Oral Answers to Questions

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts
Monday 18th January 2021

(3 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Danny Kruger Portrait Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
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What steps his Department is taking to ensure the adequacy of remote education for children during the covid-19 lockdown.

Jerome Mayhew Portrait Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
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What steps his Department is taking to ensure the adequacy of remote education for children during the covid-19 lockdown.

Tom Hunt Portrait Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
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What steps his Department is taking to ensure the adequacy of remote education for children during the covid-19 lockdown.

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Gavin Williamson Portrait Gavin Williamson
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Absolutely. We have always been clear—and I stated this to the House just a couple of weeks ago—that we encourage parents, in the first instance, to speak with a teacher or headteacher, and only as a last resort to go to Ofsted. We want to see and encourage as much live teaching as possible, which is shown to be the best way of delivering teaching, but a whole spectrum of resources can be offered. It is really important to work with schools, with parents supporting those schools, to ensure that we get the best solutions for all our children.

Jerome Mayhew Portrait Jerome Mayhew [V]
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I know from my experience with my own children that having live lessons taught online is much more effective than simply placing learning resources online. With more than 750,000 laptops already delivered and 2.9 million laptops already available in schools for the use of children, the digital divide has been substantially overcome. With that in mind, can my right hon. Friend give an indication of the percentage of schools providing live teaching online? Does he have plans to increase that further?

Gavin Williamson Portrait Gavin Williamson
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My hon. Friend is right to highlight the great strides that have been made in supporting schools, and in schools supporting parents, on the provision of remote education. We obviously encourage schools to put on as much live provision as possible, which is very beneficial, and we are working with the whole school and further education sector to support them with that request. We are seeing substantial gains, and we are monitoring the situation closely, as is Ofsted.