Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Scott Mann

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The Troops to Teachers scheme has resulted in a number of high-qualified ex-military coming into our schools. It has been slow to start, but it is a good programme, and I am determined that it will continue.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

8. What recent discussions his Department has had with the Treasury on funding for further education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

T7. How many secondary schools offer Mandarin as a language choice, and what can we do to increase the number of schools that offer it?

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

My hon. Friend has raised an important point. In 2017, approximately 91 state-maintained schools entered students for Chinese GCSE. There were 3,654 GCSE entries in that year, and 2,800 A-level entries in 2018. Maintained secondary schools must teach a foreign language at key stage 3, and we fund 64 schools for the Mandarin excellence programme, which is intended to put 5,000 students on track towards becoming fluent in Mandarin.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Scott Mann

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

6. What steps her Department is taking to promote coding and programming education in schools.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

We are committing £84 million of new funding between 2018 and 2023 to support computing teaching in schools, which will include training up to 8,000 secondary teachers to teach the new computing science GSCE, a national centre for computing education and an online resource for the A-level. That will support schools in delivering the new computing curriculum, which includes coding from key stage 1, and our reformed GCSE and A-level, both of which have a strong focus on programming.

[Scott Mann]

Cornwall is one of the fastest growing areas for tech start-ups in the whole country, and it is vital to address the challenges that we face on rural poverty as we move from a place-based economy to a skills-based economy. Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the secondary schools and the colleges in Cornwall are ready and raring to go to fill those gaps in that growing market in the economy?

[Nick Gibb]

We recognise both the challenges and the successes in Cornwall. My hon. Friend, of course, is one of Cornwall’s greatest champions. Cornwall and the Scilly Isles is one of the first areas where we are establishing a skills advisory panel with the local enterprise partnership to bring together local representatives, including local businesses; train providers and colleges; and develop a comprehensive analysis of the area’s skills needs to help ensure that skills provision meets those needs.

Term-time Leave

Debate between Nick Gibb and Scott Mann

Monday 26th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr McCabe, and I thank my Cornish colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), for spearheading this debate. He has been instrumental in making the public aware of today’s debate and the general debate in wider circles about allowing children to be taken out of school to go on holiday. As an MP for a key tourist destination, I know how the current policy is detrimental to my constituents and the economy of North Cornwall and of Cornwall as a whole.

There are various reasons why I support calls for allowing children two weeks off in term-time. First, I do not feel it is right for the state to tell parents when they can and cannot take their children on holiday, as my hon. Friend said. As a parent, I would not do anything to negatively affect my child’s education. However, I am also confident that were my child to come out of school for a holiday, she would have a broader understanding of the world and a memorable experience that she could take back and share with her classmates. I am confident that parents in my constituency would not do anything detrimental to their child’s education; they could take them out and the educational trips would be mind-broadening.

When it comes to holidays, headteachers should regain the say over when pupils can go on holiday. The whole point of a headteacher is to run the school and remain accountable to parents, so why are we not giving parents the ability to choose and headteachers the freedom to decide? I can allude to one instance on Padstow ’Obby ’Oss day—a popular day for merriment in Padstow and in Cornwall generally—when a young person was denied leave to go out on a day that is so big for the area. Holidays and days off can be incredibly educational for children. Granted, children do learn a lot when they have high attendance in school, but two weeks’ maximum is a drop in the ocean compared with the total amount of time that they are in school. Headteachers need to be able to use discretionary powers on holidays. A headteacher has a huge understanding of the importance of education for a child.

[Mr Gibb]

I have listened carefully to another very good speech. When my hon. Friend says that two weeks is a drop in the ocean, does he mean one two-week break in the whole 11-year or 13-year career of a child, or does he mean a two-week break every year?

[Scott Mann]

I would be flexible on that. We simply need to give parents the ability to take their children out of school at some time during those years. I am not a wealthy man. I cannot afford to take my child away on holiday year after year. If we can give people the ability to save up for holidays and have a week or a couple of weeks in the sun, they will benefit from that. If a child has been out of school for too long because of sickness or holiday, we should allow headteachers to say that it is not appropriate for them to take time out for a holiday, but if someone has high attainment records and has demonstrated that they are prepared to do some educational work when they are on holiday, they should be granted it.

We believe in a free market economy. When demand goes up, prices go up. However, it is wrong to deny families on lower incomes the opportunity to go on holiday simply because of a week’s schooling. Schools need to embrace the fact that children go on holiday. They should encourage children to write diaries, take photographs and bring back souvenirs to show their school friends. Holidays are beneficial not only to them, but to their peers. What better way to learn about the world and its history or geography than to have a person in the classroom to illustrate the area they have been to?

The current policy of not allowing children to go on holiday during school time is also hitting the Cornish economy hard. It has been estimated that the west country has lost £87 million a year, with Cornwall seeing an 8% drop in visitors and revenue down by £44 million in 2014. We need that money to continue to invest in Cornwall’s tourism economy to ensure that people remain in employment. I have many constituents who work in the holiday and tourism industry, and they need to work at the very time when their children are not in school.

Such a restrictive policy means that our tourism sector has to cater for a holiday season that sees huge volumes of people visiting my constituency over six weeks, but outside that time we no longer have huge numbers of people coming down. It is very frustrating and places huge demands on business owners over those six weeks. It also creates problems with the recruitment of seasonal staff and adds to congestion on the roads. A much more flexible approach would be to allow parents to choose to holiday before or after the summer holidays, which, in economic terms, would help us to extend the tourist season.

Parents need time out. They want to go away and make memories with their children. Why should we deny people that for the sake of a few days off school? Ultimately, I support the calls being made by fellow MPs and the 120,000 people who signed the online petition. Parents should be allowed to take their children out of school and go on holiday. I hope that the Minister understands my views and will consider changing the policy.