Schools: Bullying Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Schools: Bullying

Lord Lexden Excerpts
Thursday 16th May 2013

(11 years, 6 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Lexden Portrait Lord Lexden
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Can my noble friend tell the House what the Government are doing to ensure that children in alternative provision have support and education to a standard that is on a par with that in mainstream schools?

Lord Nash Portrait Lord Nash
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We are focusing intensely on alternative provision providers. This Government have sent a very clear message that we expect alternative provision education to be equivalent to that in mainstream schools. There is no doubt that alternative provision in this country is extremely erratic. I am delighted to see that we have a number of alternative provision providers coming through in the new free school applications, and I expect that a number of them will be approved. A number of alternative provision providers are converting to academies. We have some excellent alternative provision providers. We have also asked Ofsted to look specifically at alternative provision through a thematic inspection process.