Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts
Monday 11th September 2017

(7 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Anne Milton Portrait Anne Milton
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I met my hon. Friend last week, and he raises an important point about the skills that will be needed at Hinkley Point. I look forward to having a meeting, which I think he will attend, on the future steps we can take.

Lilian Greenwood Portrait Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
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T6. Nottingham faces at least a decade of growing demand for secondary school places. Although the local authority has a duty to provide places, it has no power to direct the city’s 16 secondary schools, all of which will soon be academies, to expand provision or even to admit to their full capacity. Will she act now and require all publicly funded providers to engage and work with their local authority on place planning, or is she simply determined to put her ideological faith in free schools before the needs of our city’s young people?

Justine Greening Portrait Justine Greening
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It is important to see local authorities working with schools effectively and working with them to expand if they are popular. The bottom line is that through the free schools programme we have brought forward thousands of badly needed school places and extra choice for parents, and overwhelmingly these schools are doing a great job at educating our children.