Apprenticeships (Small Businesses)

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He, too, has brilliantly anticipated some of the themes that I want to bring up. He is right to focus on two key elements, one of which is administration and the second of which is cost, which also brings in the crucial factor of value. Let us delve deeper into the question of bureaucracy or administration. There are perceptions out there that taking on an apprentice is a time-consuming business; those of us who have done so know that it is not.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I commend my hon. Friend for his tremendous generosity in giving way so often. It shows the passion and support that there is in the Chamber for this debate. I also congratulate him on calling the debate.

Before I ask my question, I thought that I would give my hon. Friend some good news. Many of us are making a real difference in the area of apprenticeships within our own constituencies. Two weeks ago, with the support of the NAS, I launched an Eastbourne initiative to recruit 100 apprenticeships in 100 days. That was 17 days ago. I got a call yesterday from the training providers to say that we have hit 103. I am now going back to Eastbourne to say that I want 200 apprentices in 100 days. That demonstrates the real hunger that is out there for apprentices from both small and large businesses.

My hon. Friend used to be a colleague of mine on the Work and Pensions Committee until he was promoted to grander things. He will know that the Work programme, which was launched by the Department for Work and Pensions, is an enormous, costly and laudable effort to help people into work, but it appears somewhat disconnected from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which runs the excellent apprenticeship programme. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would make sense for both programmes to link up, so that we can improve job opportunities for everyone?

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. May I advise Members that interventions should be brief?

Religious Education

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to speak, Mr Brady. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on arranging this important debate.

I welcome the Department’s dialogue with universities to ascertain which GCSEs will give young people the best chance to get into the best universities. I have supported the E-bac for many years, so I am greatly encouraged that the coalition Government are moving forward with it. However, I have obvious concerns about the fact that the humanities exclude RE, so let me say a little about the importance of RE, which all my colleagues have dealt with very well.

In simple terms, there are so many different messages for our young people in the modern world that the very idea of their not receiving education from experienced RE teachers fills me with horror. There are so many dysfunctional messages out there that if young people do not have the opportunity to hear about religion in the round from experienced teachers, they will, as sure as night follows day, be more prone to taking up some of the more dangerous, outrageous and cruel messages about aspects of religion, which would do them a disservice. I therefore urge the Minister to think carefully about this.

On some more specific points, I was privileged to sponsor early-day motion 1375, and I am absolutely delighted that more than 100 Members from all parties in the House have supported it and signed it, just as many tens of thousands of members of the public have signed petitions. Indeed, if I could wave a magic wand and explain the importance of RE in schools to all 60 million-plus people in this country, No. 10 Downing street would have a petition with about 30 million signatures.

The Minister and the Department recognise that this is an issue of serious and profound concern for many people. Given that the Minister is with us today, however, I want to ask for a number of commitments. First, there is no getting away from the fact that not making RE an option in the humanities section of the E-bac will lead to reductions in RE-trained and experienced staff; in fact, I am already receiving anecdotal evidence that that is happening. What is the Minister doing to ensure that that possible trend is halted? I fear that the redundancies that will inevitably come from the Department’s proposed changes will lead to a fall in standards, less focus on RE as part of a compulsory key stage 4 curriculum and, importantly, a lack of trained resource for the future, which our children and schools will ultimately regret deeply—I certainly would, and all my colleagues in the Chamber would, too.

Secondly, when the Minister speaks at the end—I am not trying to read his mind, but I have been in constant discussion with his Department, so I am pretty sure that this is accurate—he will state that RE does not need to be included as an option in the E-bac because it is a compulsory part of the key stage 4 curriculum, but that is not the case for academies. Will he therefore clarify the situation on academies and tell us what he will do about the fact that take-up in academies is—I have heard this anecdotally—beginning to decline? That is even more relevant when we consider that academies are far more prevalent in areas where there is more deprivation and where children grow up in a range of different religions. In a way, that makes it even more important that academies have the trained, experienced RE teachers to teach children in a balanced way.

