CCTV and accessible toilets with baby-change facilities

This means that 30% of this expanded fleet will be new and will operate 2000 more services per week –a 12% increase. The additional trains will provide a 37% increase in morning peak capacity into the North’s 5 major cities by December 2019.

The TransPennine franchise will deliver:-

• 220 new carriages
• All existing trains will be refurbished as new including Wi-Fi, additional power sockets, and real-time passenger information systems

This means that 70% of fleet is new, the fleet size increases by two-thirds, provides 13million more seats, an 80% increase in morning peak seats by the end of 2019.

These delivery plans as bid by the two operators during the Invitation to Tender process have been contracted within the franchise agreements.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-04-26.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 12 April 2016 to Question 32664 and the Answer of 25 April 2016 to Question 33678, and with reference to paragraph 2.113 of the report, The best of both worlds: the UK’s special status in a reformed EU, published in February 2016, if he will estimate the cost to the public purse of child benefit payments paid to non-UK citizens in each financial year since 2010-11.

Damian Hinds

Around 7m people are receiving Child Benefit. To extract and collate the value of all payments made to EU migrants for children living outside the UK in the format requested could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-05-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effect on levels of inward migration from other EU member states of (a) an economic downturn and (b) a rise in unemployment in such states.

James Brokenshire

It has been the practice of this Government not to make such forecasts. There are numerous different factors that can affect migration flows.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-06-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the National pupil projections statistics release, published on 22 July 2015, how many people defined as migrants are included in the principal population projections in each (a) local education authority and (b) region in each year between 2015 and 2024.

Nick Gibb

The national pupil projections are only produced for the whole of England and do not break down projected pupil numbers by local education authority or region. They are derived from the 2012-based national population projections for England produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS)[1] who used assumptions which were considered to best reflect demographic patterns at that time.

The ONS uses assumptions on the levels of future fertility, net migration and life expectancy in the production of their population projections. They use central assumptions for the principal projections and alternative high and low assumptions to produce variant projections.

New national pupil projections, based on the ONS’s mid-2014 national population projections[2], are scheduled to be published on 14 July 2016. The timing and content of National Statistics releases are a matter for the Head of Profession for statistics. The month of publication was pre-announced in 2015 and the specific date of publication was pre-announced on 26 February 2016.

[1] Mid-2012 ONS national population projections available at http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2013-11-06

[2] Mid-2014 ONS national population projections available at http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2015-10-29

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2016-07-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many primary and secondary academies and free schools teach sex and relationships education.

Edward Timpson

The Department does not hold this information.

Sex and relationship education is compulsory in maintained secondary schools. Academies and free schools do not have to teach sex and relationship education but many choose to do so as part of their statutory duty to provide a broad and balanced curriculum. When academies do teach sex and relationship education they are required through their funding agreement to have regard to the Secretary of State’s Sex and Relationship Education Guidance. The guidance can be accessed at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/sex-and-relationship-education

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Wragg on 2015-11-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent representations she has received from representatives of Greave Primary School on the process through which the funding for that school’s building extension project from the Education Funding Agency has been arranged by the Stockport Local Education Authority.

Edward Timpson

School building baseline designs were introduced in October 2012 to help finalise briefs for school building projects and for discussion with local planning departments. It is for contractors to develop them into detailed schemes, or propose alternatives. Guidance on the designs is available online[1].

Officials from the Department have had regular dialogue with the local authority, the school and its representatives as part of ongoing work to monitor and progress the project.

While there has been no representation, the Secretary of State and the Department will work with all parties to support the successful delivery of this school’s expansion project.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/baseline-designs-for-schools-guidance

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