Top PDF House of Commons Library: Briefing Paper: Number 07484, 15 February 2017: The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)

PHOTO REDACTED DUE TO THIRD PARTY RIGHTS OR OTHER LEGAL ISSUES.[r]

NHS Bursaries are paid in line with rules known as the NHS Bursary Scheme, which is administered in England by the NHS Business Services Authority. Although administered by the Business Services Authority, the Health Secretary retains overall responsibility for the scheme. In 2011, substantial changes were made to the scheme for students starting courses from September 2012. The rules of the scheme therefore vary depending on when a student started their course. This briefing provides information about NHS Bursaries for nurses, midwifes, and allied health professionals in England only. Support for medical and dental students is covered in a separate briefing: Support for medical students in England in 2014/15 and 2015/16.

The 2012 changes in university funding directly affect teaching rather than research. Plans were set out for each year to 2014-15 soon after the 2010 CSR was published. The earlier table shows that recurrent funding for research broadly maintained its cash value up to 2014-15. The 2013 Spending Round kept the total resource (recurrent) science budget for 2015-16, which includes funding for Research Councils and other areas, at the same cash level as earlier years. Total capital funding for science was increased, partially reversing earlier cuts. 15

The first two sections of the report looked at post-ITT employment rates and the mobility of NQTs. The analysis found that post-ITT employment rates rose in the six years up to 2014-15, at which point 85% of trainees achieving QTS secured a teaching role within a state-funded school. Employment rates amongst graduates of school-led training routes were typically 5 percentage points higher than those on HEI- based routes. There were also significant variations by secondary subject. Regarding the mobility of NQTs, the analysis found that NQTs do not tend to move far to take up their first post, with around half taking up a post within 25km of their ITT provider.

Further breakdowns of the HEIPR by age and mode can be found in the DfE publication Participation rates in higher education: 2006 to 2017. The DfE also publishes higher education entry rates by free school meal (FSM) eligibility. This covers young people who were in the state sector in England only. In 2016/17 26% of those eligible for FSM aged 15 (in 2012/13) had entered HE at ages 18 or 19. This was up from 14% in 2005/06 and was the highest level recorded. The rate among the non-FSM group was 43% in 2016/17, also a new record level. The absolute gap between these rates has decreased over time from 19 percentage points in 2005/06 to 18 points in the latest three years. 4

The number of starts on apprenticeship standards increased by over 60,000 between 2016/17 and 2017/18, while the number of framework starts fell by almost 260,000. 25% of apprenticeship starts were on standards in 2017/18, up from just 2% in 2016/17. 83% of all starts were in four subject areas: Business, Administration and Law; Health, Public Services and Care; Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies and Retail & Commercial Enterprise.

In 2013-14 changes were made to the basis on which ESOL courses were funded. Previously, courses had been funded according to their guided learning hours; from 2013-14 courses would instead be listed on the Qualification Credit Framework (QCF) and providers would get a flat rate for a qualification, regardless of the number of hours offered. As many ESOL courses are short courses and were only awarded a small number of credits on the QCF, concerns were raised that providers could lose funding for their ESOL provision compared to the previous system. Transitional protections were put in place until new ESOL qualifications were developed in the QCF from 2014-15 (see section 1.1 above). A document published by the SFA setting out the changes

After a decision to permanently exclude a pupil is upheld by a school’s disciplinary committee, the parent/carer and/or the learner must be sent a letter from the committee setting out the reasons for the decision, as well as how and when to appeal. The local authority should also write to the parent/carer and/or learner within three working days, indicating the latest date by which an appeal may be lodged. This will be 15 school days from the date of the discipline committee’s decision.

The purpose of impact assessments and things such as the family test is to enable the House to take an informed decision. Such tests are less a bar over which a measure needs to jump than a package of measures on which the House can form its decisions. The Government’s intention remains to keep the House as fully informed as possible so that it can take those decisions. 25

four local authorities reported significant increases in the number of children being educated at home and, in particular, concerns that this was not always in the children’s interests. There were disturbing references to children being removed from schools to be educated at home with the encouragement of the school as an alternative to exclusion. One local authority described it thus: “schools off rolling learners to [elective home education] when the families have no means to educate in order to protect their results records and school performance.” One local authority with nearly 2,000 children registered to be home educated said, “the majority have had some form of local authority intervention with a large proportion known to social services.” 6

There were almost 700,000 applicants for full-time undergraduate places through UCAS in 2017 and 534,000 were accepted. The table opposite summarises trends since UCAS was created following the reform of the sector in the early 1990s. The same data is illustrated in the chart below. These are annual numbers of applicants and entrants so show changes in the flow of students, not the overall population. There have been underlying increases in applicants and acceptances (averaging 2.0% and 3.0% a year respectively) since the mid-1990s. The total number of home applicants via UCAS rose in each year between 1999 and 2005. There was a 4.1% drop in 2006, the first year of 'variable' fees. The drop in 2006 was greater than that seen in 1998 -the previous change to tuition fees. Both were preceded by relatively large increases in applications.

