Barry Sheerman
Main Page: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)Department Debates - View all Barry Sheerman's debates with the Department for Education
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gibb
That is precisely what is happening. The local enterprise partnerships are working closely with the careers and enterprise companies because we want to ensure that there is a connection between employers and schools so that a generation of young people inspired by technology can get to know what jobs are available in the technology sector, where, incidentally, earnings are on average 19% higher than for those not working in that sector.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree that no Prime Minister was more passionate about science, technology and mathematics and their power to liberate individuals’ potential than Harold Wilson? Does he further agree that Harold Wilson set up the Open University and all those polytechnics that became our new universities in order to help in that process of changing our culture? Can we not now liberate the universities to do more in partnership with schools to get this culture change that Harold Wilson worked so hard to achieve?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman seemed to get a bigger cheer for mentioning Harold Wilson than he would have done if he had mentioned the current leader of the Labour party. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, however, about the importance of inspiring young people. University technical colleges have been established to do precisely that, and we have seen a huge increase in the number of young people taking STEM A-levels, with the number taking maths A-level going up by 18% so that some 82,000 young people are now taking it. It has become the single most popular A-level choice, while both physics and chemistry A-level entries have increased by 15%.