Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

6. What assessment he has made of the potential role of massive open online courses in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

MOOCs present a huge opportunity for this country and are part of a technological revolution that we are seeing around the world. A student in Newcastle can now watch a lecture online from a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for free. I think that helps democratise education and open up knowledge.

[Andrew Selous]

Does the Minister agree that MOOCs are a way of ensuring that all children, from whatever background, can get an outstanding education from world-class communicators, thus freeing up teachers to help children with their online exercises?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Thanks to our new national curriculum and qualifications, which are much more flexible, we are seeing a rise in the number of MOOCs in this country. Cambridge university is developing a new MOOC for physics and there are online courses, such as our new core maths course for 16 to 18-year-olds, which is enabling students to study international baccalaureate maths online in their schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am not sure, but I will certainly undertake to get back to the right hon. Gentleman. He raises a very important point, and schools should be vigilant about it.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

5. How many children went missing from local authority care in each of the last three years.

General matters

Debate between Andrew Selous and Elizabeth Truss

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I realise that many colleagues’ minds will not be on the business of the House, but on their Christmas lunch. If they are still in search of provisions, may I suggest that they head to Norfolk, where they can find their entire lunch? If they should be stuck in Norfolk, because of the inclement weather—

[Andrew Selous]

Or because they do not have winter tyres.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Indeed. If hon. Members are stuck in Norfolk, may I suggest that they will be catered for? Not only will they be able to purchase their turkey, potatoes, Brussels sprouts and a mountain of vegetables; we also have the world’s biggest sugar factory, so dessert is catered for. A by-product of the sugar factory is the heat that it generates, and tomatoes are produced in the greenhouses there. There is cheese—the Binham Blue and the Wells Alpine—for the cheeseboard, and, for those after-dinner drinks, we also have the only English whisky distillery.

Norfolk is indeed a county of bounty, with 80% of the land used for food and farming. It often strikes me that if Martians were to come to Earth and watch prime-time TV programmes such as “Come Dine with Me” and “River Cottage”, they would think that we were all obsessed with food. They would imagine that we spent all day thinking about where our food came from and how it was produced. They would also believe Norfolk to be a dominant part of the British economy, with its strong food and farming industry. There have been excellent developments at local level. An example is the development of the Norfolk food hub, which I am assured will have goats grazing on the grass roof of its exciting new building, but there has not been a growth of food exports in relation to food imports. In fact, over the past 10 years, we have imported nearly twice as much food, relative to exports, as we used to do.