Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I give a great shout-out to Katie Vickers, the academic mentor that my hon. Friend and the Minister for School Standards met at Burnopfield Primary School. My hon. Friend will recall that when I was vaccines Minister, I was able to cut through some of the bureaucracy and get more retired doctors and nurses to come back and vaccinate the nation. I will happily look again with the Minister for School Standards at any bureaucracy that gets in the way and we will get rid of it.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his post, and I congratulate him and his new team on their appointment. By the end of the national tutoring programme period, nearly 2 million young people will have left school without support, including, it is estimated, more than half a million in the north. Meanwhile, the new cut-price Randstad contract has left schools facing over-complicated bureaucracy and delayed tutoring—although Randstad did manage to award a contract to itself. Is the Secretary of State satisfied with the performance of Randstad’s management of the contract?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am never satisfied until we have delivered. Ultimately, we can have an arms race about how much we can spend, but it is all about outcomes. When the hon. Lady sees some of the independent evaluation of the programme delivered by my predecessor, she will see that we focus on outcomes, and that is what she should also focus on.

[Kate Green]

Yes, but tutoring is reaching just one in 16 pupils this year, and the attainment gap is 18 months at GCSE and widening. The Government failed to use the opportunity of the Budget to deliver the investment in education recovery that their own expert called for. Why will the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister not match Labour’s ambition for children’s futures?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

All I would remind the hon. Lady is that, if we look at the league tables, England is doing well under a Conservative Government and will continue to do well. If she will only shed the tribal politics and look at the evidence—as I will, and I will present it to this House—then we can get somewhere with delivering real outcomes for the most disadvantaged people in our country, which I hope she cares about as I do.