Oral Answers to Questions

Alok Sharma Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I know that the Minister of State was impressed by the commitment shown by the teachers and parents at the school he visited. The hon. Gentleman has put his case throughout fairly and well. We will do everything that we can to ensure that the schools in the greatest need receive money. We have to prioritise schools where the fabric is most in need of support. As ever when thinking about revenue and capital allocations, deprivation is one of the central factors that we will consider.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

14. What steps he is taking to improve the standard of careers guidance available in schools.

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

Subject to the passage of the Education Bill, schools will be under a new duty to secure access to independent and impartial careers guidance for their pupils from September 2012. Also, an unprecedented degree of co-operation with the careers industry means that we will have new professional standards, training and accreditation.

[Alok Sharma]

I thank the Minister for his work in this area. Does he agree that more businesses also need to work in partnership with schools to provide careers advice? Will he join me in applauding the companies that are backing the futures fair that I and others in my constituency are putting together for secondary schools in Reading?

[Mr Hayes]

I am well aware, as you, Mr Speaker, and the whole House will be, of my hon. Friend’s commitment in that regard. Indeed, on 29 September, under his leadership, Reading West schools and others will be holding a futures fair. It is critical that that becomes the norm, not the exception, with businesses, schools, careers guidance bodies and Government working together to turn people’s ambitions into reality.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alok Sharma Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

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

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Alok Sharma]

As part of the recent apprenticeships week, the National Apprenticeship Service launched a 100-day campaign in Reading. By the end of the first day alone, 28 pledges of places and a further 19 expressions of interest had been received from local employers. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Reading’s employers, Reading borough council, the Reading Post and other local organisations on supporting that excellent initiative and demonstrating what can be achieved when business and Government work together?

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

Alok Sharma Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and his experience will be typical of many hon. Members’ experience, because this will have been a wasted year.

When the global banking crisis hit, the Labour Government did not sit by hoping that something would turn up. In the six months after that crisis hit, we cut VAT to boost growth; gave businesses time to pay the Revenue; speeded up payments to small businesses; introduced the scrappage scheme; started the enterprise finance guarantee; invested in key technologies and regionally important sectors; boosted investment in education and health; and reformed training support and expanded apprenticeships. In six months there was real energy and drive; from this Government and this Department there has been nothing in nearly nine months. Worse than that, the Business Secretary has made the wrong choices. Each has made life harder for businesses that wanted to invest to create jobs and grow. Instead of creating certainty and confidence, the Business Secretary has sown doubt and confusion.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about a wasted year. Does he not acknowledge that he was part of a Government who wasted 13 years, increasing taxes on businesses, national insurance, regulation and the complexity of the tax system, and doing everything to stifle jobs and growth? Does he not agree that he should be congratulating this Government on reversing many of those excesses and thanking us for putting in place a policy that will lead to growth and jobs?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently point out to the House, first, that interventions should always be brief, and secondly, that there are time constraints? A lot of Members want to get in, so over-long interventions are not just ineffective; they are damaging to colleagues, whatever the intention, and that is of wide application.

Funding and Schools Reform

Alok Sharma Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

The Opposition’s motion today accuses the Government of

“pursuing a reform agenda in education that represents an ideological gamble with successful services”,

but Labour needs to acknowledge all its past, if it is to be taken seriously on education in future.

In my constituency, after 13 years of a Labour Government and a Labour council, and with two Labour MPs between 1997 and 2005, the latest local figures available show that nearly 40% of pupils fail to achieve the basic standard of five good GCSEs, including maths and English. The national figures show that nearly half of all pupils failed to meet that basic standard last year. I am therefore not sure how those on the Labour Front Bench can claim any success, especially when so many thousands of young people are leaving compulsory education without achieving even the most basic of standards. Nor can they claim that the issue is expenditure. In real terms, public expenditure on education increased by £35 billion over Labour’s 13-year period in office, which is an increase of some 72%, although the increase in my constituency was only 50%. Essentially, 50% of children are failing to reach the basic standard, and that is as good as it got in 13 years of a Labour Government. The minor improvements that took place in later years—the introduction of academies, and things like that—were unfortunately far too little and far too late, leaving many children failing in our schools.

Although there are still too many bad teachers in our schools, a large majority are committed and doing a wonderful job in very difficult circumstances. As with so many other parts of the public sector, teachers have been tied up with bureaucracy, and constrained by an over-supply of rules and an under-supply of common sense. I see that week in, week out in schools in my constituency, and I therefore welcome the fact that my Government are introducing truly radical reforms to increase innovation and diversity of approach in our schools. After years of failure by a Labour-run council, I welcome the fact that the Government’s academy policy is handing powers to the people who are best placed to understand the needs of education in their local areas: teachers, head teachers and governors.

In my constituency, there has been a stampede to academy status. Highdown school has already announced its intention to gain such status, and Reading boys school and Kendrick girls school, both grammar schools, will follow shortly. I am sure that others, such as Reading girls school, will take advantage of today’s announcement by my right hon. Friend that any school may now apply for academy status if it teams up with a stronger school that will help to drive improvement.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

In addition to welcoming the success of the academies in my hon. Friend’s constituency, does he also welcome, as I do, the Secretary of State’s recent decision to allow the National Education Trust, the Centre for British Teachers and the Friends of All Saints school to move forward to the next stage of setting up a free school in my constituency with the aim of opening a 120-pupil school in September next year? That local school is backed by local people and the whole of the local community.

[Mr Wilson]

Of course I welcome that. My hon. Friend has done a great deal to help that process.

I want to make one further remark about my two excellent grammar schools, and I say this gently. I have had conversations with head teachers to the same end. Their catchment areas need to be looked at carefully. Kendrick school in particular is recruiting pupils from far and wide, and is becoming too remote from the local community that it serves. I would like my local grammar schools to re-engage with the task of aiding social mobility for clever, poorer local Reading children rather than being regional schools. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ensure that those schools can expand their numbers to recruit more local Reading children as that may help the situation.

My right hon. Friend will be aware that under the last Government, grammar schools were, unfairly, not allowed to expand their numbers. It is clear that people in my constituency are voting with their feet, and schools are taking advantage of academy status and all the freedom that that brings, instead of staying with the failed system of central planning of the shadow Secretary of State’s Government.

I hope that very soon there will be another massive step forward for education in my constituency with the announcement of a brand new school. I have been particularly taken with the success of city technology colleges and university technical colleges to support education for 14 to 19-year-olds. They would add real diversity and choice for parents in my constituency.

Before it was popular and before it was Conservative party policy, I often wrote about and campaigned for a pupil premium. It is gratifying that the Government are implementing such an important and radical policy, which could see some schools with a particularly high concentration of poor pupils receive as much as £1 million in additional funding to deal with the particular disadvantages associated with poorer pupils. That could make an enormous difference, and help to close the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils, although I accept that on its own it will not be enough.

The Opposition should recognise that the coalition Government are taking on the most successful policies of the last Government, such as the Teach First scheme to bring outstanding graduates into teaching. But they must also face up to the reality that 13 years of a Labour Government and local authority-run education services have left a legacy where, despite massive investment, almost half of pupils fail to make the best or even the most basic grade at school. We owe it to our children to try radical new approaches that have had great success both here and in other countries. It is time to break the cycle of under-achievement.