Midland Main Line Electrification
Debate between Lord Coaker and Baroness Morgan of Cotes(8 years ago)
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Nicky Morgan
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. He is right that we are talking not only about the midlands, as they might be known, but the impact on the train line to Sheffield and further north. I will talk about HS2 in a moment, but he is right, as we all know from those who journey north from our constituencies, that the electrification project is important for connectivity further north.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Lady for bringing this vital debate to the House. Does she share my concern—my constituents and lots of people along the midland main line share it—that the line is the poor relation of the rail network? If the Government have to find savings for investment in other lines, the midland main line will once again be delayed and have its investment cut. The people in our constituencies will be the losers. The Government need to listen to her and other hon. Members, and get on with doing something about the midland main line.
Nicky Morgan
As I said, the midland main line is the only north-south rail route yet to be electrified. In fact, I think it is the only inter-city line that remains to be electrified. It is fair to say that the midlands should not be paying the price for cost overruns on other infrastructure projects around the country.
SATs Results
Debate between Lord Coaker and Baroness Morgan of Cotes(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan
No, I am not going to give way.
Let me also be clear about what this means for schools. Conservative Members believe that schools have to be held to account for the results that their pupils achieve. However, they need to be held to account fairly, which is why we are judging schools not just on the standards that they achieve, but on the progress that they make with every child, so that schools with challenging intakes get proper recognition for the achievement they are making by pushing their pupils to success. On top of that, in recognition of the fact that this is a transitional year, I have also announced that the proportion of schools judged to be below the floor when the new progress bar is set will be no more than one percentage point higher than last year. That progress bar will be released in September, and no school can be identified as being below the floor before then.
Having listened to the speech by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, I was struck by just how easily it could have been written by the NUT’s acting general secretary. It represented the final stage of the Labour party’s transformation into the parliamentary wing of the NUT.
Nicky Morgan
No, not at the moment.
It was noticeable last week—this is noticeable today—that there was a greater presence on the Labour Benches for an urgent question about the NUT strike than there was for the previous day’s Education questions.
Nicky Morgan
No, I am not going to give way at the moment.
In our March White Paper, we set out plans to tackle areas of entrenched educational underperformance. What we did not expect was that one of those areas of entrenched underperformance would be the NUT itself. Its readiness to use the word “failure” about children, and to oppose every reform that is designed to recognise and reward great teaching and to enable schools to tackle the not so good, is yet a further example of the chronic underperformance by that union on behalf of its members. More importantly, it is a failure for the children with whom its members work.
We now see the same attitude from the Opposition. In my two years as Secretary of State for Education, I have seen the transformation of the Labour party’s attitude to our education reforms from the secret support of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) to the hedged bets of the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). We now have the outright hostility of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne to the raising of standards. I hope that the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) will forgive me for lacking the time to work out where she stood.
The Labour party has firmly chosen, as the motion indicates, to become the anti-standards party, devoid of ideas and determined to protect vested interests and union barons rather than putting children and parents first. It has gone from the party of education, education, education, to the party of low standards, low aspiration and low expectations.
I do not want to end this speech by focusing on the collapsing Labour party; I want to end it by saying thank you. Rather than doing down the achievements of schools, teachers and pupils, I want to celebrate them and commend their exceptional work.