Oral Answers to Questions

John Bercow Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

The Minister will know that only 1% of children who move from mainstream to alternative provision during their GCSE years achieve good GCSEs, including in English and maths. What more can be done to support this important group of students?

[Mr Speaker]

I do not want the House to get the wrong idea; we seem to have gone from Harrow to Rugby, but that does not mean that others cannot take part. We are focused predominantly on the state sector.

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) raises an important point. The standards of achievement in the alternative provision sector are not high enough. The children who attend those schools are vulnerable and we want to do more to improve the situation, which is why we have recently commissioned new research into the relationship between schools and alternative provision to find out what more we can do to raise standards.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Let us hear about the situation in Wirral.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The situation in Wirral is that we have fine teachers but insufficient Government resources. When it comes to literacy and numeracy, I want all the schools in my constituency to be good or outstanding. In the case of one rapidly improving school, Bebington High School, an administrative delay seems to be getting in the way of teaching and learning, and there is an issue with the resources for that. Will the Minister meet me to find a way to use our leadership to stop red tape getting in the way of children’s learning?

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[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 gave universities a duty to provide additional support to students with special educational needs and disabilities. However, the Government provided no general guidance or any means for students to ensure that their rights are met, apart from taking the universities to court. Does the Minister agree that that is justifiable?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady is thinking of a matter of great importance, but its relationship to the question under consideration is not clear. We are grateful to her, and she may be able to unburden herself further at a later stage if she is lucky.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to improve the quality of further education provision.

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[Anne Milton]

Funding is important, which is why I mentioned those figures. The strategic college improvement fund will be very important. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth merged to form East Coast College, which is a much more financially independent institution. We are also putting £500 million a year into technical education to increase the hours of learning for more than 50% of those on technical routes; providing £20 million to help teachers prepare for those routes; and continuing to protect £4,000 a year for 16 and 17-year-olds. I am very aware, however, that this is a complex sector delivering a wide range of courses in quite difficult financial circumstances.

[Mr Speaker]

Too long.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her efforts on behalf of Exeter College, which, as she will know, was inexplicably not granted the contract by the Skills Funding Agency to provide apprenticeships through small firms. I would like her to continue those efforts, working with officials from her Department and the agency, because if this is not rectified, or a way through found for this, it will do serious damage both to the provision of apprenticeships in the Exeter area and to Exeter College, which is one of the top performing colleges in the country.

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[Damian Hinds]

Language skills are important for young people in Scotland, as they are for those in England. In England, we have looked across the world for examples of best practice in various subjects, and we are happy to share that information with others. I am keen to work collaboratively with the Scottish Government, so that we can both see what we can learn from one another.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Michael Fabricant.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Thank you, “Herr” Fabricant. [Laughter.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I remind Ministers that there is no obligation to provide multi-sentence replies? There is no prohibition on single sentence replies. In fact, some people think that they are quite desirable.

[Damian Hinds]

That is very fortunate, Mr Speaker, as I do not quite know where to go after that. My hon. Friend makes a very good and interesting point about the value of languages.

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[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)]

The Year of Engineering, this year, is a cross-government national campaign to raise the profile of jobs in engineering for all young people. More than 980 partners have signed up to be part of the year, which includes workshops, toolkits for use in schools and site tours.

[Mr Speaker]

Yes, but the Minister was seeking to group this question with number 15, from the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mrs Badenoch). Ministers seem a tad discombobulated this afternoon.

[Anne Milton]

Mr Speaker, my very sincere apologies. I believe I did that on another occasion, too. I was answering questions 11 and 15 together.

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[Nadhim Zahawi]

I have been to see both Hackney and Doncaster. In Hackney’s case, there was a turnaround in 2006; in Doncaster, it was over the last two years. It is about leadership, and a better-quality outcome depends not just on the leaders at the top, but on the social workers on the frontline being able to feel confident in the service that they provide. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

The sedentary chuntering of the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) would constitute a book in itself, and it might sell rather well.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why we introduced the school sport premium, a very important initiative. Sport is very important not only for reducing obesity but for ensuring that children can concentrate in lessons.

[Mr Speaker]

The mention of sport gives me a heaven-sent opportunity to congratulate the inimitable Roger Federer on his latest triumph. He just gets better and better.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

T8. Visiting my old school, Notting Hill and Ealing High, which produced not only me but the ex-Conservative MP Angela Rumbold, I found concern, among staff and students, about political imbalance in the new A-level history syllabus. It completely omits the 1945 to ’51 Labour Government, asks candidates for Conservative strengths and Labour weaknesses and stops in 1997. By deleting Labour, are they trying to rewrite history?