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Exam Results

Mr. Thurnham: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what have been the average

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exam results for state sector schools (a) in the Bolton local education authority area and (b) nationally in each of the last three years. [9665]

Mrs Gillan: The average exam results for state sector schools (a) in the Bolton local education authority area and (b) England in each of the last three years are:

GCSE achievements

	Percentage of 15-year-old pupils achieving
	Five or more GCSE grades A* to C	Five or more GCSE grades A* to G	One or more GCSE grades A* to G
Bolton
'1993-94	41.9	85.3	91.0
1994-95	41.4	85.8	91.0
1995-96	41.9	84.8	90.5
England
1993-94	39.8	85.3	92.3
1994-95	40.4	85.9	92.2
1995-96	41.7	86.3	92.4

GCE A/AS examination achievements of 16 to 18-year-old candidates

	Average GCE A/AS point score
	Per entry	Per candidate entered for two or more GCE A/AS
Bolton
1993-94	4.8	17.5
1994-95	4.9	17.7
1995-96	5.0	18.1
England
1993-94	4.8	15.1
1994-95	4.9	15.9
1995-96	5.1	16.8

Official Ministerial Visits

Mr. Donohoe: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list for each of the Ministers in her Department how many official ministerial visits they have undertaken since 1 January; and how many of these have been abroad. [9389]

Mr. Robin Squire: Since 1 January 1996 up to the present day, Ministers in this Department undertook the following visits:

Minister	Number of visits	Of which were abroad
Secretary of State, Mrs. Gillian Shephard	100	4
Mr. Eric Forth	93	7
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan	88	1
Mr. James Paice	107	6
Mr. Robin Squire	88	0
Lord Henley	69	2

Jobcentres

Mr. Ian McCartney: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment with whom she has consulted

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regarding the suitability of open plan arrangements in jobcentres with respect to the safety of Employment Service staff. [10283]

Mr. Forth: Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from R. D. Horne to Mr. Ian McCartney, dated 13 January 1997:

The Secretary of State has asked me, in the absence of the Chief Executive, to reply to your question about who has been consulted regarding the suitability of open plan arrangements in Jobcentres.

Jobcentres operated by the Employment Service and its predecessors have always been open plan since their inception in the early 1970s. From the mid-1980s a programme, with staff agreement, to convert to open plan layouts in Unemployment Benefit Offices was in progress.

Our new integrated Jobcentres, combining the two services, retained an open plan layout because it provided a much more effective and pleasant environment for delivering our services. These require interviews with jobseekers that involve sensitive discussions about their personal circumstances and requirements. Space Planning experts and design consultants were employed to help plan the interior layouts, which have since been subject to thorough risk assessments designed to reduce the risk to the safety of our people to a minimum after the introducation of the Jobseekers Allowance (JSA). The assessments conducted by competent assessors were undertaken in all Jobcentres during 1996. A further round of assessments is planned for 1997 when we have sufficient experience of operating JSA.

I hope this is helpful.

Mr. McCartney: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what factors underlay the decision by Employment Service management on 1 October to appeal against the issue of a Crown notice of improvement to the Employment Service following an assault at the Camberwell jobcentre. [10282]

Mr. Forth: Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from R. D. Horne to Mr. Ian McCartney, dated 13 January 1997:

The Secretary of State for Education and Employment has asked me, in the absence of the Chief Executive, to reply to your question about the Employment Service response to the issue of a Crown Notice following an assault at Camberwell Jobcentre.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) informed us of their intention to issue a Crown Notice and invited our comments. Our officials met with theirs and provided further information and evidence to clarify the issues raised by HSE. Following this meeting and a further exchange of correspondence we were informed by HSE that they no longer intended to proceed with the issue of a Crown Notice.

I hope that this is helpful.

