Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Pat Glass and David Laws

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is entirely right to raise this very important issue. It is a concern that the take-up of free school meals varies so much across the country. That is why the Department has now introduced an eligibility checking service to make it easier and quicker to check which families are entitled to free school meals. I can tell my hon. Friend that under-registration for the east of England has actually fallen from 23% to 18% over the past year.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Children from disadvantaged homes and those with special educational needs are most likely to be hit by the cuts to 18-plus funding. When the Secretary of State met the Education Committee just before Christmas, he told us that he regretted the cut, but that it was the best worst option. These children are the closest to being not in education, employment or training; are they really the ones who should be hit hardest and first?

[Mr Laws]

The Minister for Skills and Enterprise, who covers this area, has already responded to this point. These are very difficult decisions that we are having to take as a consequence of the budget deficit we inherited from the previous Government. It is a difficult decision, but I believe that the analysis will show that it is justified.

Teacher Training and Supply

Debate between Pat Glass and David Laws

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laws]

I certainly stand by the comments about Labour’s policy on free schools. However, I will respond to the points made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central on School Direct, and then—I assure the hon. Lady—I will return to the issue of QTS before we finish the debate.

As the hon. Member for Sefton Central knows, the 2010 White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, set out our ambition for a schools system that can compete with the best in the world. Improving teacher quality is at the heart of the plan, as he mentioned, in both attracting good applicants and ensuring a good supply of teachers in all subjects over time.

To improve teacher quality, it is vital that the teaching profession can attract and retain the best people. As the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues mentioned, top-performing education systems around the world, such as those in Finland and South Korea, draw their teachers from the most academically able candidates who demonstrate the right mix of personal and intellectual qualities. Candidates then go through high-quality training, often led by schools, focusing on the skills and knowledge that they need to become successful teachers.

By making teaching a highly attractive profession, we are seeing high-quality teachers enter and stay in teaching. More top graduates and career changers than ever before are coming into teaching. In spite of the economic upturn that we are now seeing, we expect to hit 96% of our recruitment target this year, after a period of recruiting above the target. There is currently no evidence of teacher vacancy rates rising.

Data published before the Select Committee hearing on 11 September provided an accurate picture of where we were with recruitment at that stage in the cycle. The picture is mixed across subjects, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged. The data showed that we had exceeded our targets in some subjects: chemistry, where we achieved 110% of the target; English, 114%; and history, 137%. However, they also showed that we were likely to miss targets in subjects such as maths and physics. Final recruitment data will be published at the end of the year.

Importantly, we over-allocated—I will return to that point later—the allocations, particularly in this first year of School Direct, to ensure that we did not lose high-quality people across the board, particularly in physics, maths and computer sciences. The under-recruited areas referred to by a number of hon. Members were those where both higher education institutions themselves and School Direct did not fill up their full quotas; they both had shortages. It would be a far greater concern if HEIs had filled up their quotas but School Direct had come in under target, but they both came in below their allocated numbers.

[Pat Glass]

Does the Minister not recognise that even though HEIs have fallen short, there is a huge difference between School Direct and HEIs in the missed targets in maths and physics?

[Mr Laws]

I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the exact figures, which I do not have to hand, but there were considerable undershoots on both, so we have not been suppressing demand for places in higher education institutions, particularly in those shortage subjects. As she will know, maths and physics are subjects that have traditionally been challenging to recruit for, although we recruited a record number of physics trainees last year. We would need 37% of all physics graduates to come into teacher training to meet our target for physics teachers alone.

We recognise that we need to do more to improve recruitment in shortage subjects, and to increase the number of people taking A-levels, which is likely to increase the pool of people who can be drawn into those subjects. That is why we announced last week that we will make more scholarships available and change bursaries to help recruit the most talented graduates in key subjects. Scholarships awarded by respected subject organisations will be made available to the top maths, physics, chemistry and computing trainees, which will build on the existing scholarships that have proved highly popular. Since the Government introduced scholarships in 2011, 425 high-quality graduates in maths, physics, chemistry and computing have been attracted to teaching through the scheme.

AS-levels and A-levels

Debate between Pat Glass and David Laws

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing the debate and on putting her case so clearly and in such a measured way. I am also pleased that we have had useful and helpful contributions from a number of other Members, including members of the Education Committee.

A lot of the contributions have pointed out that some of the proposals that we are discussing are controversial, and clearly they are. We are aware of a lot of the feedback that has come in from different organisations. Sometimes when Governments go out to consultation on particular proposals, they realise that they have made mistakes and they change the proposals. As a number of Members have indicated, we did that on the reforms to GCSEs that we had proposed, but I should say to those Members who have at times today suggested that popularity is the benchmark for introducing policies and the ultimate test that there are many other examples of changes in education and in other Government policy areas where proposals were extremely controversial at the time—I am thinking of key stage 2 national tests, the introduction of Ofsted and sponsored academies—and not welcomed by many in the relevant sector when they were introduced that have proven to be generally very successful and which are now welcomed. The consensus changes.

If we wanted an example of what happens when policy is introduced just on the basis of what is popular with the sector, we have Wales to look at. Wales has introduced, over time, many policies that were extremely popular in the sector, but which have proven, in many cases, to do huge damage to the quality of education in Wales. That is now widely and internationally recognised.

[Pat Glass]

Does the Minister accept that although those controversial reforms that he mentioned, such as the introduction of Ofsted and key stage 2 tests, may have been unpopular with some people working in education, there was nevertheless a body of evidence to support their introduction? Therefore, although they were perhaps controversial, there was huge evidence behind them, and they have subsequently proven the evidence.

[Mr Laws]

That was not said by many of the opponents of those proposals at the time. Actually, many opponents, including to sponsored academies, continue to maintain today that there is no evidence to show the success of those policies, so I do not agree with the hon. Lady that the issue is as simple as that.