Education

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Thursday 20th July 2023 Ministerial Corrections

[Nick Gibb]

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study was published in May this year. England had come fourth among 43 countries that tested children of the same age, nine and 10-year-olds. In 2012 we introduced the phonics screening check, testing year 1 pupils for their progress in reading and phonics.

Topical Questions

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

The chairs of the governing bodies of 19 primary and secondary schools across the London Boroughs of Richmond and Kingston upon Thames have today written to the Education Secretary, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss the crippling funding and recruitment challenges they face. Will she agree to meet them?

[Nick Gibb]

Of course the Secretary of State will agree, as she has just said to me. We are spending record amounts of funding on schools. The Secretary of State achieved an extra £2 billion in the autumn statement last year and we are now spending £59.6 billion on school funding.

[Official Report, 17 July 2023, Vol. 736, c. 620.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for Schools:

An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson).

The correct response should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We have engaged in an extensive reform of teacher training, introducing what we call the golden thread: a higher level of requirements in initial teacher training and a two-year early career framework for teachers just starting off in their career. Those standards will mean that in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and in all subjects, teachers are better prepared to enter the profession.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

The chairs of the governing bodies of 19 primary and secondary schools across the London Boroughs of Richmond and Kingston upon Thames have today written to the Education Secretary, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss the crippling funding and recruitment challenges they face. Will she agree to meet them?

[Nick Gibb]

Of course the Secretary of State will agree, as she has just said to me. We are spending record amounts of funding on schools. The Secretary of State achieved an extra £2 billion in the autumn statement last year and we are now spending £59.6 billion on school funding. We have recruited 2,800 more teachers this year than last year and we have a record number of teachers in the profession, at 468,000, but of course I am happy to talk to the hon. Lady and the teachers in her constituency to discuss their particular concerns.

Safety of School Buildings

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Yes. That is another intervention criticising us for another success, where a school is being rebuilt. We do keep updating these surveys, which is why we had the initial survey and then the condition data collection, CDC1, which is what this debate is about. We have already commenced CDC2, which will report by 2026, I believe. This is about making sure that we keep that information up to date and relevant to all the schools.

Last December, I had the chance to visit Guiseley School in Yorkshire, where I saw for myself the transformative effect that the new, modern buildings being provided will make to the entire school community. That was under the school rebuilding programme. Littleborough Primary School in Rochdale celebrated the handover of its new buildings in March, the first school to do so under the programme. I am pleased to say that a further three schools—Whitworth Community High School, Lytham St Annes High School and Tarleton Academy—are also now using their new buildings, which were refurbished or rebuilt under the school rebuilding programme.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

The Minister has said that he either cannot or will not publish the data from CDC1, but on 21 February, in response to a written question from me, the Minister confirmed that 39 schools have been either partially or fully closed since the last general election because they were deemed unsafe. He refused to name those schools or say how many were in each region in subsequent written questions from me, and his Department is now late in responding to a freedom of information request from my team asking for that data. Will he commit today to publish which schools were affected before the House rises for recess? If he will not do so, will he say why not?

[Nick Gibb]

I ask the hon. Member to hold off, because I am trying to create a sense of anticipation for the answer to this debate. We will come to the point that she has made on CDC1 later in my speech. May I also mention that her local authority received almost £1.2 million in school condition allocation for 2023-24 to address these very issues in her local authority area?

It is not just the school community that benefits from this capital spending. Construction projects support jobs and create apprenticeships and T-level placements. The Department is using its experience with innovative methods of construction to support more highly skilled jobs and improve productivity. Our procurement frameworks provide opportunities across the industry and enable small and medium-sized enterprises to benefit from the opportunities that a long pipeline of projects brings.

Furthermore, the earlier priority school building programme has handed over new buildings at more than 500 schools, as part of its commitment to delivering 532 projects overall. We are now building schools more quickly, more efficiently and better targeted on need than ever before. Since 2010, we have reformed our capital programme to bring down the cost of school building. The James Review of Education Capital in 2011 had found that the Building Schools for the Future programme was overly bureaucratic and did not deliver cost-efficient buildings of consistent quality.

Universal Infant Free School Meals

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your beady eye, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing this important but short debate on school food. We can all agree on the importance of ensuring that children in school are given the best opportunities to succeed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Alan Mak), in an intervention, raised the issue of school breakfasts. The Government are committed to continuing to support school breakfasts. In November last year we extended the national school breakfast programme for an additional year. Overall, we are investing up to £30 million in that programme, which will support up to 2,500 schools in disadvantaged areas, meaning that thousands of children from low-income families will be offered free, nutritious breakfasts to better support their attainment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester also raised the issue of the holiday activities and food programme. This year, the Government are again investing over £200 million in that programme, with all 152 local authorities in England delivering it. Last summer, the programme reached over 685,000 children and young people in England.