Thirdly, I suspect that the Minister will state that the number of students studying RE has risen from 16% in 1995 to 28% in 2010 and that the take-up of history and geography has declined over that period. I agree with him and accept that that is an issue. I welcome the E-Bac, but does the Minister accept not only that the increased take-up of RE is a good thing, but that excluding it from the E-bac will perhaps lead to an even more dramatic decline in take-up than geography has experienced over the past 16 years—from 45% to 26%? What will he do to address that? I would like him to commit to revisiting and reviewing the role of RE, should take-up decline.

[Dr William McCrae in the Chair]

Essentially, I and many of my colleagues—on both sides of the House, and of all beliefs and none—along with hundreds of thousands of members of the public, profoundly believe that the changes could lead to a diminution for our children of RE teaching by trained and experienced teachers. I urge the Minister to reconsider the Department’s direction of travel, to listen to us and to the public, and to not do a U-turn but change his mind as the facts change.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. As I said at the outset, I wish to make a plea for better evaluation of what works. My hope, although not my direction, is that more Sure Start children’s centres would therefore follow best practice.

From 2001 to 2009, I was chairman of the Oxford Parent Infant Project—OXPIP—which is a children’s charity operating around Oxfordshire. In the past year, it has become co-located with the Rose Hill Sure Start children’s centre. When I first became its chairman, OXPIP helped families who were struggling to bond with their newborn babies and provided psychotherapeutic support for families who were simply desperate. I am talking about people who are perhaps suicidal or about to harm their baby, who are desperately depressed and who simply cannot cope. OXPIP helps those parents to get over that, to build a secure attachment with their babies and to move on confident of being loving parents as part of a loving family. OXPIP’s results have been truly astonishing and there is a desperate need to evaluate quantitatively the work of such organisations, so that such best practice can become widespread in children’s centres.

In 2001, the Rose Hill Sure Start children’s centre was just starting out, as was OXPIP, and in those days it was all about creating a large building and it had a large budget. It was focused on outreach and putting lots of resources into play. My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness made the good point that it has taken a lot of time to get children’s centres to the point where they are really effective, they know what works and they know where the best value for money lies, so it would be a great shame now to try to form any sort of revolution in children’s centres and end up throwing away all the good stuff that has come out of that long term of experience.

In those early days, OXPIP was a charity with very little funding, no statutory money whatever and only the money it could raise through its own efforts. We were successful in getting a significant and ballooning lottery grant, so we had three years of ever-rising income from which we could build on our platform. The sad fact was that the Sure Start children’s centre would not even cover the cost of providing a service. It wanted to engage OXPIP’s services, but only at a flat rate that did not reflect the true cost of providing it. We therefore had a ridiculous scenario in which a charity that was living hand to mouth and was totally dependent, in the early days, on the good will of volunteers was subsidising a Sure Start children’s centre that had a huge budget and that did not seem to understand that OXPIP’s work really defined what Sure Start was all about—providing children with a sure start in life.

