Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Andrew Percy and Tristram Hunt
Andrew Percy
As I said a moment ago, as long as we are a member of the European Union, the funding regime remains as it is. We are working across Government to get the certainty we want; all of us share that ambition for when we do begin the process of exiting. I would say to the hon. Lady that major investment by this Government is not just limited to the funding that comes through the European Union. We have seen a massive programme of £12 billion of local growth fund investment, with 48 enterprise zones that have created 23,000 jobs and leveraged in £2.4 billion of private sector investment. We are committed as a Government to continuing to invest in infrastructure, such as HS2, of which I know she is a big supporter.
Tristram Hunt
May I, too, welcome the Minister to his job? He was part of a campaign which not only promised £350 million a week for the NHS if we left the European Union, but said that any lost EU funding would be matched by the Government. May I join my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), in trying to get him to confirm at the Dispatch Box that the £157 million from the EU destined for Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire is underwritten by this Government? Mr Speaker, we have had enough of the Brexit baloney. Tell the potteries they are going to get their money.
Andrew Percy
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman took such an interest in my campaigning on the referendum in Brigg and Goole. We have made it absolutely clear that while EU funds have delivered some important support for growth and jobs, that has been only a small part of the much larger investment by this Government. It will be for the Government—in time, when we exit the European Union—to set out the funding arrangements and the guarantees. We hope to be able to work to get the certainty we require across Government once that process begins.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Percy)
I know my hon. Friend had some involvement in the deal, helping to achieve a consensus with local leaders. The west of England devolution agreement will see a new directly elected mayor and combined authority receive new powers to better manage transport across the area, linking new homes and people to the jobs and opportunities that we as a Government support with £900 million of significant new investment. The Government continue to work with local leaders to put in place the governance to deliver on the deal. I and my officials will continue to work to ensure that the Government deliver.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
T5. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), refused to confirm that the £157 million of EU structural funds for the potteries will be matched by the Government, so can I try his boss? Will the EU regeneration funds be matched by the Government, or have the Brexiters sold north Staffordshire down the river?
Teaching Quality
Debate between Andrew Percy and Tristram Hunt(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Tristram Hunt
My advice is to not have unqualified teachers in the classroom and to keep going with the reforms that have been introduced recently on league tables and the literacy and numeracy strategy. We know that the surest way to improve children’s attainment is to boost the status, elevate the standing and raise the standards of the teaching profession. Therefore, today, let us put our differences aside and send a clear message to teachers, parents and pupils that the House understands the importance of teacher quality to improving the performance of our education system.
I saw it first hand last week when I attended the annual prize giving at St Thomas More Catholic school in Wood Green, north London, the most improved school in England. As we saw from last week’s analysis of GCSE results, much good work is being done in schools throughout the country.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
Can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether he draws a distinction between teachers who have gained qualified teacher status through the study of a PGCE and teachers who have gained QTS through the graduate teacher programme or Teach First? Do international jurisdictions consider those qualifications gained in a different way? Do they value them differently in international comparisons?
Tristram Hunt
As ever, the hon. Gentleman is a master of his profession. We were happy to introduce, under a Labour Government, the wonderful Teach First scheme, which was about the road to having qualified teachers in the classroom. Gaining QTS, as I will explain, is not the be all and end all of focusing on teacher quality, but it is an important plank of the minimum standards that we would expect. The attainment gap between children on free school meals and those whose parents can afford to pay actually widened in 72 out of 152 areas last year. There remains a worrying attainment gap between less advantaged pupils and those from more affluent families, and current policy is failing to address that. The most worrying disparities were in the affluent areas of Wokingham and Buckinghamshire. There is therefore much work to be done.
Qualified Teachers
Debate between Andrew Percy and Tristram Hunt(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House endorses the view that in state funded schools teachers should be qualified or working towards qualified teacher status while they are teaching.
In moving this motion, the Opposition call on the Government to uphold the highest standards in our schools. We are delighted that the Deputy Prime Minister—if not his Schools Minister, as we never quite know on whose side he is talking—appears finally to have accepted the Labour party’s position on ensuring qualified teacher status within our schools. As if we needed any further proof of the importance of this point, events at the Secretary of State’s Al-Madinah free school in Derby—where the teaching was inadequate, the school dysfunctional and the care of those with special educational needs a disgrace—proved that right.
