"Teacher Employment" (Hansard, 8 September 2003)

§ Mr. Damian Green
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will publish the results of his Department's surveys of local education authorities entitled "Teacher Employment", conducted in May. [119909]

§ Mr. Austin Mitchell
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on recent redundancies of teachers in north-east Lincolnshire; and how many of these redundancies were attributed to insufficient school funds. [120061]

§ Paul Holmes
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what his latest estimate is of the number of teacher redundancy notices that have been issued in 2003, broken down by local education authority; and if he will make a statement. [123042]s

§ Mrs. Gillan
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what his latest estimate is of the number of teacher redundancy notices that have been issued in(a) Chesham and Amersham and (b) Buckinghamshire in 2003. [123913]

§ Tony Lloyd
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what redundancies of(a) teaching and (b) non-teaching staff have resulted from the funding of schools in this financial year. [125151]

§ Mr. Miliband
Provisional statistics on teacher and support staff numbers and teacher vacancies at January 2003 were published in April in "Statistical First Release 10/2003". Statistics due to be released on 9 September will provide regional and LEA level breakdowns of these figures; provisional national figures for January 2004 are due to be published next April. In May this year, in response to concerns about the difficulties some schools are facing as a result of changes to the funding arrangements, my Department liaised with local education authorities (LEAs) to make a broad assessment of the extent to which schools were making changes in their teaching staff complements. This included whether teachers were being made compulsorily redundant, and the possible reasons for changes in staffing, including falling rolls. LEAs' assessments were based on the best information available to them at that time; many told us that definitive information was not available and that the situation was changing rapidly as schools finalised their budgets and their staffing. In addition they advised that a significant number of the redundancy notices were "protective" and were likely to be withdrawn as the situation within schools and the LEA became clearer. My Department will continue to work closely with our national partners, including representatives of teachers, and have regular contact with LEAs.