From that day to this, 10 years on, we have gone from strength to strength. As I have said, in the last year OXPIP has co-located with the Sure Start children’s centre, and that has been a complete success story. They have many different approaches regarding the different backgrounds of the many diverse nationalities and cultures found in Oxford. They provide support to fathers, mothers, grandparents, foster parents and adoptive parents, and many different services. Now that OXPIP, of which I remain a trustee, is co-located with Sure Start, we can focus on providing psychotherapeutic support for families who are really in difficulty. That has worked very well. I wanted to share that experience with hon. Members because I feel that Sure Start children’s centres have come a very long way and it is terribly important that the Government seek to improve on that and to provide more evidence about what works best, rather than interfering with and possibly damaging it.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I concur with much of what my hon. Friend and other hon. Members on both sides have said about Sure Start being a tremendous success. It is now bedding down and although I have some anxieties about local authority flexibility, I think it is broadly going in the right direction. One thing I am particularly pleased about is the increased entitlement to 15 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds. My view—I think that everyone who has spoken so far has said this—is that the more children from disadvantaged areas we catch early the better and that the entitlement for all three and four-year-olds will make a real difference. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank my hon. Friend for that timely remark. I was going to resist the temptation to talk about early infant brain development, but I shall just spend 30 seconds on it now. I absolutely agree with him, but I feel that the money should be focused on nought to two-year-olds for the simple reason that a baby’s brain development is at its peak rate at between six and 18 months. That is when the frontal cortex grows as a result of a secure attachment to a loving carer. That loving attachment enables that part of the brain to put on a healthy growth spurt, giving the child the capacity for lifelong mental health even before they are a toddler. In the absence of such an attachment, intervention when the child is three or four is too late, so I absolutely agree that the extra money for the early years is important, but I think it is coming in too late and I would rather it was focused on the nought to two-year-olds to support families at a time when the outcomes for their baby matters so desperately. Once a baby reaches two years old, that opportunity is significantly reduced, so anything we do after that is already too late.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

Indeed. I hope my own local authority will change its mind under pressure from those who use the excellent children’s centres in my patch. I am sure that throughout the country there will be a large number of closures of children’s centres. That will be a disgrace, because I know what good work children’s centres are doing.

May I take up a remark made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead? He visits schools and sees how important the first two years are. I used to boast that I visited more schools than any other MP, and I am trying to keep up that track record. When I visit urban schools I see the difficulties that he has identified, measured against the 10 things that children should be able to do. I visit schools with fantastic heads and children’s centres with fantastic leaders who improve children’s behaviour and performance enormously, but 40% of the children will not be in those primary schools in a year because of the churn in our schools. We do not discuss that enough.

How can children be stimulated when in many of our major towns and cities they live in totally mobile populations? It is not the old-style poverty of the coalfields and shipyards, but the poverty of churn and change. In so many of our constituencies, heads and Sure Start leaders do not know which children will come through their doors in just a few weeks, which is a real problem. However, they do know that children will often have no one at home who speaks English to support them in learning our language. When those children go home, the television will not be in English. Sometimes, because of political correctness, we turn away from the reality of what is happening in our schools.

I fear that, as the world changes and the middle east turns itself upside down, for example, even higher rates of migration will result in even higher rates of change in our schools. I am not against migration and hold no extreme views on the matter, as everyone who knows me would acknowledge, but I know that our children’s centres and primary schools in urban areas are at the front line of that change. We cannot carry on asking teachers, heads and Sure Start leaders to cope with the increasing churn and turmoil resulting from the number of new children, so few of whom have a command of English, or indeed of many of the standard requirements that we expect in schools and children’s centres. We all pick up on that point but sometimes ignore it. We ask professionals to do a job, but not all children live in the leafy suburbs or the countryside.

[Stephen Lloyd]

That is an important and well-made point, but does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the additional investment for increasing the number of health visitors to 4,200 is surely a good thing for a number of reasons, not least the important issue that he has addressed?

[Mr Sheerman]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman made that intervention, because I was moving on to the funding of health visitors. I am not entirely sure or comfortable about when that money will come in, because I had heard that it is not yet and that it might be in 2012; there is nothing in black and white. I would be pleased if a member of the ministerial team would let us know during the debate whether the funding is coming and whether it is from the health budget, as one Minister has told me. If that is true, it will be a real plus for the overall budget and to be welcomed.

Where the health visitors are based is also important, and I hope that they will be concentrated in children’s centres. Some of us will remember hearing the head of the Royal College of General Practitioners say in evidence to the Select Committee that half its members did not know what a children’s centre was and that the other half thought that it was just competition for health visitors. Integration and working together are important.

