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EDUCATION AND SKILLS

Academic Performance

Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what steps the Government are taking to prevent isolation and lack of commitment among students who are not achieving as much as their peers. [188292]

Mr. Miliband: Ensuring the personalisation of teaching and learning is the effective response to difficulties of isolation and lack of commitment, the work of the Primary and Key Stage 3 National Strategies is central to this. Both Strategies help teachers give careful attention to pupils' learning needs, set challenging targets for them linked to high quality assessment, and offer tools to make lessons pacy, challenging and more enjoyable.

Citizenship Lessons

Mr. Jenkins: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) what assessment the Department has made of citizenship lessons within the national curriculum since their introduction; [188120]
 
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(2) what (a) assistance and (b) guidance the Department gives on teaching the citizenship curriculum in secondary schools. [188124]

Mr. Stephen Twigg: The Department has commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NfER) to conduct an eight year longitudinal study of the impact of the subject on pupils' knowledge, understanding and skills. The study began in 2002 and reports of the first two years are available at www.nfer.ac.uk. Ofsted's section 10 inspections and QCA's monitoring reports provide effective progress reports on school practice and provision and have shown that good progress is being made. They are available from www.ofsted.gov.uk and www.qca.org.uk respectively.

The QCA has developed and sent to all schools a range of guidance to support the introduction of citizenship education, including schemes of work and guidance on assessment and curriculum planning. The Department published in June a self evaluation tool for schools to help them monitor progress in developing citizenship education. The Department has also put in place a package of support for continuing professional development of teachers in citizenship education.

Departmental Energy Efficiency

Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on energy efficiency in his Department's buildings. [186680]

Mr. Stephen Twigg: My Department remains committed to reducing energy usage in all its Department's buildings. A range of measures are in place and regularly reviewed and updated to ensure improved performance meets the requirements of the national policy "Framework for Sustainable Development on the Government Estate".

Non-classroom Learning

Sue Doughty: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) if he will make a statement on the role of out-of-classroom education and field trips in school education; [188166]

(2) what the Government's strategy is for ensuring (a) equality of access and (b) increased access for all schools and their pupils to out-of-classroom learning; [188167]

(3) what assessment he has made of the merits of including out-of-classroom learning in Ofsted school inspections. [188168]

Mr. Stephen Twigg: Our "Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners" sets out our commitment to high standards for all within a broad and rich curriculum. Out of classroom learning is key to an enriched curriculum. It can take many forms, for example, through fieldwork, a statutory requirement of the Geography curriculum; through visits to farms and projects within school grounds, accessible to schools through our Growing Schools web service; through heritage and cultural visits, where high quality provision is provided through our Renaissance in the Regions programme; through music, where our Music Manifesto pledges access for every young person to a range of music experiences; through our PE and School
 
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Sports Strategy where we are creating a national network of 400 Specialist Sports Colleges and School Sport Partnerships to increase and enhance school sport, Schools will decide which out of classroom opportunities best meet the needs of their pupils. The Ofsted school inspection framework covers, and will continue to cover, all aspects of a school's provision, including out-of-classroom learning. needs of their pupils. The Ofsted school inspection framework covers, and will continue to cover, all aspects of a school's provision, including out-of-classroom learning.

Secondary School Teachers

Mr. Jenkins: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what action the Department is taking to increase the number of people training to enter the secondary school sector as teachers. [188123]

 
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Mr. Miliband: Since September 2000, £6,000 training bursaries have been offered to postgraduate trainee teachers. An additional £4,000 Golden Hello is also available to those who train in and go on to teach priority subjects in a maintained secondary school. From September 2005, the value of the training bursary for those training in mathematics and science will increase to £7,000 and the Golden Hello payment for those subjects will rise to £5,000 for trainees entering Postgraduate Certificate in Education and equivalent courses at that time. These incentives have helped to increase recruitment to courses of initial teacher training for secondary school teachers by almost one-third between 1999–2000 and 2003–04.

The Teacher Training Agency's Use your head. Teach, advertisement campaign for 2004–05 will focus on the recruitment of teachers for secondary schools and priority subjects

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