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19 Nov 2008 : Column 638W—continued
Letter from Christine Gilbert, dated 10 November 2008:
PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION NUMBER 234130: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, how many and what proportion of (a) maintained and (b) private, voluntary and independent full day childcare settings have had to close following inadequate Ofsted inspections in each of the last five years.
Your recent parliamentary question has been passed to me, as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, for a response.
Ofsted does not possess data that allow us to identify whether inspection judgements are directly attributable to closure of childcare settings. Most of the providers that close choose to do so voluntarily and for a variety of reasons. We do not collect these reasons. I am therefore unable to provide data identifying the reasons for providers closing in each of the last five years.
Ofsted can only cancel registration where a person ceases to be qualified for registration, We would not normally take such action as a result of inspection, unless we believed that children were suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. The usual practice following an inspection judgement of inadequate is to require the setting to take action to improve. We have a number of enforcement options open to us to bring about such improvement, such as imposing conditions of registration or issuing a compliance notice requiring a setting to take certain actions by a particular date. It is an offence not to comply with such a notice. We only move towards cancelling registration when providers cannot or will not improve, As this is often much later than an inspection, we cannot attribute cancellation directly to the inspection judgement We must always give reasons for cancellation but these relate to the requirements a provider is failing to meet rattier than the immediate inspection outcomes.
A copy of this reply has been sent to Rt Hon Beverley Hughes MP, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.
Ofsted: Industrial Disputes
Kelvin Hopkins: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) what assessment he has made of the effect on productivity within the Children's Directorate of Ofsted of industrial action by Unison and Public and Commercial Services Union members; and if he will make a statement; [232997]
(2) how many and what type of employment tribunal claims against Ofsted have been lodged with an employment tribunal whose tribunal proceedings have not yet concluded. [233000]
Jim Knight: These are matters for Ofsted. HM chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, has written to my hon. Friend and copies of her replies have been placed in the Library.
Letter from Christine Gilbert, dated 6 November 2008:
PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION NUMBER 232997: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what assessment he has made of the effect on productivity within the Children's Directorate of Ofsted of industrial action by UNISON and Public and Commercial Services Union members; and if he will make a statement.
Unison and the Public and Commercial Services Union have been jointly involved in the industrial action with Ofsted over a dispute with the current pay model, implemented on 31 March 2008. This industrial action has consisted of:
a one day strike on Friday 16 May 2008;
action short of a strike from Monday 19 May 2008 to Friday 30 May 2008; and
action short of a strike from Monday 16 June to Wednesday 17 December 2008.
The action short of a strike primarily consisted of:
working to contractual hours
not working overtime
not using personal vehicles for inspections and other official visits.
There has been very little impact on the productivity within the Children's Directorate of Ofsted. The industrial action mainly affected those inspectors of childcare and early education who were members of the above unions. 236 inspectors and managers from the Children's Directorate were recorded as striking on 16 May.
With regard to the regulation of childcare and early education, the period of the industrial action started after the end of the prescribed inspection period, completed by 31 March 2008. The new inspection programme did not commence until 1 September 2008. Our planned programme of work for the summer included registration visits, re-inspection of inadequate provision; short inspections of those providers who had no children on roll during the prescribed period; and first inspections of those who registered with us from December 2007. We completed all our planned inspection work during this period. We also met our targets for investigating complaints and for registering new day-care providers. Although we did not meet our registration target for new childminders, our evidence suggests the main reason for this was the delays caused by some police authorities in obtaining the CRB checks. As a consequence, I wrote to a number of police authorities about this issue.
We also undertook a four-day training of all inspectors and an assessment of their learning during June and July 2008 in preparation for the Early Years Foundation Stage. All scheduled training took place with no reported absences of inspectors due to industrial action.
The industrial action did not have any impact on productivity relating to inspections of children's social care.
A copy of this reply has been sent to Rt Hon Beverley Hughes MP, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.
Letter from Christine Gilbert, dated 4 November 2008:
PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION NUMBER 233000: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, how many and what type of employment tribunal claims against Ofsted have been lodged with an employment tribunal whose tribunal proceedings have not yet concluded.
Your recent parliamentary question has been passed to me, as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, for a response.
At present, there are five employment claims in the tribunal, of which four are for unfair dismissal and one is for equal pay.
A copy of this reply has been sent to Jim Knight, Minister for Schools and Learners, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.
Schools: Manpower
Hugh Bayley: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many full-time equivalent (a) teachers, (b) teaching assistants and (c) support staff there were in local education authority schools in (i) Yorkshire and the Humber and (ii) City of York constituency in (A) 1997 and (B) the latest period for which figures are available. [237266]
Jim Knight: The following table provides the full-time equivalent number of teachers, teaching assistants and support staff employed in local authority maintained schools in Yorkshire and the Humber Government office region, the City of York constituency and England, January 1997 and 2008,
| Full-time equivalent teachers( 1) , teaching assistants( 2) and support staff in local authority maintained nursery, primary, secondary, special and pupil referral units, years 1997 to 2008—coverage: Yorkshire and The Humber government office region, City of York constituency and England | |||||||||
| Yorkshire and The Humber | City of York | England | |||||||
| Teachers( 4) | Teaching assistants( 3) | Support s taff( 3,4) | Teachers( 4) | Teaching assistants( 3) | Support s taff( 3,4) | Teachers( 5) | Teaching assistants( 3) | Support s taff( 3,4) | |
| (1) Includes qualified and unqualified teachers. (2) “Teaching assistants” include teaching assistants, special needs support staff and minority ethnic pupil. (3) Source: School Census (4) Includes ‘teaching assistants’. (5) Source: Annual Survey of Teacher in Service and Teacher Vacancies; 618g Notes: 1. Excludes academies and city technology colleges. 2. Figures are rounded to the nearest 100. | |||||||||
Schools: Standards
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department plans to spend on the National Challenge in each of the next five years; and if he will make a statement. [234910]
Jim Knight: As set out in the National Challenge documents published on 10 June 2000, the Department for Children, Schools and Families will deploy £400 million of support to the National Challenge for the three financial years starting 1 April 2008 and ending 31 March 2011. The precise phasing between these three financial years is flexible, depending on the needs of schools.
The National Challenge is designed to facilitate sustained improvements in schools and—with the exception of some previously committed spending on establishing structural interventions—we are not expecting to provide funding beyond 2010-11.
Special Educational Needs: Transport
Mr. Gibb: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what guidance his Department provides on the procurement of home to school transport services for children with special educational needs in London. [237406]
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The Department does not publish guidance on the procurement of transport for special educational needs (SEN) children. It is for local authorities, including London boroughs to follow their own procedures and make appropriate arrangements.
Specialised Diplomas
Stephen Williams: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many people have registered for 14 to 19 diplomas this year, broken down by (a) subject and (b) level of diploma. [233623]
Jim Knight: The latest information we have from local consortia indicates that around 12,000 young people are currently working towards a diploma qualification, based upon returns from all but one of the local authorities involved. By subject and level, this breaks down as:
| Line | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Total |
Teachers: Pay
Michael Gove: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much was spent on (a) teacher training, (b) teacher professional development, (c) teacher wages and (d) other teacher payments in each of the last 10 years. [235111]
Jim Knight: The information requested is as follows:
(a) The amounts spent on (a) initial teacher training by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, (c) teacher salaries and (d) allowances for teachers in England in each of the last 10 years are set out in the following table.
(b) Information on spending on teachers' continuing professional development (CPD) is not collected centrally. Funding for CPD generally is included within schools' delegated budgets and it is for schools to determine how to spend this, based on individual needs and the school's own improvement priorities.
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