To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) what additional support he plans to provide to teachers to help facilitate the continuation of educationally valuable visits or trips in light of the rarely cover guidelines; (285910)

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families if he will place in the Library a copy of the guidance he has issued to schools on the requirement that teachers rarely cover for absent colleagues; what guidance he has issued to schools on the implementation of rarely cover guidelines for school trips; and what definition of rarely cover is used in the context of such guidance. (285722)

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) what estimate his Department has made of the number of school excursions which were cancelled owing to a failure to provide sufficient levels of staff cover in the last 12 months; (286079)

(2) what steps his Department has taken to ensure that the requirement that teachers rarely cover for absent colleagues does not adversely affect learning activities outside the classroom. (286081)

The Secretary of State and my predecessor, the right hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight) have discussed the issues of rarely cover individually with our social partners on the Workforce Agreement Monitoring Group on a number of occasions over the last few months.

General guidance on the rarely cover provisions was issued at the end of April. A copy of this has been placed in the House Libraries. It makes clear that teachers should, from September 2009, be required to cover for absent colleagues only rarely, in circumstances that are not foreseeable.

Since April, the Department has been working hard with social partners to produce additional guidance on the rarely cover provisions. This will include guidance on learning outside the classroom which is designed to help schools plan effectively for these activities, which we all agree are an important part of the curriculum. The additional guidance, which will be subject to a period of consultation, will be issued shortly and a copy will be placed in the House Libraries.

No estimate has been made of the number of learning outside the classroom activities that have been cancelled because of a lack of cover over the last 12 months and where schools take note of the new guidance, we do not anticipate that the rarely cover provisions will result in reduced opportunities for learning outside the classroom in the future.