Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

As my hon. Friend will know, the Department has a statutory duty to convert local authority maintained schools judged inadequate by Ofsted into sponsored academies, whereby a strong sponsor works with the school to secure improvements in education. We take a case-by-case approach to the conversion of these schools and to addressing failure in academies, which includes consideration of all the different means by which the Government can support the future success of a school, including capital investment where appropriate.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Ind)]

T3. My constituent Geno Brown rightly points out that education plays a vital role in teaching young people about our country’s colonial past and its implications for generations of black and minority ethnic children. What is the Minister doing to make sure that this history—not just our successes, but our failures—is taught properly in our schools?

[Nick Gibb]

We have had a debate on the content of the history curriculum and the role that migration and other issues play in it. We give a lot of discretion to schools and teachers over what they teach and how they teach it within that curriculum, and there are many elements in it where those issues can be taught effectively.