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24 Jun 2008 : Column 274W—continued
Since 2003 Ofsted has been responsible for the registration and inspection of child care providers, Ofsted have produced figures on the numbers of registered child care providers and places on a quarterly basis from March 2003, Their latest figures were published in their report ‘Registered Childcare Providers and Places, March 2008’, which is available on their website
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many and what proportion of those who have received money from the (a) Transformation Fund, (b) Graduate Leader Fund and (c) Outcomes, Quality and Inclusion strand of the (i) Sure Start, (ii) early years and (iii) Childcare grants in each of the last three years are registered childminders. [213505]
Beverley Hughes: The Department does not collect the data requested. Funding for childminders is allocated to local authorities through the Sure Start Early Years and Childcare Grant. Local authorities determine how these resources are used at local level.
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many and what proportion of local authorities provide funding for childminding networks. [213506]
Beverley Hughes: The information requested is not held centrally.
We encourage the establishment of childminding networks but it is for local authorities to decide whether or not to fund them, according to their priorities for securing sufficient child care based on their child care sufficiency assessments. In addition, Sure Start Children's Centres in every local authority are encouraged to support childminders, including through childminding networks.
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many and what proportion of local authorities have undertaken full sufficiency assessments of local child care provision under the Childcare Act 2006. [213508]
Beverley Hughes: All local authorities have completed and published child care sufficiency assessments, as required by section 11 of the Childcare Act 2006.
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families pursuant to the answer of 4 June 2008, Official Report, columns 948-50W, how many and what proportion of daycare settings in the (a) 15 per cent. most deprived and (b) 15 per cent. least deprived local authorities are Sure Start centres; and how many and what proportion of the 8.4 per cent. of day care providers deemed inadequate in the 15 per cent. least deprived areas between 2007 and 2008 are Sure Start centres. [213510]
Beverley Hughes: The DCSF does not hold this information. The Chief Inspector, Christine Gilbert, will write to the hon. Member and a copy of her reply will be placed in the Library.
Children: Day Care
Mrs. Maria Miller:
To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families pursuant to the answer of 4 June 2008, Official Report, columns 948-50W, how many and what proportion of daycare settings in the (a) 15 per cent. most deprived and (b) 15 per cent. least deprived local authorities are Sure Start centres; and how many and what proportion of the 8.4 per cent. of
day care providers deemed inadequate in the 15 per cent. least deprived areas between 2007 and 2008 are Sure Start centres. [213510]
Beverley Hughes: The DCSF does not hold this information. The Chief Inspector, Christine Gilbert, will write to the hon. Member and a copy of her reply will be placed in the Library.
Letter from Christine Gilbert, dated 15 September:
Your recent parliamentary question has been passed to me, as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, for reply.
The first part of your question refers to the number and proportion of day care settings in the relevant authorities that are Sure Start centres. There are 6,913 settings in the 15% least deprived authorities, of which 481 (7.0%) are Sure Start centres. There are 3,420 settings in the 15% most deprived authorities, of which 503 (14.7%) are Sure Start centres. These data are also presented in Table A below.
These figures should be treated with care. The total figures for day care settings are from Ofsted's childcare database. However, we do not identify whether childcare providers are Sure Start centres on our database. The total numbers of Sure Start centres in each local authority are taken from the Sure Start database, which is maintained by each local authority and as such the
quality of the data is variable. Therefore, inaccuracies may occur from a direct comparison between our register and the database (for instance, a provider on our register that has not yet been added to the Sure Start database by the local authority).
The second part of your question refers to the 8.4%, or 102, of day care providers deemed inadequate in the 15% most deprived local authorities. 11 of these settings (10.8% of 102) are Sure Start centres. These data are also presented in Table A below.
Again, I am afraid that these data come with some caveats. To produce the figures we have cross-referenced the postcodes of Sure Start centres as recorded by local matching, however, is unlikely to be fully accurate for a number of reasons:
postcodes are not unique to a single setting but cover a small area, so a Sure Start centre may have the same post code as another childcare setting which is not a Sure Start centre;
linked sites that do not operate in the post coded area of the children's centre have not been identified; and
as above, the Sure Start database is maintained by each local authority and as such the quality of the data is variable.
Please also note that, as requested, we are providing figures relating to the quality of day care providers inspected during 2007-08. These figures cannot be used to represent the total number of inadequate Sure Start centres as they do not include those inspected in previous years.
| Table A: Sure Start centres inspected between 1 April 2007 and 31 March 2008 | ||||||
| Total Day Care Providers at 01/04/08 | Sure Start Children's Centres (Designated and Meeting Full Core Offer) | Total Day Care providers Inspected 07/08 | Those childcare settings inspected which are Sure Start centres* | Number of day care providers inspected and found inadequate in 07-08 | Number of those inspected and judged inadequate which are possibly Sure Start centres( 1) | |
| (1) Sure Start centres include both main sites and satellite units with a postcode within the least and most deprived areas. | ||||||
A copy of this reply has been sent to Right Hon. Beverley Hughes MP, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.
