Education

Debate between David Johnston and Robert Halfon

Monday 18th December 2023 Ministerial Corrections

[Robert Halfon]

Not content with being in the anti-apprenticeship party, given her plans to weaken the apprenticeship levy and halve the number of apprenticeships, the hon. Lady is also taking on the mantle of T-level denier. We have 18 T-levels; we have, as I mentioned, a 90.5% pass rate; we have 10,000 students doing our T-level programme in the 2022 cohort; and we expect the data that we will release early next year to show that many thousands more students are doing the T-level programme.

After-school Childcare: Long-term Educational Outcomes

The following is an extract from Education questions on 11 December 2023.

[David Johnston]

In October, the Government announced the allocation of £289 million of start-up funding to local authorities for wraparound care, which we know supports parents to work, as well as having the potential to improve attainment, engagement and attendance.

[Official Report, 11 December 2023, Vol. 742, c. 597.]

Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston):

An error has been identified in the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn). The correct answer should have been:

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston]

We are investing £2.6 billion in capital funding to transform the special educational needs and alternative provision system, and there is a 36% increase in revenue funding to Birmingham, where the timeliness of EHCPs has been getting better each year between 2020 and 2022.

Higher Education Institutions: International Students

The following are extracts from Education questions on 11 December 2023.

[Robert Halfon]

As I said to the hon. Lady, we have something like 689,000 international students and our target is 600,000 a year.

[Official Report, 11 December 2023, Vol. 742, c. 605.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon):

An error has been identified in my answer to the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith). The correct answer should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Johnston and Robert Halfon

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

22. What steps her Department is taking to increase the uptake of degree apprenticeships.

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)]

My hon. Friend will know that “degree apprenticeships” are my two favourite words in the English language. My hon. Friend’s constituency of Wantage has had 330 extra degree-level apprentices since 2018. We have had over 180,000 starts overall since 2014 and we are investing an additional—an additional —£40 million over the next two years to support degree apprenticeships.

[David Johnston]

My right hon. Friend is a great supporter of degree apprenticeships, as am I, but he will know they do not always function as the route for social mobility that they should. We have seen a much higher proportion of the most affluent young people obtain them than we have the poorest young people, so what is he doing to ensure disadvantaged students get their fair share of degree apprenticeships?

[Robert Halfon]

We are transforming careers advice on apprenticeships in our schools and targeting that advice towards disadvantaged students. The Office for Students has asked higher education to increase the proportion of level 4, 5 and degree apprenticeships as part of reforms to wider access. We also increased the care leavers bursary from £1,000 to £3,000, and are providing £1,000 to employers and training providers when they recruit young people. Our determination is to get more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds doing degree apprenticeships and apprenticeships across the board.

Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers

Debate between David Johnston and Robert Halfon

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Was my right hon. Friend struck, as I was, in that Education Committee hearing that Ofqual could see coming many of the problems that came about? It knew that high-achieving children at low-performing schools would be disadvantaged, and it knew that schools with small classes would be advantaged, but its attitude was very much “We’ll just sort it out at appeals” rather than to worry about the distress it would cause on results day.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is a hard-working member of our Select Committee. I just think Ofqual had this Charge of the Light Brigade mentality that it knew best and no one could challenge its algorithm.

I mentioned the BTEC, where 450,000 students were affected. The way that all came out is very depressing. As a country, we should value vocational qualifications as much as we do academic qualifications, and I just think that summed up everything that is wrong with our country in the way we look at these results. We need to learn the lessons from that.

Let me say in the time that I have remaining that we clearly need to make a decision on exams next year—that is very important—but before that is done there should be nationwide assessments of all the pupils in the relevant years in particular, so that we can find out how much loss of learning there has been and how much catch-up is needed. The Government will then be able to say, working with the regulators, whether the syllabus needs to be pared down and how much of a delay is needed. I very much hope that exams will take place. That is the best solution, but if they do not and there is a plan B and we go to teacher-assessed grades, I hope very much that there will be an independent assessor—a human independent assessor—acting as a check and balance.

I hope that this saga and the things that went wrong give us a chance to reboot education. I hope that we can have a long-term national education plan that looks at addressing social injustice in education, levelling up, meeting our skills needs, helping children with special educational needs and much more besides.