Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to ensure that all pupils attain basic levels of literacy and mathematics before leaving school.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to ensure that all pupils attain basic levels of literacy and mathematics before leaving school.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

Before I answer the questions, may I say on behalf of the House that you, Mr Speaker, would want us to pass on our best wishes to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), who has recently suffered an accident from which he is slowly recovering. We all miss him. He was a fantastic constituency MP and great scrutineer of education [Hon. Members: “He still is!”] He still is, and we look forward to him being restored to full health.

The new national curriculum includes more demanding content in English and mathematics. In line with high-performing south-east Asian countries, mathematics will have more emphasis on arithmetic, fractions and decimals. There will be a new professional development programme for mathematics teachers at key stage 3, which will help them teach fractions more effectively, with robust evaluation of the results. We are, of course, also reforming GCSEs and making changes to nursery education.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Given the evidence that parents who have lower levels of literacy and numeracy can be motivated to improve themselves in order to support their own children’s learning, will the Secretary of State explain what measures are being taken to support family learning programmes?

[Michael Gove]

It is absolutely right that if parents are given the opportunity to play a part in their child’s education and if they are given additional confidence in their own grasp of literacy and numeracy, the whole family can benefit from it. It is a commitment of myself and the Under-Secretary of State for Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who has responsibility for skills and adult learning, to make sure that family learning programmes can be supported as effectively as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can confirm that Ofsted is currently recruiting more HMIs—Her Majesty’s inspectors—for the early years, and will increase the frequency of inspections of weaker providers. It will also give those providers support for improvement. Existing good quality support provided by local authorities will continue, provided that the providers agree. The issue is that such support is patchy across the country, and not necessarily the same in some local authority areas as in others.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

T6. Given the vital role that vocational education plays in delivering the skilled work force of the future, will the Minister explain how the technical baccalaureate will raise standards of vocational courses and attract more learners?