In August 2016 the Department for Education (DfE) published a document entitled Information on apprenticeship levy which provided data on the amount of apprenticeship levy they expect to be paid in 2017-18 and the proportion of employers who will pay it. These experimental statistics were published in response to a number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for the analysis supporting apprenticeship levy policy.

• Non-UK EU students: EU students who have been ordinarily resident in the EEA/Switzerland for the three years prior to the start of their course and will be living in England when their course starts. The Government has stated that EU students applying for a place at an English higher education institution in the 2017-18 academic year will continue to be eligible for the same funding and support as they are now, and that their eligibility will continue throughout their course, even if the UK exits the EU during that period. Eligibility for individuals applying after 2017-18 has not yet been confirmed (see box 6 below). 4

is that most grammars existed already and could be filled soon after the 1944 Act came into force. Expansion of the rest of the publicly funded secondary sector (effectively secondary moderns at first) took longer. The comprehensive school emerged as an experiment in a few areas in the early 1950s. This alternative to the ‘tripartite’ system increased modestly at first to just over 100 schools in 1959. More rapid expansion in the number of comprehensives and a very clear decline in the number of grammar schools came from 1965 when circular 10/65 was issued by the Ministry of Education encouraging local education authorities to move to non-selective education. The number of grammar schools went from 1,298 in 1964 to 675 in 1974 and 261 in 1979. The fastest period of decline was the 1970s. Between 1971 and 1978 650 grammar schools closed, an average of more than 90 per year.

A report published by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) in November 2016 examined how the RSC regions had changed in terms of the number and proportion of free schools and academies since RSCs were introduced in 2014. The report also included eight individual ‘region profiles’. Among other things, the report found that the rate of academisation remains highly variable between RSC regions, but also that differences within regions are greater than between regions. 33

In January 2017, the 2015 Government launched a consultation, Building our Industrial Strategy. The consultation on the industrial strategy closed in April 2017 and the Government had not responded prior to the dissolution of Parliament prior to the 2017 general election. Echoing the Post-16 Skills Plan and the Report of the Independent Panel on Technical Education, the consultation stated that “poor performance in basic and technical skills is key to the UK’s persistently lower levels of productivity compared with other advanced economies”. It added that the current technical education system “can be complex and confusing, which often does not deliver either for individuals, for the skills needs of employers, or for the wider economy.” 59

…The change to national insurance will require legislation of its own, it won’t be part of the Finance Bill, that’s always what happens with national insurance changes and those elements of the package will be brought forward by the autumn, as I say making lower paid self employed workers better off and we will publish a paper which will explain the full effects of the changes to class 2 and class 4, along with some changes we plan to make on rights and protections for self employed workers including on issues like pension rights and parental rights and maternity pay. 39

The focus that there has been on exams in every one of those final four years of school education can lead to young people failing to deliver and develop that deep understanding of their subject, and to their failing to make connections between topics. Re-sits have also led to too much teaching time being sacrificed for assessment preparation. Research—hon. Members have said that they are keen on it—from Durham university and Cambridge Assessment suggests that repeated opportunities for students to re-sit exams have also risked a form of grade inflation. This is why our reforms to A-levels are so important. Ofqual announced the first stage of the reforms last autumn by removing the January exam window, which will reduce the number of re-sits, as the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston said.

2010/11 saw a fall in the total headcount of academic staff for the first time since the sector was reorganised in the early 1990s. The falls in part-time staff and those teaching, but not carrying out research, were greater than the increases in other types of academic staff. Numbers increased slightly in 2011/12 due to continued growth in part-time staff. There was a larger increase in 2012/13 and 2013/14, although the method for defining academic contracts has changed.

While we endorse the approaches and methods outlined in the behaviour management report and strongly expect ITT providers to take account of these recommendations, the Government does not wish to make them mandatory. The behaviour management content developed by this group is, of course, an integral part of the framework of core content for ITT. It should be noted that, given our intention to use the new framework of content as one of the quality criteria that will be used to determine future allocation of training places, providers will need to demonstrate that their programmes conform to the behaviour management content that is included in the wider framework. We recognise that there is rarely one standard delivery method that will work in every classroom, and it would be wrong for Government to try to impose a “one size fits all” approach to behaviour management. Rather, all ITT providers should consider what is being suggested in the report and decide how the approaches outlined can best be incorporated into their programmes. 49