Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Nick Gibb

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We are spending record amounts on school funding—£42.4 billion this year—but we accept that schools are facing some cost pressures. We are helping schools with their resource management, and we are providing national buying schemes so that they can buy things such as energy and computers more cheaply.

We are also introducing a free teacher vacancy scheme, which is being rolled out later this year—it has already been piloted in Cambridgeshire and the north-east—and which will save schools £78 million a year.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Is the Minister aware that the Treasury has not funded the teachers’ pay increase for Welsh teachers, and therefore that, if there is to be a pay increase for teachers in Wales, it will mean redundancies, a reduction in provision for pupils with special educational needs and a reduction in school investment budgets?

[Nick Gibb]

We have managed to fund the pay award from within the Department for Education’s own budget, and we expect the Welsh Government to be able to do the same.