Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Williams and Baroness Featherstone

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

4. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of UK support to the Global Partnership for Education.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

The UK is currently the largest donor to the Global Partnership for Education, providing on average of £50 million per year from 2012 to 2014. GPE estimates that in 2012 its funding supported around 4.5 million children in primary school, 1.3 million of whom with DFID support.

[Mr Williams]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer and welcome the Government’s leading role in the Global Partnership for Education, which has done so much to fulfil the entitlement of all children to an education and is now turning its sights to the quality of education through teacher training. Given the Government’s strong support for it, what plans does she have to champion the GP’s replenishment this year and to encourage other donors to come forward?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I pay tribute to his work and interest in this area. The UK is currently the largest bilateral donor to basic education. That is the sector in which aid is now declining. We strongly encourage other donors to step up to the plate alongside us, as well as mother countries themselves. We will determine our plans for support to the GP based on the case they make for replenishment. We will use that as a basis for—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Williams and Baroness Featherstone

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

1. What steps her Department is taking to improve standards in education in Nigeria.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

As discussed with you, Mr Speaker, and as Labour Front Benchers have been advised, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is in Kuwait for an international conference on the humanitarian crisis in Syria. I hope that the House will accept her apologies for not being here to answer questions today.

Our education programmes in Nigeria have already reached 1.25 million children by improving the quality of education in 3,700 schools, and 6,800 more schools will be reached by 2014. We are supporting school-based management committees to make schools and teachers more accountable to parents, and we are providing training to more than 60,000 teachers.

[Mr Williams]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer and for the reaffirmation of the Government’s commitment to Nigeria, where there are 10.5 million out-of-school children. Inevitably, we focus on the number of children at school, but given the pressures on teacher training, the infrastructure of schools, and the number of children in classes, can we also focus on the quality of the education that those children are receiving?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his work on the all-party group on global education for all. He goes to the heart of the matter, which is not just the number of children coming into school but the quality of the teaching. The statistics show that in Kwara, for example, only 75 of 19,000 teachers passed a test for nine-year-olds—that gives some idea of the scale of the challenge that we are facing. My hon. Friend will therefore be pleased to know that we have a new teacher development programme supporting over 60,000 teachers.