Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to improve educational standards in schools.

In 2014, we introduced a new ambitious National Curriculum. We have reformed GCSEs and A levels to ensure they are on par with qualifications used in the best education systems in the world and to keep pace with universities and employers’ demands. Last July, we announced a £41M programme to support primary schools to adopt successful Southeast Asian ‘mastery’ approach to teaching mathematics. In the financial year 2016-17 we funded eight phonics partnerships and ten phonics roadshows to improve the teaching of early reading.

We also want to ensure that schools are able to access the support they need to improve. We are making funds available to the school system. This includes a new £140 million ‘Strategic School Improvement Fund’ for academies and maintained schools and a £50 million a year grant for local authorities to continue to monitor and commission improvement provision for low-performing maintained schools.

Since 2010, the proportion of children taught in good or outstanding schools has risen from 66% to 86%, which means almost 1.8 million more pupils today have a good or better school place than in 2010. The ‘Schools that work for everyone’ consultation sets out plans to make more good school places available, to more parents, in more parts of the country.