(1 year, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberThe Secretary of State told the media at the weekend that she had found the money for the pay settlement from an underspend in the Department. Can she tell the House exactly where she found the money and what policies have not been delivered?
I am delighted to. We have a constructive relationship with the Treasury, whether on childcare, school funding or extra budgeting, and in this particular case what we have done, as I have done many times in my 30-year business career, is to go through every line of the budget. We spend £100 billion on education, so there are a lot of things in that budget, and we have gone through it and checked every single assumption. Some are demand led and some depend on the roll-out of certain projects. We have protected the frontline and reprioritised; what has changed is that the Treasury has allowed us to keep that money to reprioritise—[Interruption.] It is an answer. The right hon. Lady may not understand, because she does not—
(1 year, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for his remarks, and I very much agree that this is about choice—the lifelong loan entitlement, degree apprenticeships and all of the other choices—and about people understanding that there are many different routes to success in life. We have asked the Office for Students to look at earnings, because I realise that is difficult and that some jobs will not earn people more. However, for his information, five years after graduating from some courses, people are earning less than £18,000. That is less than the minimum wage, and it is not acceptable.
May I ask the Secretary of State, because she has not actually spelled this out, what is a low-value degree?
In relation to low-value degrees, an example of the quality provisions we have introduced for the Office for Students is B3, which is about: whether students continue in their degree, because clearly if they drop out, it is not of much value; whether they complete their degree, because clearly if they do not complete it, it is of zero value; and whether they get a job or progress into higher education afterwards. Those are the three quality measures we look at. Right now, the Office for Students is looking at 18 providers and two specific areas—business and management, and computer science—because there is a massive range in what people can expect to earn from jobs having followed one course or others, all of which seem to have the same name. There are quality issues, and we want to make sure that they are thoroughly investigated. The Office for Students is doing that.
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for her excellent question. We encourage schools to play a positive role in their community, and many choose to provide access to sports and other facilities. The school rebuilding programme directly commissions projects rather than providing funding to schools, so, where feasible, we include additional facilities beyond the scope of a project, if it is funded by the local trust or the local authority. We are interested in making sure that school facilities benefit the wider community.
The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), visited Joseph Leckie Academy, which really helped, and I had a good meeting with the heads of Joseph Leckie and Blue Coat Church of England Academies along with my friend the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). However, the schools still lost out. Will the Secretary of State, or one of her Ministers, meet those two heads and me to find out why on earth they cannot succeed in obtaining funds for vital repairs?
Obviously some schools are disappointed that they did not have access to those funds. We have announced funding for 400 schools so far and a further 100 will be included in future rounds, but we would be happy to meet the right hon. Lady.
(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Brave young women are being beaten to death just for wanting to be women and to conserve their human rights. We also have British citizens, Morad Tahbaz and Mehran Raoof, who are still incarcerated in Iran. What are the British Government going to do to release them?
Of course we have ongoing discussions about many different cases, but I am afraid I am not able to comment on those at this point.