Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts
Monday 10th February 2014

(10 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Matt Hancock Portrait Matthew Hancock
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Absolutely: I should love to visit Hackney with the hon. Lady. What is happening there is part of a wider drive to ensure that it is real employers who mentor and support young people and give them inspiration. It is part of a culture change that is starting to come about, and I look forward to working with the hon. Lady in that connection.

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Portrait Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
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Vocational education ought to be a genuinely dual system. May I invite the Minister never, ever to utter the sentence “It is for those who cannot attend university”? May I also urge him to realise that it is essential to tie in work experience with vocational training?

Matt Hancock Portrait Matthew Hancock
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I think that our minds are as one on this. I only wish that the hon. Lady had managed to convey the same message to her party’s Front Benchers when they were last in government. We strongly believe that it should become the norm in this country for young people to be able to enter either a university or an apprenticeship, that the choice should be theirs, and that our job is to provide excellent opportunities in both.