Schools That Work For Everyone
Debate between Damian Hinds and Chris Skidmore(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
This is all part of existing capital funding. I mentioned earlier the much larger figure of which this is one part.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement on wave 13 of the free school application process and the fact that free schools have created 212,000 places since 2010. Applications for two new free schools, which I am keen to support, will be coming forward from my constituency. Will he meet me and a delegation to discuss those plans so that I might continue to support educational provision in my local area?
Teaching Quality
Debate between Damian Hinds and Chris Skidmore(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
I absolutely agree.
We can do other things further to raise teacher quality; that is what the title of this debate turned out to be. The first of those concerns Teach First, which accounts for a relatively small proportion of the overall teaching work force. It is heavily concentrated—half of all Teach First teachers are there—in London, which has come up more than once today. It has what I call a positive disruptive influence in schools in bringing in new ideas, in new teachers learning from teachers it already employs and those teachers learning from new ones and, importantly, in increasing the pool for recruitment and selection. Head teachers often say that having more people, including fresh graduates, applying for jobs helps them a lot. We need greatly to expand Teach First outside London.
Chris Skidmore
Does my hon. Friend welcome the fact that when, this morning, I met and spoke to the chief executive officer of Teach First, Brett Wigdortz, he talked about its tremendous success in the city close to my constituency, Bristol? Teach First has now established centres there, so regionalisation is taking place as we speak.
Damian Hinds
I very much welcome that. Teach First is also doing good work in Bournemouth, a coastal town that has had particular issues. We should look at what impact it has had there—
Qualified Teachers
Debate between Damian Hinds and Chris Skidmore(11 years ago)
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