Julie Hilling
Main Page: Julie Hilling (Labour - Bolton West)Department Debates - View all Julie Hilling's debates with the Department for Education
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who was a very distinguished leader of West Sussex county council. In Crawley we need additional capacity and people also need proper choice. The Discovery free school provides both.
I, too, attended the world skills event at the ExCel centre—I was supporting my constituent, Andrew Fielding, from MBDA, who was competing in electronics. His employers and others at the event told me how essential it is that young people are taught technology in school. What will the Secretary of State do to ensure that there is good technology teaching with up-to-date equipment for all young people in all schools, not just technology colleges?
We are doing everything possible to attract new teachers into science, technology, engineering and mathematics by transforming initial teacher training and providing additional support for teachers who are qualified in those disciplines. We will say more on that when we publish our teacher training strategy, which I hope will be later this month or early next month.