Children's Commissioner for England: Costs
Mr. Streeter: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) how much the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England cost in each year since its inception; [213021]
(2) what assessment he has made of the performance of the Children's Commissioner for England in the last three years. [213022]
Beverley Hughes [holding answer 23 June 2008]: The Children’s Commissioner for England publishes his annual report and accounts, copies of which are laid before Parliament and available in the House Library.
The Children’s Commissioner is independent of Government. The Government values the role the Commissioner plays in bringing the views and interests of children to the forefront and values his independence as this enables him to fulfil his functions appropriately. The Children’s Commissioner for England regularly meets with Ministers across Whitehall to bring his work to their attention and discuss his findings. No formal assessment is made of the Commissioner’s achievements by Ministers as this would be improper considering the Commissioner's independence.
Connexions Service: Finance
John Battle: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much funding the Connexions service has received from (a) his Department and (b) other sources in each year since 2005; and if he will make a statement. [213369]
Beverley Hughes: The amount of resources we are putting into Connexions and other services for children and young people is substantial The funding that the Connexions service has received from the Department in each year since 2005 is shown in the following table. Although we know that Connexions Partnerships have also received resources from other sources we do not hold information on the amounts involved.
| Connexions Service DCSF/DFES funding | |
| £ million | |
Departmental Accountancy
Mr. Letwin:
To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families if he will place in the Library a copy of his Department's (a) chart of accounts and
(b) resource account codes and usage descriptions for the 2008-09 financial year. [210984]
Kevin Brennan: A copy of the DCSF chart of accounts has been placed in the Library. The chart of accounts for 2008-09 reflects the Department’s structure for the year and will not necessarily reflect the 2007-08 structure, or that for future years. The Department does not use resource account codes. Each code has a brief description that describes its use.
Departmental Planning Permission
Mr. Maude: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what (a) planning applications and (b) licensing applications his Department has submitted in the last 24 months. [210880]
Kevin Brennan: The information requested is as follows:
(a) None.
(b) None.
Departmental Transport
Mrs. Villiers: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families when his Department's green transport plan was introduced; and if he will place in the Library a copy of this plan. [209243]
Kevin Brennan: The Department's sustainable development action plan, ‘Brighter Futures—Greener Lives’ was published on 1 May and is underpinned by delivery plans committing us to make progress on a series of sustainable development goals. We do have a commitment to encourage staff to travel to work in the most carbon efficient manner which we will develop into a green transport plan.
Education Leeds: Finance
John Battle: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much funding his Department has given to Education Leeds in each year since 2001. [213368]
Jim Knight: Details of the total payments issued to Education Leeds by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and its predecessor the Department for Education and Skills in each year from 2001 to 2008 are set out as follows:
| £ | |
The expenditure relates to payments recorded in the Department’s Integrated Financial Information System and credited against Education Leeds.
The expenditure recorded covers the Department for Children, Schools and Families and its predecessor the Department of Education and Skills (DFES). The Department for Children, Schools and Families was established under machinery of government changes on 28 June 2007.
Education: Assessments
Rosie Cooper: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) what steps are being taken to resolve systemic problems encountered by schools attempting to register Key Stage 2 SAT pupils online; [213108]
(2) what steps are being taken to ensure helplines are accessible to schools and teaching staff during the period of Key Stage 2 SATs; [213109]
(3) what steps are being taken to ensure the system for administering Key Stage 2 SATs is fit for purpose for teaching staff and pupils. [213110]
Jim Knight: The National Curriculum tests for key stage 2 took place on 12-16 May. The National Assessment Agency (NAA) administers those tests on behalf of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Delivery of the national curriculum tests is always challenging in view of the scale and timing of the task and it is unfortunate that this year's exercise has encountered difficulties. As usual during the test delivery period, we are in regular contact with the NAA and I take a close interest in the progress of test delivery, I have asked David Gee, Managing Director of the NAA, to write to my hon. Friend. A copy of his letter has been placed in the Library.
Letter from David Gee , dated 20 June 2008:
The National Assessment Agency is responsible for overseeing the safe delivery of the National Curriculum Tests. The tests at KS2 and KS3 are sat by over 1.1 million pupils.
To remove the risk of error in the marking of pupils work it is important that an accurate record of pupil attendance for each test is recorded. For many years this has been a paper process which given the scale of the tests brings with it inevitable errors that require correcting, For the 2008 test cycle a new contractor ETS was appointed and one of the many improvements they offered was to move the recording of pupil attendance online.
Schools were provided with a copy of the most recent pupil records as collected from school census data and were required to annotate against each pupil which tests were actually sat. Some pupils move schools during the year and so there was the additional facility to edit the records.
A new website provided by ETS delivered this service On the first day of the KS2 test week the website unfortunately suffered technological problems for three hours. While key stage 2 schools had a period of 10 days to submit their entries an estimated 745 schools out of approximately 16,000 were impacted by the website being not available during this time.
Help line service for schools is provided by ETS throughout the test period. During the time of system outage the ETS helpline did experience a high number of calls as schools reported this issue. The volume of calls caused callers to be held in a queue and ETS have acknowledged and apologised for this frustration. Staffing of the helpline has been increased in response to this issue to give greater capacity.
As in previous years the NAA will be conducting a review in to the delivery performance of the tests including consulting with schools, markers and other stakeholders to ensure good practice and necessary improvements are captured and acted upon
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