Louise Haigh
Main Page: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)Department Debates - View all Louise Haigh's debates with the Department for Education
(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
No, I think that is an anachronistic approach to discussing important political issues. We have regular discussions with the teacher unions. We have all kinds of reference groups of representative teachers whom we meet regularly in the Department for Education. We are very aware of teachers’ concerns about the changing curriculum and worries about workload. We had a workload challenge to which 44,000 teachers responded. We take all these issues very seriously, and we respond to concerns. We do not want to go back to the 1980s and have strikes as a way of engaging in issues of concern. They are not necessary, and most teachers agree with that.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
The Minister can say all he likes about school budgets going up, but the facts on the ground paint a very different picture. One of the schools in my constituency has had to close down its summer school, which was deliberately targeted at helping deprived students to catch up before the beginning of the school year. Will he look at that example, and other examples that other hon. Members are sure to raise, to make sure that the funding cuts do not impact on deprived students, in particular?