Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gillian Keegan and David Davis

Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I start by sending our thoughts and prayers to the whole school and the community in Ammanford in Wales.

With exams season nearly upon us, I wish all our students and teachers the very best of luck over the coming months. We should be very proud of all the progress that our students and teachers have made, with 90% of schools now rated “good” or “outstanding”—up from 68% under Labour. In the internationally renowned programme for international student assessment, our secondary school children have rocketed up the rankings from 27th and 25th in the world for maths and reading under Labour to 11th and 13^th now. The establishment of the Education Endowment Foundation, which has conducted nearly 20% of all randomised control trials in education in the world, is adding to that success. That fantastic progress is testament to the hard work of our schools and the evidence-based reforms that we have undertaken since 2010.

[Sir David Davis]

On a personal level, may I thank the Secretary of State for sponsoring my charity event yesterday for disabled children with SYNGAP1? Of course, I welcome the Government’s funding of 60,000 new school places for children with special educational needs, but we need a fairer funding formula for those resources, and we need a further £4.6 billion just to prevent the crisis in special needs from getting worse, so what steps are the Government taking to ensure that funding is allocated according to need, not postcode?

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who is doing exceptional work to raise awareness of the impacts of SYNGAP1, and has so far raised over £29,000 to support vital research. As he has pointed out, we are investing record amounts in special educational needs and disability funding. We review that funding and look at the formula every year; it has gone up by 60% over the past five years—to £10.5 billion—but I am very happy to meet my right hon. Friend, and look forward to doing so. We said we would have a cup of tea to talk about this important topic, and I will get that date in the diary soon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gillian Keegan and David Davis

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I pay tribute to all our dedicated teachers. All of us across the House will agree that we cannot have a world-class education system without world-class teachers, and I am committed to making sure that we recruit and retain the best teachers. Obviously, we have had intensive talks with the unions and we offered them a one-off payment of £1,000 and an average of 4.5% for the period from September 2023 to 2024, when inflation is expected to be way below 2%. It is really disappointing that they have rejected that offer. It is also disappointing that they claim that it was not fully funded or affordable to schools, because we have confirmed that it is, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed that as well.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

T3. The Department for Education has announced that it intends to subsidise the so-called Oak National Academy by £43 million in the coming years, much to the dismay of some of the educational software sector. Did the Department carry out a full assessment of the impact of that subsidy on competition and innovation in the sector before it made the decision, and if it did so, will it publish that study?