Angela Smith
Main Page: Angela Smith (Liberal Democrat - Penistone and Stocksbridge)Department Debates - View all Angela Smith's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Laws
I shall certainly follow up that issue on behalf of my hon. Friend. I am pleased to tell him that earlier this month the Department announced it was making available almost £25 million in additional capital to schools to support this policy. This money has come from an underspend in the existing free school meals budget.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
17. How many free schools for 16 to 18-year-olds have opened in the last four years.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
A total of 14 16-to-18 free schools have opened in the last four years, including the highly innovative King’s college London mathematics school and Exeter maths school, which aim to increase the levels of mathematical attainment by the most able students to enable them to study at top-rated universities, and Chapeltown academy, a new 16-to-18 sixth form committed to high-quality academic A-levels.
Angela Smith
The academy in Chapeltown that the Minister has just referred to opened in September and has been funded for 90 places, but the numbers recruited fall significantly short of that—I understand that the figure is something like 55. Why are the Government funding institutions that are not recruiting to full capacity while cutting the funding available to 16 to 18-year-olds already in education or training in existing institutions?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Lady raised her opposition to the establishment of the Chapeltown academy in an Adjournment debate in April, when she said that
“there is no evidence whatsoever that there is demand for these additional sixth-form places.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 964.]
In fact, 58 places have been taken up. Free schools often have smaller numbers in the first year than their maximum, but numbers tend to increase in the years ahead. To quote its website, the school wants to
“Increase aspirations to attend the world’s best universities, and boost attainment at A-Level”.
Why can the hon. Lady not support such a school, with such great ambitions for young people?