David T C Davies
Main Page: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)Department Debates - View all David T C Davies's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Elizabeth Truss
The Department for Education has worked out that universal full-time child care for children aged one to four would cost £18 billion.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
10. What assessment he has made of the findings of the recent PISA report as they relate to England; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
15. What assessment he has made of the findings of the recent PISA report.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)
The PISA results for 2012 showed that England’s performance has stagnated in the league tables, with no improvement over the entire period of the previous Government’s time in office. In contrast, Germany and Poland reformed their education systems and saw a significant improvement in their results, and east Asia also moved ahead. That is why this Government are learning from the success of those other countries by increasing school freedom and accountability and focusing on core academic subjects.
David T. C. Davies
The PISA results also showed that things in Wales have not only stagnated, but gone backwards, and that educational standards in England are still far higher than they are in Wales, where the Welsh Assembly’s Labour Minister recently had to make a fulsome apology on the front page of the Western Mail for his party’s abysmal failure. Why does my hon. Friend the Minister believe that educational standards in England are so much higher than those under the Labour-run Welsh Assembly?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and the Welsh Minister was right to apologise for letting children in Wales down. The reality is that the Welsh Government caved in to the unions and abolished national tests and league tables, and their results in maths have plummeted to lower than 40th in the PISA tables. That shows how vital it is that we increase accountability in this country and keep up the pace of our reforms to make sure that we push ahead like countries such as Germany and Poland, rather than fall behind like Wales.