Teachers Strike
Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Nick Gibb(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
The problem with education in Wales is that standards are behind those in this country. In fact, yesterday we were asked what advice we could give to the Welsh Government about our academies programme, our reforms to the curriculum, and our reforms of GCSEs and A-levels, which are resulting in higher and improving standards in this country. The gap, I suspect, is widening.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
As we now have a Chancellor talking about post-Brexit largesse, what do Ministers intend to do to ensure that the projected schools funding cuts are prevented?
Mr Gibb
We have protected school funding on a per-pupil basis. School funding is now at £40 billion—the highest it has ever been, and £4 billion more than in 2011-12. Because of the decisions that the Chancellor took in his Budgets, particularly the June 2010 Budget, we are not facing, and have not faced, the crisis facing countries such as Greece that had the same deficit as a percentage of the budget. We have not faced their crisis of closing schools, slashing salaries, and cutting numbers of teachers; we have maintained stability in our system. The average class size has remained stable in that period despite the fact that we have also created 600,000 more school places.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Nick Gibb(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
There is undeniably a crisis in teacher recruitment in schools. I warn the Minister that it is not confined to schools but is starting to affect early years provision too, and hitting it hard because there is no coherent early years career pathway and no set pay scale, with some providers paying wages for only 35 weeks a year. How can the Government possibly hope to improve quality in early years when they are doing their level best to put people off joining the profession?
Mr Gibb
We are not putting people off joining the profession, and we are expanding the early years sector. We acknowledge that when we have a strong economy it is a challenge to recruit highly qualified and highly able people. That is the case in this country, and it is the same in other successful economies around the world. We are doing a huge amount to encourage more professionals to come into the profession. We have a very effective advertising campaign. We have very generous bursaries right across the system; we are spending £1.2 billion on those bursaries. This is working, because we recruited 94% of our target to teacher training last year and we have record numbers of people in teaching. What we do not do, as the hon. Lady and Labour Members are doing, is talk down the profession, because, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, teachers tell us that talk about a recruitment crisis helps to deter people from coming into the profession; it does not encourage them to do so.