Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Kane and Justine Greening

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. As I have said, it is important that we reflect the fact that our funding needs to follow children who have additional needs. In particular, we know there is an attainment gap for children from lower-income and more disadvantaged areas and families. We also know that many children will start both primary and secondary school already behind, so we need to give an uplift for those pupils to enable their teachers to help them to catch up. These are important parts of the formula but, as he set out, we need to look carefully at other aspects of it, and we will do so.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I have to say to the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) that he is not seeing the wood for the trees. The Minister for School Standards recently wrote to the Chelmsford Weekly News about the uplift of 1.9%, which the Secretary of State mentioned, but there is a denial of the wider picture that £66 million is being withdrawn from funding in Essex overall. Will she explain how Chelmsford County High School for Girls, which is estimated to lose £300,000, will make its cuts?

[Justine Greening]

I think I have answered the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns), but the bottom line is that the only budget that would go up under Labour is debt interest, which would lead to fewer teachers and less investment in education, not more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Kane and Justine Greening

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

It is important that all children leave our education system with something to show for their names, particularly in maths and English—ideally at a level congruent with their potential. We brought in the GCSE resit policy, because we think that students who achieved a D grade and were therefore pretty close to the better standard should have another go at doing so. However, the functional skills qualifications have been well received by employers and we want to look at how they can also play a role in enabling all our young people to show their accomplishments.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Grammar schools represent the Prime Minister’s flagship policy for improving outcomes, but according to today’s edition of The Independent, officials in the Department have said that there is no chance of a new selective school before 2020. Will the Secretary of State tell us how many selective schools will be built during the current Parliament?

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

At key stage 4, the attainment gap between more disadvantaged young people and those who start off from better backgrounds has been getting lower. That is, in part, because we are putting resources into the system, but we are also steadily improving the system itself. The hon. Gentleman talks about further education: one of our key aims across this Parliament is to make sure that technical education delivers the same gold-standard education as academic education delivers for those following academic routes.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

In answer to my earlier question, the Secretary of State failed to commit to building a new selective school during this Parliament. Today the Education Policy Institute has released evidence showing that the 11-plus test cannot be tutor-proofed. Does she agree that selection at 11 will favour families that can afford it and do nothing to improve the educational outcomes of the most disadvantaged pupils?

[Justine Greening]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. As usual, we have had criticism from the Opposition, but no alternative policies whatever—and, indeed, a continued failure to set out whether they would close existing grammars. It would be fantastic to get clarity at some stage on Labour party policy. We want more good school places for children, particularly disadvantaged children. We know that disadvantaged children on free school meals who get into grammars see their attainment gap close by the time they leave.

Schools that work for Everyone

Debate between Mike Kane and Justine Greening

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend sets out a serious issue. It is one of the reasons for some of the proposals to ensure that grammars work more carefully with their feeder schools that are primaries in areas of lower income families. It is vital that we break that link. An important piece of work done by Kent County Council looked at some of the reasons why parents from lower income families were often less inclined to send their children to grammar schools. In many cases that was not just about the test; it was about school uniforms and transport costs. These are all practical steps that we can take to remove the barriers that parents sometimes wrongly think exist, which dissuade them from even applying to grammars.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

As the Secretary of State will know from her previous job, faith-based institutions are the biggest providers of schools on the planet. I think the grammar school issue is a smokescreen to hide the disastrous policy of the 50% arbitrary cap that this Government introduced, which has led to few schools being built in areas of demand and thousands of parents therefore being denied their choice. That is this Government’s record.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Kane and Justine Greening

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We recognise the Scottish Government’s work in Malawi, which is also very much the focus of UK work. On young people’s role, from my perspective, it is not simply that young people can be, and are, advocates for development but that they are many of the people on the ground delivering. If we look at the response to Ebola in Sierra Leone, young people in communities did the work to help those communities understand how to stay safe.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

For young people in countries most affected by the trauma of war and displacement there can be as few as one psychiatrist or mental health worker per 2 million people. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the Department has adequate resources to fulfil its commitment to young people’s mental health, as set out in the disability framework?

[Justine Greening]

We have brought in the disability framework over the past couple of years because we felt that we had not focused on that area in development in the way that we should have. Children’s mental health is incredibly important. We have put in more money through great agencies such as UNICEF to fund psychosocial support. One of the biggest problems we face is making sure that we have Arabic speakers with the right kinds of skills in the right quantity to deal with the scale of the challenge.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Kane and Justine Greening

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We hope that we will be able to take a big step forward by announcing agreements with both Jordan and Lebanon that, in return for their taking political steps forward on enabling Syrian refugees to work legally, we will be able to mobilise international finance to create jobs in those countries—not just for Syrian refugees, but for host communities, too. That will be in everyone’s interest.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Malawi is the poorest country on the planet, yet our 1955 tax treaty between the UK and Malawi severely limits the country’s ability to raise taxes on UK companies based there. Will the Secretary of State commit to looking at this issue of the treaty and to making it fit for the 21st century?

[Justine Greening]

This issue of domestic resource mobilisation and taxes is something that we have very much ramped up in DFID’s work over the last few years. I set up a joint unit with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that sees HMRC officials working with countries to help drive their tax revenues up. We will continue that support, particularly in Africa, over the coming months.