This afternoon I shall set out the importance of having a professionally qualified teacher work force; the role that this work force play in allowing children in our schools to reach their full potential; and to urge the Liberal Democrats to rediscover their progressive credentials. I hope to do so succinctly, Mr Speaker, so that many of my colleagues can contribute.
Andrew Percy
Yes, and one with qualified teacher status—unlike, perhaps, some others.
May I press the shadow Secretary of State on that issue of qualified teacher status? I taught at a time when we had a Labour Government and, at that time, we saw a massive increase in the number of unqualified teachers, a massive increase in the number of instructors, and a massive increase in the number of teaching assistants taking classes when planning and preparation time was introduced. What has changed the hon. Gentleman’s mind?
Tristram Hunt
Today we are focusing on the future. Under future Labour Governments, we will have qualified teachers in our classrooms. I find it extraordinary that Government Members do not want the best-qualified, best-trained teacher work force in the world.
In 2010, when the British people lent the Prime Minister their trust and he used to talk about things like the big society, the Government believed in having a motivated, professional teacher cohort. At that time, the Prime Minister rightly said that
“the most important thing that will determine”
whether children succeed at school
“is not their background, or the curricula, or the type of school, or the amount of funding. It’s who the teacher is.”
Sadly, since then the Secretary of State has focused entirely on curricula, school structure and reducing funding, and has done little to support the skills and capacities of our teachers.
National Planning Policy Framework
Debate between Andrew Percy and Tristram Hunt(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Tristram Hunt
We were so happy when the former Secretary of State, the former Member for Suffolk Coastal, John Gummer, saw the light. I agreed not only with his “town centre first” plans, but with his plans for the regeneration of major stately home building, although that does not make me popular on the Labour Benches. Now, however, the “brownfield first” plan is gone; planning permission is to be granted where the plan is absent, silent, indeterminate or where relevant policies are out of date. That means developers can build where and when they like. What makes the English landscape so special—that rural/urban divide and the post-war planning settlement—threatens to be undermined. It is threatened because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central said, there is no economic growth. The Government’s growth strategy has collapsed, and they think that ripping up the planning process will solve the problem.
Andrew Percy
I spent 10 years as a city councillor under the previous Government’s planning system, and I am afraid that I do not recognise the nirvana that the hon. Gentleman is painting. Instead, we had central Government diktat telling us what to do and where to do it, deciding that communities that wanted to grow could not grow and making us put housing where local people did not want it. That was the reality under the previous Government’s planning policy.
Tristram Hunt
I know that Government Members do not believe in fact-based discussion, but the reality is that under the previous Government’s planning policy, we saw an increase in house building, increasing densification and growing numbers in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Bristol—I do not know about the great urban centre of Tunbridge Wells, but perhaps there was an increase there as well. Weak planning does not deliver strong economic growth.
Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Andrew Percy and Tristram Hunt(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward). No doubt we shall be seeing him later.
I want to make a rather basic intervention. Amidst all the language of funding models, burdens of bureaucracy, accountability and pupil premiums, I thought that it would be germane to raise the question of what children might learn under these new school reforms. We are being invited to extend the academy model in one form or another on the specific rationale that those schools raise educational attainment, in particular through a rapidly improving results framework, with almost double the number of A* to C grades at GCSE. At the beginning of the Secretary of State’s speech, we heard the litany of schools that are doing so well, and in The Daily Telegraph on Friday, the Department for Education repeated the mantra that academies were outstanding. But what are they outstanding at? How have the results improved so markedly?
Although much of the success can be attributed to strong leadership, inspiring teaching, improved facilities and the new ethos of learning that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) outlined so well, in some cases improved results are the product of directing students into less demanding examination options that in the end improve no one’s life chances. We are being asked to implement an educational model whose validity is open to question. Indeed, there should have been an element of scepticism about the academies when they were not subject to freedom of information legislation. With a degree of ease, some academies were able to disguise some of the data behind their results surge.
Andrew Percy
It was not necessarily only academies that went down that route: all kinds of schools throughout the country forced children on to GNVQs and equivalent qualifications to force up their results. It was not unique to academies.