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16 Apr 2007 : Column 299W—continued
Jim Knight: The information requested is given in the following table:
| Percentage of 15-year-old pupils( 1) who gained at least five A*-C grades at GCSE or equivalent including mathematics, English, science, history and geography | Percentage of 15-year-old pupils( 1) who gained at least five A*-C grades at GCSE or equivalent including mathematics, English, geography, modern languages and double science | Percentage of 15-year-old pupils( 1) who gained at least five A*-C grades at GCSE or equivalent including mathematics, English, history, geography, modern languages and double science | Percentage of 15-year-old pupils( 1) who gained at least five A*-C grades at GCSE or equivalent, excluding( 2) grades A*-C at GCSE in mathematics, English, history, geography, modern languages or double science | |
| (1) Number of pupils aged 15 at the start of the academic year, i.e. 31 August. (2 )These figures exclude pupils who achieved grade C or above in any of mathematics, English, history, geography, modern languages or double science. | ||||
Headteachers: Vacancies
Sarah Teather: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many head teacher vacancies were advertised in the 10 per cent. of schools with the (a) highest and (b) lowest levels of free school meal entitlement in the latest year for which figures are available. [131296]
Jim Knight: The information is not available in the format requested.
Information on vacancies is not available at the school level and therefore cannot be linked to school meal entitlement.
Health Education: Sex
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what plans he has to improve sex education in schools. [130480]
Mr. Dhanda: We are committed to helping schools improve their planning and delivery of this important area of the curriculum. In addition to the Department's Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) Guidance (2000), all teachers of SRE are encouraged to undertake the Government funded continuing professional development programme for Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE). The programme, which is also open to community nurses, supports standards in the delivery of PSHE teaching including SRE. To date, over 5,000 teachers and nurses have benefited from the programme.
Other measures to support high quality SRE provision include:
(i) DfES funding for the recently launched subject association for PSHE. The association will provide support and advice to teachers on all areas of PSHE, including SRE;
(ii) Increased funding (£13.2 million) in 2007-08 (for the National Healthy Schools programme. This key programme for driving up standards in PSHE, requires schools, for the purposes of accreditation, to demonstrate that they have a SRE programme in line with DfES guidance; and
(iii) Detailed guidance to teachers from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, covering how schools can evaluate what young people are learning through PSHE, including SRE.
Higher Education
Mr. Hoyle: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the average cost to the public purse of a university degree in England was in each of the last 10 years. [125249]
Bill Rammell: The funding per full-time equivalent higher education student studying at English institutions funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) is shown in the following table; in addition to these totals, institutions have received income from tuition fees, and from September 2006 have been able to charge up to £3,000 for full-time home and EU undergraduates, with the Government, not students, meeting the upfront costs.
| Real terms (2004-05 prices) | Funding per planned student (£) | |
| (1) The planned student numbers used in the figures to 2004-05 are taken from a snapshot count. The planned student numbers used in figures from 2005-06 are taken from a whole-year count which replaced the snapshot count method because it is more accurate. | ||
These funds include recurrent resources for teaching and research provided to the HEFCE and the IDA. Figures exclude tuition fee income and expenditure on student support costs.
The total cost per course would depend on the duration of study, and can be calculated from these per annum costs in each case.
The coverage of these figures is Home (i.e. UK) and EU domiciled students, including postgraduates, studying at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Further Education Colleges (FECs) in England.
Higher Education: Sports
Mr. Bailey: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what assessment he has made of the impact of specialist sports colleges on standards in teaching and learning of PE and school sport. [131509]
Jim Knight: Sports colleges have consistently performed at or above the national average for attainment of a good grade in PE. Their wider GCSE performances have also improved since designation. This rate of improvement has been the highest of all the specialisms for the second year running.
Sports colleges play a key role in driving school sport partnerships which are central to the DfES/DCMS Physical Education, School Sport and Club Links (PESSCL) strategy. Ofsted has evaluated the strategy since 2003. Their latest report (2006) found that:
The school sport partnership programme was helping to improve the quality of provision in physical education and school sport, particularly in primary schools.
The sport partnership programme had enabled subject leaders to influence their colleagues’ teaching and improve provision.
The DfES has also commissioned the Institute of Youth Sport at Loughborough university to carry out a series of independent impact studies on the strategy. The second annual study (2006) found that
“Not only have school sport partnerships increased considerably the range and quality of sports and PE opportunities available to pupils, the data also shows that the programme still possesses considerable momentum as indicated by the substantial improvement in participation levels and in the quality of the experience of pupils in sport over the twelve months since the last report.”
Higher Education: Tees Valley
Mr. Iain Wright:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what percentage of (a) 18 and
(b) 19 year olds from (i) Hartlepool constituency and (ii) Tees Valley sub-region joined university courses in each of the last 10 years. [130902]
Bill Rammell: The latest available figures on participation in higher education by local areas were published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in January 2005 in “Young Participation in England”, which is available from their website at:
This report shows participation rates for young people who enter higher education aged 18 or 19 for the years 1997 to 2000. The figures for Hartlepool parliamentary constituency, Tees Valley Learning and Skills Council area and the comparable figure for England, are shown in the following table. HEFCE have not produced participation rates beyond 2000.
The total numbers of undergraduate entrants to UK higher education institutions from Hartlepool parliamentary constituency and Tees Valley for each year since 2001/02 are given in the following table.
| Entrants to undergraduate courses( 1) from Hartlepool parliamentary constituency and Tees Valley( 2) , 200/02 to 2005/06 | ||||||
| 2001/02 | 2002/03 | 2003/04 | ||||
| Age | Hartlepool | Tees Valley | Hartlepool | Tees Valley | Hartlepool | Tees Valley |
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