Toby Perkins
Main Page: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)Department Debates - View all Toby Perkins's debates with the Department for Education
(12 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)
The Government have already committed to a funding condition for students who do not achieve a C at GCSE to continue to study maths until 18 either in or not in employment. I am also concerned about the cohort who achieve a GCSE grade C in maths but who do not want to go on and study A level. We need to make it clear that there are qualifications for them, too.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I am interested in the logic of the Secretary of State’s position. If he believes it is right that academies and free schools should be able to take on whoever they like on the strength of the opinion of the head teacher, why is that not right for local authority schools? And if he believes it is right that we make the teachers’ training qualification more difficult, why is it right that academies can opt out of that?
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is supposed to be an egalitarian. One question will do—an equal distribution of the available fruits.