Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I agree that there are challenges in Kettering and Northamptonshire, including from the rising pupil population. In that part of the world not only are we delivering the pupil premium and the additional interventions to support better school leadership, but we have almost doubled the allocation of money for new places for basic need from £29 million in the last Parliament to more than £55 million in this Parliament.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

At the weekend, Her Majesty the Queen was pleased to confer knighthoods and damehoods on a number of outstanding teachers. May I add my congratulations to those of others to Andrew Carter, Barry Day, John Dunford, Anthony Seldon, Nicola Nelson-Taylor and Erica Pienaar? There are many outstanding teachers in our schools today and we should celebrate their work. I am particularly pleased to acknowledge that there are teachers from the recently judged by Ofsted “outstanding” Warmsworth primary in Doncaster in the Gallery today, and I congratulate Mrs Marshall on her superb Ofsted.

[Dr Huppert]

The Secretary of State is right that there are many excellent teachers. Is he aware of the evidence that has been produced by the “too much too soon” campaign about play-based learning? What assessment has he made of the benefits of a sustained period of creative play-based learning before children are exposed to more formal learning environments?

[Michael Gove]

Early years practitioners know that we need both structured play and appropriate introduction at the right time to more formal methods of learning to get the most out of every child. We are very fortunate that we have not just a revised early years foundation stage but more and more talented people teaching in the early years.