The Government support the provision of food in schools so that pupils are well nourished, develop healthy eating habits and can concentrate and learn. The universal infant free school meal policy, introduced by a Conservative- led Government in 2014, is a vital component of that provision.

[Munira Wilson]

I hope the Minister will recognise that that was a Liberal Democrat policy? It was a flagship policy introduced by the coalition, and we were very proud of it. However, since 2014, as we have heard, the funding for that policy has only risen by 11p, which is why we have the yawning gap that Members have pointed out today. Will the Minister put on record that schools should not be forced to choose between cutting and scrimping on teaching budgets—and other budgets that benefit children—and eroding food standards?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Monday 28th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The 2021-22 academic year saw more than 86,000 hours of music teaching in secondary schools—the highest number since 2014. They were taught by more than 7,000 music teachers in secondary schools—the highest number since 2015. Schools should provide timetabled curriculum music of at least one hour a week. We have published an excellent model music curriculum that schools can lean on to help to deliver that.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Why will the Secretary of State not listen to her Cabinet colleague the Secretary of State for Levelling Up and the Government’s own food adviser by expanding the eligibility for free school meals? Hungry children cannot learn and tend to behave badly, too.

Awarding Qualifications in 2021 and 2022

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

In my recent visits to secondary schools in Twickenham, year 10 and 12 pupils told me how anxious they are because of the lack of clarity on exams in 2022—whether they will even go ahead, how they might be assessed and what they might be assessed on. Teachers told me that, with all the disruption, they want to focus their precious face-to-face teaching time on parts of the syllabus that will definitely be assessed next year. Can the Minister please commit to putting pupils, parents and teachers out of their misery by providing a clear steer on 2022 assessments, and not sometime in the autumn but by the beginning of September?

[Nick Gibb]

We published the consultation, jointly with Ofqual, on 12 July, and it sets out our proposals for how we will conduct exams in 2022. The Secretary of State has made it very clear that our plan is for exams to go ahead, and we want schools to teach the full curriculum. The purpose of the adaptations is to make the exams as fair as possible for students and to give them confidence in taking those exams, given the disruption they have suffered over the past 16 months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

What financial support his Department is providing to schools to fund additional costs relating to the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

Some £102 million of funding for exceptional covid-related costs incurred by schools in the first lockdown period of March to July 2020 has already been distributed to schools, and for November and December, schools under financial pressure that have exceptional additional staffing costs due to covid-related absences have been able to claim from the covid workforce fund.

[Munira Wilson [V]]

I am grateful to the Minister for his response. He is aware from our discussions that many Twickenham schools have incurred significant one-off and ongoing costs to become covid secure that they have not been able to reclaim, at the same time as losing tens of thousands of pounds from lettings and fundraising. Many of them do not have significant cash reserves to rely on, nor does the council have the money to bail them out, so if schools are to reopen fully and safely as soon as possible, could the Minister please advise which staff and activities he thinks are expendable so that they can make ends meet?

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Member will be aware that we secured a three-year funding settlement for schools, with a 4% increase in funding for the next financial year, and we have also secured for this year a £1 billion catch-up fund and the covid workforce fund. If a school is genuinely in financial difficulties, it should talk to the local authority if it is a maintained school, or to the Education and Skills Funding Agency if it is an academy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Munira Wilson

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

As I said to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), everything we are doing is about ensuring that every student has a fighting chance to do well in the exam. There is a broad consensus that exams are the fairest way to judge a student’s assessment. We want to ensure that that fairness is spread right across the country, regardless of the experience any individual will have had as a result of the virus. That is why we are delaying the exams, why there have been changes to the assessment and why we are still working with Ofqual and the exam boards on further mitigations and contingencies to ensure that every student is treated fairly. We will have more to say about those issues shortly.

[Munira Wilson]

Young people across this country, including Sophie, an A-level student in my constituency, are extremely anxious about this year’s exams after last year’s fiasco, and due to the precious face-to-face teaching time lost in the first lockdown and to the self-isolations and teacher absences currently. Why will the Minister not, please, listen to Sophie and follow the lead of the Liberal Democrat Education Minister in Wales by providing clarity and certainty now, by cancelling exams and moving to a robust teacher-led assessment? As Sophie said to me: “We are not lazy. We need your help.” Will the Minister listen to her and help her?

[Nick Gibb]

We listen to all opinions on this issue, but there is a broad consensus, including among unions and school leaders, that holding exams is the best option for next summer. That is the fairest and best way of judging students’ performance. But as I said earlier, we know that all students due to sit exams next year have experienced disruption to their education due to the pandemic, and that is why we are working closely with the school sector to ensure that clear contingency plans are in place for students who are ill or have to self-isolate. We are engaging widely on contingency plans and other measures to ensure that exams are fair this year.