It is also important to consider the revolutionary step at the heart of children’s centres, which has been missed out of the debate so far. The revolutionary step is that they view a child holistically. A child is not a child with a bit of educational difficulty here and a bit of early stimulation there, or with a little health problem here and language difficulties there. The beauty of children’s centres is that a child gets all that support and evaluation in one place. Parents do not have to push a pram all over town to go to one clinic for a certain service and somewhere else for another, as my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) said. The fact is that providing a holistic service for a child delivers the best chance of giving that child the environment in which they can thrive.

While the Committee was conducting that inquiry, we were looking at young people who were not in education, employment or training. When we went to Holland, we found the Dutch experience particularly interesting, because they also looked at young people holistically. They have centres where young people can have a health evaluation and an aptitude evaluation, where employers and colleges are represented and there are seminar rooms for people who had been NEETs before gaining employment. Those centres provide an all-purpose focus for young people. When we are talking about people’s lives, it is that holistic approach that seems to work, and I recommend that what we do in children’s centres should be transferred to that older age group, as stated in our report on NEETs. Local authorities have moved in that direction, and some examples in the UK have been extremely successful.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

12. How many apprenticeship starts there have been in the academic year 2010-11 to date.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

17. How many apprenticeship starts there have been in the academic year 2010-11 to date.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

All our Christmases have come together.

Provisional data show that there were 119,800 apprenticeship starts in the first quarter of the 2010-11 academic year. That good news confirms that employers are recognising the value of apprenticeships to building growth and competitiveness. The Government are committed to increasing the budget for apprenticeships to over £1.4 billion in the 2011-12 financial year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

It is a little known fact, but none the less one that I want to draw to the House’s attention, that 78% of apprentices are employed in small businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. I started in a small business, which got bigger as a result, and small businesses are essential if we are to make apprenticeships sing.

[Stephen Lloyd]

Last Friday, I spoke to several employers in Eastbourne, and their view was that a grant to the providers of apprenticeships would act as a huge incentive and make a huge difference to take-up and completion. Although I appreciate that tough current fiscal conditions mean that any money has be found elsewhere, does the Minister agree that, for small employers in my constituency and throughout the country, a small cash incentive for small and medium-sized enterprises will lead to a dramatic rise in the take-up of apprenticeships?

[Mr Hayes]

We are committing substantial funds to apprenticeships and, indeed, those funds will be targeted at the firms that most need support to take on apprentices and build their skills. My hon. Friend is right to say that these are tough times, but we are always open to proposals made by this House and representative bodies of the kind that he describes.

Education Policy

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I am well aware that in Slough—the local authority that covers her constituency—there are huge pressures on education as a result of migration, of the many children who have English as an additional language and of the entrenched pockets of deprivation. It is our aim to ensure that all deprived children, wherever they are, receive the funding that is necessary, so we will take account of historic investment in tackling deprivation while ensuring that deprivation money is better targeted on the individual children who need it. The hon. Lady’s area also has a particular pressure on primary places that was not addressed satisfactorily under the previous Government. We hope to work with her and her local authority to address that.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on this excellent announcement on the pupil premium. I have one quick question. May I have confirmation that head teachers will have control of where money is spent so that the dead hand of Whitehall and the local authority does not get in the way of what head teachers know how to do best?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely confirm that. One of the benefits of working in coalition, as the hon. Gentleman will know, is that I have been able to work with the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Deputy Prime Minister to ensure that the right balance is struck between respecting the autonomy of individual schools and promoting social justice.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I have had the privilege and pleasure of sitting here for a good number of hours listening to the arguments of Members on both sides of the Chamber. One speech in particular struck home—that of the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy); I am sorry that he has left the Chamber. He made a moving, passionate speech about education in his constituency. I wrote down a particular line; I think he said that when Labour came to government, 13% or 16% of his constituents went to university, and a higher number went to prison, which I thought was a telling tale.