Contract for Work Pilots

Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment on what date contract for work pilots will commence; in what areas they will be located; what will be the procedure for referring claimants to the programme; if benefit sanctions will apply for refusal to attend; and if these pilots will be linked to project work pilots. [10265]

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Mr. Forth: I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Congdon) on 12 December 1996, Official Report, columns 316-17, for a list of potential areas. There are no plans to introduce project work in any of these areas. The contract for work pilots will begin in the spring of 1997, once tender negotiations have been completed satisfactorily. The Government's intention is that clients will be referred to the programme by the Employment Service at the first restart interview that they receive after the start of the pilot, and that, subject to the approval of Parliament, those who fail to attend without good cause will be subject to benefit sanction under the provisions of section 19 of the Jobseekers Act 1995, and regulation 69, 73 and 75 of the Jobseeker's Allowance Regulations 1996.

Jobmatch Programme

Mr. Rooney: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment in what ways the jobmatch programme for claimants aged 18 to 25 years will differ from the rules and provisions of the pilot programme. [10261]

Mr. Forth: The new jobmatch programme will be delivered through the Employment Service and will remain broadly similar to the pilot programme. It will offer 4,000 places in 1997-98 to help those aged under 25 who have been unemployed for two years or more to leave unemployment for a part-time job. The programme will differ from the pilots in that there will no longer be two payments of the weekly jobmatch allowance after the initial payment period of 26 weeks, and in that the procedures for issuing training vouchers will be simplified.

Literacy and Numeracy

Sir Roger Sims: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if her proposed mandatory baseline assessments will incorporate screening for children at risk of literacy and numeracy difficulties.[10262]

Mrs. Gillan: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) on 3 December 1996, Official Report, column 611.

Education Standard Spending Assessment

Sir Peter Emery: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list in percentage terms the amount of the education standard spending assessment (a) distributed directly to schools and (b) retained by the local education authority indicating the sum of each amount transferred to the county for each of the county authorities. [9745]

Mr. Robin Squire: Local education authorities are free to set education budgets higher or lower than their education standard spending assessments--SSAs. As education SSAs are not earmarked, there is no prescribed proportion for delegation to schools, or deployment by the authority for other purposes. The table sets out, for each shire county LEA unaffected by local government re-organisation, (a) its education SSA,

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(b) its adjusted aggregated schools budget--ASB-- representing the funding to be distributed directly to schools, and (c) the adjusted ASB as a percentage of the SSA.

The figures are for 1996-97.

	Education SSA £ million	Adjusted ASB £ million	Adjusted ASB as percentage of SSA
Bedfordshire	220.156	165.703	75.3
Berkshire	282.308	211.899	75.1
Buckinghamshire	252.855	182.777	72.3
Cambridgeshire	237.278	180.996	76.3
Cheshire	348.970	282.632	81.0
Cornwall	164.930	120.886	73.3
Cumbria	170.602	136.829	80.2
Derbyshire	319.922	243.069	76.0
Devon	345.862	260.300	75.3
Dorset	207.427	155.123	74.8
Durham	216.644	159.569	73.7
East Sussex	219.761	170.270	77.5
Essex	566.981	451.469	79.6
Gloucestershire	183.797	143.271	78.0
Hampshire	525.153	436.658	83.1
Hereford and Worcester	229.005	172.192	75.2
Hertfordshire	387.245	318.261	82.2
Kent	581.733	462.400	79.5
Lancashire	510.448	386.353	75.7
Leicestershire	333.840	257.073	77.0
Lincolnshire	213.026	175.552	82.4
Norfolk	243.384	199.426	81.9
Northamptonshire	222.270	179.817	80.9
Northumberland	113.513	88.719	78.2
Nottinghamshire	365.135	270.030	74.0
Oxfordshire	192.571	141.698	73.6
Shropshire	145.332	113.234	77.9
Somerset	150.908	120.837	80.1
Staffordshire	366.019	283.219	77.4
Suffolk	217.470	178.819	82.2
Surrey	307.474	243.503	79.2
Warwickshire	164.025	131.492	80.2
West Sussex	235.410	183.856	78.1
Wiltshire	197.517	156.683	79.3

Adjusted ASB includes both the aggregated schools budget for LEA schools, and the annual maintenance grant paid to grant-maintained schools.

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