Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that it is not my job to tell teachers how to do theirs. This Government are committed to treating teachers as mature and confident professionals. It was on the “Left Foot Forward” blog that somebody had written:

“It is genuinely difficult to fathom what was going through Tristram Hunt’s mind when he decided that a Hippocratic oath for teachers was a good idea.”

I suggest that the shadow Secretary of State might want to look at the reaction on social media to his Hippocratic oath.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I am afraid that 44,000 teachers responded not because the Secretary of State has reduced the burden; this Government spent four years increasing the burden on teachers and then spent many months suppressing the evidence in the teacher work load survey by not publishing it. Andrew Carter has said:

“What…matters most in a child’s education is the quality of the teaching.”

Can she confirm to the teachers of this country that, following his review, the Conservative party will go into this election with a commitment to expand the number of unqualified teachers?

[Nicky Morgan]

In May, the Conservative party will be committing to have the highest-qualified teaching profession ever, something we have already achieved under this Government. We now have more teachers with 2:1 or first degrees in our schools, and the successful initial teacher training system, as Andrew Carter has reported in his review today—[Interruption.] If the Labour party wants to talk about unqualified teachers, it ought to look at the shadow Secretary of State, who teaches in his local schools as an unqualified teacher.