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EDUCATION AND SKILLS

Academic Staff (Assessment)

Dr. Gibson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will publish the data from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise relating to individual academic staff. [81504]

Margaret Hodge: The available data from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise have been published by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE), and can be obtained from the Higher Education and Research Opportunities website at www.hero.ac.uk/rae/.

Cost Saving

Mr. George Howarth : To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, what assessment he has made of the cost savings that could be achieved by allowing private institutions to run courses leading to an award or a degree. [84144]

Margaret Hodge: There has been no such assessment. There are currently around 125 private organisations already running courses leading to a degree awarded by a recommended UK degree awarding body.

Criminal Records Bureau

Mr. Willis: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills when further guidance will be issued to registered bodies about the postponement of Criminal Records Bureau checks. [84607]

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Mr. Miliband [holding answer 2 December 2002]: My Department wrote to local education authorities last week about the need to manage demand for CRB Disclosures. The letter advised authorities that, for the time being, CRB checks should not be sought for school governors.

It also provided further advice about checking school volunteers and confirmed that the arrangements we put in place in September to enable staff and volunteers in schools to start work in advance of receiving a CRB Disclosure at the discretion of the head teacher will continue until the Secretary of State is satisfied that the CRB is reliably providing a service that meets the needs of the education service.

Parallel guidance is being sent to all schools next week.

Degrees

Mr. Kilfoyle: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what plans he has to allow private organisations to award degrees. [83873]

Margaret Hodge: Section 76 of the FHE Act 1992 allows the Privy Council to specify any institution offering higher education as competent to grant degrees. Institutions are required to meet specific criteria, as set out by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, before degree awarding powers are granted. Any institution which believes it fulfils the relevant criteria is eligible to apply to the Privy Council, including private organisations. There are currently two private institutions that have secured degree-awarding powers: University of Buckingham and Henley Management College.

Departmental Staff

Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what reasons underlay the change in the number of staff employed by his Department between (a) 1996 and 1997 and (b) 2001 and 2002; and if he will make a statement. [81724]

Mr. Stephen Twigg [holding answer 20 November 2002]: The merger of the Department for Education and the Employment Department Group to form the Department for Education and Employment in 1995 led to substantial savings in support service jobs as the new departmental structure rolled out over the following two years. Between April 1996 and March 1997 the Department managed the voluntary early release of 542 staff.

Machinery of Government changes following the General Election in 2001 transferred responsibility for the employment portfolio away from the newly created Department for Education and Skills. As a result some 700 staff moved to one of the four Departments which now share that responsibility: the Department for Work and Pensions, Home Office, the Department for Trade and Industry and Cabinet Office.

Education Provision (Buckinghamshire)

Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how much money was spent in

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(a) Chesham and Amersham and (b) Buckinghamshire through the Standards Fund in 2001–02 on class size reduction. [85129]

Mr. Miliband: In 2001–02 Buckinghamshire local education authority was allocated £2.3 million revenue and £0.8 million capital, to reduce infant class sizes for 5, 6 and 7-year-olds to 30 or fewer. In the constituency of Chesham and Amersham £0.2 million was allocated to schools to meet the limit. I should point out that not all schools have received funding to meet the pledge.

Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what proportion of classroom teachers are on the top of the main scale or have progressed through the upper pay spine in (a) Chesham and Amersham and (b) Buckinghamshire. [85127]

Mr. Miliband: The following table shows the latest available teacher data for Buckinghamshire. It is too early to provide data on teachers progressing to point two of the upper pay scale. The information is only available at LEA level.

Percentage⁽¹⁵⁾ of qualified classroom teachers on point nine of the main pay scale and the post-threshold scale as at 31 March 2001 (provisional)⁽¹⁶⁾—Maintained schools sector

Buckinghamshire
Main scale point 9	24.8
Upper pay scale	35.2
Not known(17)	4.9

⁽¹⁵⁾ Percentage is based on all classroom teachers including advanced skills teachers

⁽¹⁶⁾ The data are provisional and may understate the percentage of teachers who had passed through to the upper pay scales

⁽¹⁷⁾ Following changes to the pay system in September 2000, an unusually high number of teachers were shown with a spine point of 'not known'. The majority of these teachers are expected to be on either spine point nine or the post-threshold scale

Exclusion Units

Jeff Ennis: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many local education authorities have established total exclusion units to take pupils who have been permanently excluded from their schools. [84978]

Mr. Stephen Twigg: Currently, 139 of the 150 local education authorities, including Barnsley LEA, have Pupil Referral Units, which are used in the education of permanently excluded pupils.

Further Education Lecturers

Jeremy Corbyn: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the average salary of further education lecturers on permanent contract was, and what the average hourly rate of pay to sessional staff was, in each of the past five years. [84121]

Margaret Hodge [holding answer 2 December 2002]: The Department does not collect pay information disaggregated by the contract status of further education (FE) lecturers or about the average hourly rate of sessional staff. Figures for the average salary of full-time lecturers over the last five years for which we have published information are given in the table.

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(£)

March 1996	March 1997	March 1998	March 1999	March 2000
23,240	23,720	24,160	24,940	25,760

Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills whether there is a guaranteed minimum wage level for lecturers of further education or higher education courses; and what proportions of lecturers are employed on the bottom of the pay scale. [84293]

Margaret Hodge [holding answer 2 December 2002]: Individual FE colleges and HE institutions determine, within the context of current employment legislation, their own pay rates according to local needs and priorities.

The Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges' Employers' Forum and the Universities' and Colleges' Employers' Association publish recommended pay awards and pay scales for further and higher education lecturers following annual negotiations with their representative trade union bodies.

The Department does not collect information about the proportion of lecturers in FE or HE who are employed on the bottom of the pay scales.

Geographical Knowledge

Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on geographical knowledge among schoolchildren; and what measures are planned to improve this. [85051]

Mr. Stephen Twigg: As part of the National Curriculum, all pupils aged five to 14 are required to study geography.

Pupils are taught geographical enquiry skills, leading to the development of knowledge and understanding of places, patterns and processes, both in the UK and the wider world. They develop an understanding of maps, atlases and globes and how to use them effectively.

Graduate Incomes

Mr. Rendel: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what assessment he has made of the total taxation paid over the average working life of (a) graduates and (b) non-graduates. [82774]

Margaret Hodge [holding reply 25 November 2002]: Using earnings data from the Labour Force Survey over the four quarters autumn 2000 to summer 2001, we estimate that graduates whose highest qualification is a first degree could pay on average around £200,000 in income tax over a working life. This figure relates to Great Britain. The equivalent figure for graduates and non-graduates, collectively, is around £120,000. Lifetime income taxation for only non-graduates would be significantly lower than this figure.

Mr. Rendel: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what assessment he has made of the average income of graduates over their working lives

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compared to the average income this same group would have earned had they not obtained a higher education qualification. [82776]

Margaret Hodge [holding reply 25 November 2002]: The information requested is not available.

Numerous academic studies have attempted to estimate the average percentage increase in hourly or weekly earnings attributable to having various higher education qualifications. These studies control for a range of factors that affect earnings, other than having a HE qualification—such as age, gender, prior educational attainment—although they do vary in the extent to which other influential factors are taken into account. The studies do not tell us exactly what a particular graduate would have earned had they not have obtained a higher education qualification. We can only observe one reality for any individual—i.e. their actual earnings given that they did get a HE qualification. However, they do provide the closest estimates that we can get of the earnings they could have had.

There is, unsurprisingly, some variation in the results of these studies, indicating that the increase in earnings from having a first degree compared to two or more A-levels is in the range of around 20–30 per cent.

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