Oral Answers to Questions

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is typically acute in getting to the heart of the matter. The change to judging schools on how well each student progresses from the moment they arrive until the moment they take their GCSEs, across a broad range of eight GCSEs, will mean that not just academic excellence but creativity and technical accomplishment will be counted in determining how well each school has improved—and of course we will move away from the distorting impact that a focus on the C-D borderline has had in the past.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to tackle the rising costs of child care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

First, we are increasing the supply of child care to bring down costs, reversing the decline in childminders by giving top childminders automatic access to Government funding, enabling the creation of childminder agencies which will be a one-stop shop for parents and childminders, and getting better value out of school sites by encouraging schools and nurseries to open from 8 am to 6 pm to support working parents. Secondly, we are supporting parents with costs through tax-free child care, which will be available from next year and give working parents up to £1,200 per child.

[Barbara Keeley]

Despite budget cuts of £100 million since 2010, Salford council is aiming to provide 25 hours of nursery care for our three and four-year-olds. This extra funding for our nursery schools will make a great difference to hard-pressed families. However, 56 out of 76 schools in Salford will lose out from September because of Government changes to their funding allocations. Why are the Government acting to undermine the attempts we are making in Salford to support our hard-pressed parents who need child care?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I assure the hon. Lady that we are in fact increasing spending on early intervention and child care across the country. We have increased early intervention spending from £2.1 billion to £2.5 billion, and we are increasing the funding for two, three and four-year-olds as well. The reality is that under this Government the costs of child care have stabilised, whereas under the previous Government they went up by over £1,000 a year.