Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Grahame Morris and Gillian Keegan

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Member puts his finger on it. Industrial action has a massive impact, particularly on vulnerable children, those with special educational needs, and those in exam cohorts. I am always happy to share with my counterparts in the devolved Administrations, and I am very happy to share what we are doing on minimum service levels.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

3. What steps her Department is taking to ensure the adequacy of school funding in County Durham.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Grahame Morris and Gillian Keegan

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris]

The further education sector is facing a teaching crisis, not fully addressed by the pay review body. In my constituency, East Durham College has had two teacher vacancies in engineering and a computer science position unfilled for 18 months. Barriers to recruitment include high workload, qualification reform, excessive assessment and a huge pay disparity compared with comparable work in industry. Could the Secretary of State tell us what steps she is taking to ensure that further education teaching is an attractive and viable career?

[Gillian Keegan]

I very much care about further education and ensuring that it has the funding. That is why, as of last week, we are investing an additional £185 million in the financial year 2023-24 and £285 million in 2024-25 to drive forward skills delivery in further education. The Government do not set pay for the FE sector. However, I have been clear that I expect that funding, which is new funding, to go to the frontline. I hope the investment will support the FE sector to address its recruitment and retention challenges. In addition, we introduced bursaries of £29,000 for STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects, and the Taking Teaching Further programme is working with industry and paying £6,000 to attract those from industry who want to spend their second career in FE teaching.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Grahame Morris and Gillian Keegan

Monday 28th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his welcome. We did commit to address student interest rates and we have delivered on that, which I am sure all hon. Members on both sides of the House will welcome.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

2. What support the Government are providing to help (a) schools and (b) parents with the cost of living.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

I recognise the current challenges faced by families and public services. We know that things are tough out there, which is why we are acting in the national interest and why we have secured funding to increase the schools budget by £2 billion next year and the year after. All education settings are benefiting from the energy bill relief scheme, which will protect them from excessively high energy bills over the winter. In addition, we are committed to supporting the most vulnerable households through the toughest part of the year with additional direct support, and we are supporting schools and parents to make sure that we can all get through this.

[Grahame Morris]

I, too, welcome the Education Secretary and her team to the Front Bench. I thank her for that response, but I point out that due to runaway costs, schools can barely stay open for five days a week, let alone provide transport. Home-to-school transport is being pared back and public transport, certainly in east Durham, is unreliable and deteriorating. Can she give us some good news and tell us what she is doing to ensure that schools can afford to pay their heating bills and stay open? How will she guarantee access to education during the cost of living crisis?

[Gillian Keegan]

I can give the hon. Gentleman good news, because we heard in the autumn statement that education will be funded by an extra £2 billion next year and the year after. We will be working through how that will affect schools; each school will get its individual allocation. School funding is £4 billion higher this year compared with last year, and the autumn statement has confirmed that increase, which takes the core schools budget to an historic high of £58.8 billion. That will deliver significant additional support to pupils and teachers and will, I am sure, be welcomed by the sector.