Al-Madinah Free School Debate

Full Debate: Read Full Debate
Department: Department for Education

Al-Madinah Free School

Margot James Excerpts
Thursday 17th October 2013

(11 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts

Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.

This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record

David Laws Portrait Mr Laws
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I will certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. We scrutinise free school applications very carefully and reject many of them for a variety of different reasons. We will continue to scrutinise them very closely.

Margot James Portrait Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
- Hansard - -

The OECD report published last week places Britain near the bottom of the international literacy and numeracy league tables. Does that not make the case for continued innovation in education? Will the Minister ensure that this poor example does not undermine the excellent and innovative free schools programme?

David Laws Portrait Mr Laws
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

My hon. Friend makes a telling point about the educational challenges for this country and about the need to focus on educational failure from wherever it comes. It speaks volumes about the Labour party that it should choose to have an urgent question on this one individual school while across the country there are hundreds of other schools facing similar challenges in which it seems to have no equivalent interest.