Alex Chalk
Main Page: Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)Department Debates - View all Alex Chalk's debates with the Department for Education
(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
What I would say is that the percentage of pupils in infant classes of more than 30 is 5.8%, which is down from 6.2% in January 2015. In the last five or six years, we have created 600,000 more school places. We have doubled the amount of capital going into creating new school places, compared with that spent by the previous Labour Government. Incidentally, they removed 200,000 primary school places, which is the problem we have had to tackle, and they did not plan for the increased birth rate.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
Our teachers do a fantastic job, but does the Minister agree that there are ways to protest that do not involve damaging children’s education and inconveniencing parents? Does he agree that there has to be the strongest possible justification for such drastic action and that that threshold has not been met in this case?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ministers in the Department are always open to having discussions with trade union leaders. We have one-to-one discussions, we attend the new programme of talks and we attend the roundtable talks. Officials also have regular talks with the trade unions. This is not a necessary strike, because those discussions are always taking place. This has more to do with the internal workings of the NUT than with the real pay and conditions of teachers in this country.