[Stephen Pound]

On a point of information, the reason my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) is not in his place is that today is his birthday, and his presence was required elsewhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Lloyd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I appreciate that information. In that case, I am particularly glad that I complimented the right hon. Member for Tottenham on his speech, which I thought was strong.

I should also like to compliment the Labour party. Any fair-minded person would accept that in the past 13 years, considerable investment went into education, and there were improvements to schools in my constituency, for which I am grateful. That, in a sense, is the positive side to what happened over the past 13 years under the Labour party. I am disappointed that a lot of what I have heard today from Labour Members is indignation about the coalition Government’s plans for academies. To be perfectly frank, at the election, it was clear from the Conservative manifesto what the plan was. Given the coalition Government’s position, there cannot be any surprise at the idea that they will deliver what they promised, so I am a little puzzled.

[Paul Farrelly]

Before the hon. Gentleman gets to the substance of his speech, I point out that I voted against plenty of Labour programme motions in the past two Parliaments when I thought that Bills needed more consideration. Funnily enough, I always found the No Lobby heaving with Liberal Democrats. Does he agree that any Liberal Democrats who tonight vote for the programme motion have, in very short order, given up on the basic principles of proper scrutiny, and have in effect become mere nodding dogs on the Tory bandwagon?

[Stephen Lloyd]

No, I do not agree at all. In a sense, the hon. Gentleman’s intervention backs up my point about what I see as the flipside of the Labour party. On the one hand, it brought about a lot of good things in education when it was in government. On the flipside, there also came a lot of nonsensical things. It was an absolute disgrace that six months before the general election, the former Secretary of State went around promising that billions of pounds, or certainly a multimillion-pound sum, would be spent on schools, when he knew that the money was not in the kitty.

I particularly want to talk about the coalition Government’s commitment to a pupil premium. Last week, I had the privilege of attending a year 6 production at Shinewater school in my constituency. It serves an area with a large number of disadvantaged families and students. Despite that, the school has tremendous esprit de corps. I believe that it has been told that it has got an “outstanding” from Ofsted. The school is a perfect example of what will happen with the pupil premium, to which I know that the Secretary of State is committed. It will result in further tens of thousands of pounds being invested in schools such as Shinewater. That is the sort of money that will make the difference for people and youngsters in my constituency—the difference that the right hon. Member for Tottenham described so powerfully when talking about his constituency.

I received a commitment from the Secretary of State for Education three weeks or so ago. He said that he was absolutely committed to putting £2.3 billion or £2.5 billion into the pupil premium. I look forward to the coalition Government and the Secretary of State delivering on that promise; I am confident that he will. I am very aware that education is the silver bullet. Education is the route out of poverty, and that is why so many of us feel so passionately about the matter.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Lloyd]

No, I shall not. I have almost finished.

The pupil premium is directly targeted at those disadvantaged students who need it most, and I am absolutely delighted that the coalition Government are committed to delivering it. I look forward to reading that commitment when I see the detail of the Bill, and I am absolutely confident that, for the youngsters from Shinewater school and for others from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds in my constituency, the pupil premium will make a considerable difference and give them a real opportunity. I look forward to seeing the detail of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

I wish the hon. Gentleman luck with Essex county council. He and I have worked long and hard to try to free Colchester from various people on the council. But I will not go there, Mr Speaker. I have been to Colchester three times. Perhaps the new Schools Minister will now take up that task with great relish.

It should be obvious that when a Government do not listen, when they do not bother to consult and when they rush through legislation grounded not in evidence or experience but in ideology, they will get things badly wrong. In this instance, that will result in the undermining of our education system in a way that could damage the educational prospects of a generation. Whatever their motive, a coalition Government who have declared an interest in helping those who are disadvantaged in the education system are championing a model of schooling from other countries about which serious questions are now being asked.

