Diana Johnson
Main Page: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham)Department Debates - View all Diana Johnson's debates with the Department for Education
(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
No one on the Government Benches is denigrating teachers. Teachers in this country are a much respected profession who are providing a very high, and improving, quality of education to young people. We have reformed the primary curriculum and the secondary curriculum, and we have reformed GCSEs, putting them on a par with the best qualifications in the world. The teaching profession has responded magnificently to those new challenges. Today we have published the key stage 2 results on a pupil basis, and we see that two thirds of pupils are now meeting the new expected standards in reading and 70% of pupils are meeting the new expected standards in mathematics. That is a tremendous achievement given the very significant rise in the expectations and rigour of the new primary curriculum.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Just to be clear, does the Minister accept the IFS’s prediction that school budgets will fall by over 8% up to 2020—yes or no?
Mr Gibb
School budgets have been protected. We are spending £40 billion, and we have said that per-pupil funding for schools is protected throughout this Parliament. Schools will face increased costs of salaries, pension contributions and national insurance, but we have provided advice to them about how they can meet those challenges to procure more efficiently and to make sure that their staffing arrangements provide the best education within their budgets. We have protected school funding throughout this Parliament.