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Debate between Michelle Donelan and Nick Gibb(7 years ago)
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Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
Last Friday, I held the Wiltshire festival of engineering, inspiring more than 3,000 children and involving more than 35 businesses and organisations. The Schools Minister kindly attended. The event highlighted that Wiltshire really is a hub of engineering. Will the Minister confirm that the new careers strategy will encourage a better link between schools and businesses, and prioritise sectors with severe skills shortages, such as STEM?
Nick Gibb
It was a real pleasure to join my hon. Friend at the engineering fair and I pay tribute to her for creating such a wonderful occasion. It was attended by thousands of pupils from years 6 to 9, who will be inspired to take up STEM careers. A-level maths is now the single most popular A-level choice for the fourth year in a row.
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Debate between Michelle Donelan and Nick Gibb(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
It is nice to hear from the hon. Lady for the third time. We are spending record amounts on capital: £23 billion has been allocated for capital spending over this spending review period. We created 600,000 more school places in the previous Parliament, and we are committed to creating another 600,000 in this Parliament. We are spending £40 billion a year on revenue funding for schools—a record amount that over the next two years will rise, as pupil numbers rise, to £42 billion. None of that would be possible if we relied on the Labour party to oversee the economy. We have a strong economy and we are rescuing it from the fiasco of the previous Labour Government.
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
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Debate between Michelle Donelan and Nick Gibb(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
As I said in my letter to my hon. Friend, the Government believe that all students should study a broad and balanced curriculum. Design and technology is an important and valued subject, which is why we are doing a huge amount to promote the importance of D and T, and why we have reformed and improved the curriculum, working with the James Dyson Foundation and other experts to raise the quality and rigour of the design and technology GCSE. D and T is a very popular GCSE choice, with 185,000 entries this year.
Michelle Donelan
We have an annual shortage of 69,000 trained engineers in the UK, with only 6% of that workforce being female. Those shortages are much more severe than in computer science. As the Minister has pointed out, the new design and technology GCSE has the same academic rigour as the other subjects in the EBacc, so will he explain to the House why he felt that computer science was more worthy of EBacc status than design and technology?
Mr Gibb
The EBacc is about a small number of core academic subjects, focused on those subjects that keep options open. I am confident that the new, reformed design and technology GCSE will lead to even more young people wanting to take this qualification in future years, once the new curriculum is in place. However, our policy objective is for more students, particularly those taking design and technology, to study the traditional sciences.
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Debate between Michelle Donelan and Nick Gibb(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
T9. Will my hon. Friend please join me in recognising the vastly improved design and technology GCSE, which comes into play next year and which will help to inspire the next generation of technical and engineering professionals?
Mr Gibb
Yes, we have made some significant reforms to the D and T GCSE and A-level, working closely with the Design and Technology Association and the James Dyson Foundation to ensure we have high-quality D and T qualifications that lead on to higher education, apprenticeships and high-quality employment in the sector. I hope the qualification itself will lead to more young people taking it.