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Gorton Education Village

Sir Gerald Kaufman: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what the sources of funding are for the rebuilding of Cedar Mount School and Melland School into Gorton Education Village; and what the cost of that rebuilding is. [219534]

Jim Knight: The Gorton Education Village project in East Manchester will create a single-site campus on an eight acre site providing 900 co-educational spaces and 110 specialist support special educational needs (SEN) places. This 100 per cent. new build project will combine Cedar Mount High School with Melland SEN High School. Construction commenced in September 2006 and the Education Village is due to be operational at the start of the new academic year in September 2008.

Manchester city council has been allocated £202 million of Government capital grant to Manchester for the schools in its wave 1 Building Schools for the Future project and the council has set aside approximately £10 million to supplement this. The Government funding includes £16.4 million for Cedar Mount School and £9.7 million for Melland School. Manchester city council has established a programme-level contingency fund, some of which may be allocated to the Gorton Education Village project.

Music: Education

Sarah Teather: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many (a) primary and (b) secondary age children took music lessons in schools outside the national curriculum in each London borough in each of the last five years. [219583]

Jim Knight: This information is not held centrally.

However, in 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2007, the Department commissioned surveys of local authority music services, which collected data on the prevalence of music tuition. Survey reports are available at:

These are national data rather than broken down by local authority, but they provide an indication of the music tuition that children and young people are receiving.

Personal Income: Wales

Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what account was taken of the parameters set by the devolution settlement in the development of the proposed powers to pass information on an individual's benefits, income tax and tax credit status to the Welsh Assembly Government in clauses 72 and 73 of the Education and Skills Bill. [220308]

Jim Knight: The Welsh Assembly government has been fully involved in the development of these proposals. The Welsh Ministers have devolved responsibility for education, skills, economic development and regeneration and therefore have a legitimate interest in the data sharing proposals as they will help them to monitor their policies to improve skills and the levels of sustainable employment in Wales. The Welsh Assembly government will supply data on the learning achievements of learners in Wales to DWP and will have access to aggregated data with items that explicitly identify individuate removed. These data will be on income tax, tax credits and benefits.

Section 72 and 73 of the Education and Skills Bill will enhance the ability of the Welsh Assembly government to analyse the effect of their spending on education and skills training, identify opportunities to modify activity to improve economic and social outcomes in Wales; and generally to assist in ensuring that their decisions with regard to education and training are made on a sound
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basis. Education outcome data supplied from Wales will be matched at an individual level by DWP, but will only be used for analysis in Wales as an aggregated dataset. The precise nature of the data items that will be matched and aggregated has yet to be defined.

Private Education: Specialised Diplomas

Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families which independent schools sent representatives to the national conference to discuss the new diplomas. [216609]

Jim Knight: Those independent schools represented at the national conference test December on “14-19 Reforms and independent Schools” are listed as follows:

Independent School Recommendation at the 14-19 Reforms and Independent Schools’ conference on 3 December 2007

Final attendee list : independent s chools


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