Jo Cox
Main Page: Jo Cox (Labour - Batley and Spen)Department Debates - View all Jo Cox's debates with the Department for Education
(8 years ago)
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The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)
I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that the college would have a clear responsibility to ensure that those students were able to complete their A-levels at another high-quality institution, and I would be happy to work with him to ensure that it lives up to that responsibility.
Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept that all the evidence shows that being an academy is intrinsically neither good nor bad for a school’s performance? With expert opinion now lined up from the County Councils Network to the Bow Group, it is surely time to revisit this flawed plan to force schools to become academies against their will.
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Lady ought to take note of Andreas Schleicher, the deputy director for education and skills at the OECD, who says:
“What our data do show is that school systems which offer a greater deal of school autonomy tend to have higher performance, but they do not say anything about trends…I view the trend towards academies as a very promising development in the UK, which used to have quite a prescriptive education system, if you look at this through international comparison”.
I think we should take note of the international evidence.