According to recent studies, charter schools and free schools in the US and Sweden have led to a deterioration in overall standards, to a greater differentiation in attainment between the haves and the have-nots and to a decrease in racial and socio-economic integration. Just last month, the Swedish Education Minister warned the UK against adopting the free school model, stating:

“We have actually seen a fall in the quality of Swedish schools since the free schools were introduced…The free schools are generally attended by children of better educated and wealthy families, making things even more difficult for children attending ordinary schools in poor areas.”

Stanford university published the first national assessment of charter schools in America and found that 37% delivered learning results that were significantly worse than those that the students would have realised had they remained in traditional public schools, and that nearly half the results were no different. That evidence was ignored by this Government.

It is ironic that a party that professeses to champion localism will now fatally undermine the ability of our most local layer of democratically elected government— the local authority—to plan for and support fair and excellent schooling in its area. “What could be more democratic than giving power to parents?”, ask the Government, but in the context of the Bill, that claim is deeply disingenuous. Parents are not mentioned in it once. Around the country, parents are rightly up in arms that governing bodies may seek to convert their children’s schools into academies without so much as speaking to them. In a MORI poll this year, 95% of parents and the general public opposed external organisations such as private companies and charities running schools, and 96% opposed the creation of so-called free schools. Parents know what is best for their children.

Sadly, the Liberal Democrats have yet again demonstrated their elastic convictions when it comes to notions of fairness and justice, redefining them at every turn to accommodate their desire to be at the top table.

[Stephen Lloyd]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vernon Coaker]

No, I do not have much time.

In June 2010, the Liberal Democrat Education Association said:

“Liberal Democrat Party members call upon their MPs and Peers to vote against the Academies Bill. The present Bill did not form part of the published coalition agreement. The Bill is wasteful of resources at a time when public expenditure is under extreme pressure, and does not meet the coalition’s aim for a fairer society.”

We shall see how many Liberal Democrat MPs and Peers follow that advice tonight.

It was not so long ago that the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), now a Minister in the Government, described the free schools policy as a “shambles”. I should like to remind her that she also said:

“Unless you give local authorities that power to plan, it is just a gimmick. Giving schools a fancy title—be it ‘free school’ or ‘academy’—and allowing disparate groups of parents, charities or other organisations to run or ‘sponsor’ them will not magically transform them.”

I wonder what has transformed her attitude and opinion.

The Bill will visit huge injustice upon those children and young people who most need our help, and it will cause confusion, worry and division for children and parents everywhere. By elevating market mores above the core principles of co-operation, accountability, democracy and equality, it will turn our education system into a dismal experiment in educational Darwinism. It will be the survival of the fittest and the demise of the rest. The consequences could be calamitous for tens of thousands of children and take decades to reverse.

Education—[Interruption.] Conservative Members should calm down; they will like the next bit even better. Education is a public good, not a private commodity. The common good is served not when parents and children engage with schools as consumers pursuing relative advantage, but when they act as citizens and partners who understand their crucial role as co-creators of learning and educational success. For these reasons, we strongly oppose this Bill and we urge all right-thinking hon. Members to do the same.

Schools Funding

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As the hon. Gentleman might know, I have visited Copland school and know that its facilities are less than adequate, so I appreciate the frustration that the staff, pupils and parents of that school will feel. I underlined on Monday the regrettable fact that the economic circumstances that we inherited meant that we could not go ahead as we might have wished with the school rebuilding programme. I also stressed that the manner in which Building Schools for the Future had been organised did not seem to me to guarantee the best value for money. We are reviewing how capital is allocated in order to ensure that we get value for money so that those schools across the country that do need rebuilding and renovation will receive that money in a more timely and efficient manner in future.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

To my ears, the Secretary of State’s apology is sincere. One school affected is the Eastbourne technology college, which is under consideration. So that I can reassure the head and the staff, can my right hon. Friend give me some indication of exactly the time line for the decision on whether the building will go ahead?

[Michael Gove]

We hope to make the decision in respect of the school to which my hon. Friend refers before the House rises for the summer, but I will obviously seek to talk to him after this statement in order to clarify exactly the position that his school is in.