argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Transport and Local Infrastructure — House of Commons, 2016-05-19
Topic: Labor
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): Labour Members are getting used to discourteous winding-up speeches from Ministers, but the hon. Gentleman did not have the courtesy to listen when I and other Labour Members were speaking, and he has just summarised what three people said in about six words. I spoke on behalf of 7 million carers and 2.6 million women who are affected by this Government’s changes to the state pension age, and I think that that deserves a little more than three words from the Minister. He is extending a discourtesy. This is a "so what?" Queen’s Speech from a "so what?" Government who cannot even be bothered to support it.
Detention of Kamal Foroughi in Iran — House of Commons, 2016-05-19
Topic: International Affairs
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): My constituent Councillor Jill Houlbrook, a former lord mayor of Chester and the auntie of Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife Nazanin has been detained, will be most relieved and gratified to have heard the contribution by the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden), and the delicate but persuasive way in which he put it. The Minister talks about Iran opening up, and the Chairman of the Defence Committee mentioned that Iran might be opening up and also opening out. The Minister will be very cautious about his dealings with Iran, but does he detect an improvement in the tone of Iran that might assist us in resolving the cases that the hon. Member for Hertsmere spoke about so eloquently?
Academies: Teacher Pay — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: It is likely that academies in better-off areas will be able to access more funding and therefore pay higher salaries and attract the best teachers. What will that do for staff morale in academies in poorer areas? How will they be able to attract the teachers needed to close the attainment gap?
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to face the Minister for the first time today. As he mentioned, we have discussed education issues in one of the areas in my constituency, in Oldham. It has been an interesting week, and I am really pleased that there are still two women at the Dispatch Box overseeing education; that is really good news We face a crisis in the teaching workforce, and it has not been made any better by the potential problems with teachers’ pay. Almost 50,000 teachers quit this year—the highest figure ever. More teachers left than were recruited, and applications are still falling. The crisis has left academies spending nearly £200 million more on supply teachers in the last year. Is the Minister now prepared to apologise for the Government’s accusation that the Opposition were scaremongering in raising this issue?
Academies: Teacher Pay — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: It is likely that academies in better-off areas will be able to access more funding and therefore pay higher salaries and attract the best teachers. What will that do for staff morale in academies in poorer areas? How will they be able to attract the teachers needed to close the attainment gap?
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): I think that every single teacher does an absolutely superb job. Ministers should listen to teachers when they talk about the issues that teachers face every single day in the classroom. On today’s evidence, it seems that Ministers are failing and not coasting. They are not prepared to apologise. Where is the evidence that devolving terms and conditions to school level will lead to higher standards? Can the Minister tell us of any other high-performing country in which this has been done?
Teacher Workload — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): I have raised on the Floor of the House on a number of occasions the problems in west Cumbria with teacher recruitment and retention, which are leading to workloads building up, to the detriment of our children’s education. I am concerned to see that figures provided by the National Union of Teachers project that Cumbria will see a 4.5% real-terms cut in funding under the Government’s new national funding formula. What is the Secretary of State doing to address that, and to ensure that there is no detriment to children in my constituency?
Teacher Workload — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): If the Secretary of State really does want to help teachers with the workload pressures that they are under, she has to do much more to tackle the serious shortage of teacher colleagues in schools and the duplicative paperwork that teachers are coping with, and not rely so much on the Minister for Schools, who sees the wonders of the free market as the solution.
Academies: Parent Involvement — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: What steps her Department is taking to ensure that parents have greater say in the running of their children’s schools when they become academies.
Tristram Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State sought to ban parents from becoming school governors. She has blocked Ofsted from inspecting academy chains, and she refuses to have any democratic oversight of regional school commissioners. In her final days in office, with school improvement stalled, according to the chief inspector, has she not realised that the command-and-control, "Whitehall knows best" approach to schools and education does not work?
Academies: Parent Involvement — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: What steps her Department is taking to ensure that parents have greater say in the running of their children’s schools when they become academies.; Will the Minister use this occasion to reassure parents of pupils at the Europa School in my constituency that they will still be able to play a part in the running of their school?
Heidi Alexander (Labour, Centre-left): Parents in my constituency have been left feeling bewildered and angry after an academy order was issued for Sedgehill School but was withdrawn for six months because the regional schools commissioner could not find a sponsor. What does this uncertainty say about the state of the Government’s academy programme, and how can this uncertainty possibly be good for pupils?
Academies: Parent Involvement — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: What steps her Department is taking to ensure that parents have greater say in the running of their children’s schools when they become academies.; Will the Minister use this occasion to reassure parents of pupils at the Europa School in my constituency that they will still be able to play a part in the running of their school?
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): I would also like to pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), and her team for the work that they did with MPs from across the House to convince the Secretary of State that full-scale forced academisation is not right for our children or our communities. As glad as we are that the right hon. Lady was for turning, she still plans to convert schools into academies across vast swathes of our country. Will she now rethink her description of parents as "vested interests", which added insult to injury?
School Funding — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): I did not expect to be on the Back Benches today, having resigned from a job that I relished doing over the past few months, but we are where we are Yesterday on the television, the Secretary of State again presented the illusion that school budgets have been protected over the course of this Parliament, yet she and I both know that school budgets are facing significant cuts in real terms, which are having a huge impact on the frontline. Given that the Chancellor has all but abandoned his fiscal approach, will she be the first person at his door to ensure that our schools have the real-terms budget protection they need?
School Funding — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Centre-left): What would the Secretary of State say to Schools NorthEast, which represents 1,000 schools in my region and has said that "the Government risks fuelling the North-South divide in education by proposing to fund schools with similar characteristics differently, based on their location."?
School Funding — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): I am afraid that the Government’s claim that they are providing fair funding is unravelling as fast as the pledge of £350 million for the NHS on the Vote Leave bus. Will the Secretary of State confirm that analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that the new funding settlement will implement an overall cut of at least 8% in school budgets?
School Funding — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Imran Hussain (Labour, Centre-left): When the Government redraw the funding formula to make it fairer, as they say they will, they must remember that fair does not necessarily mean equal and that many schools face differing challenges, particularly in respect of teacher training. Will the Secretary of State therefore look at ways in which we can change the funding formula to help areas and schools with a history of low teacher recruitment rates?
School Funding — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: Will the Secretary of State, in reaffirming her commitment to fairer funding, set out the timetable for the consultation process and say when it will eventually be implemented
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): Is there not a danger for the Secretary of State that some schools will risk losing funding and that those that gain from the new funding settlement will not gain nearly enough to offset both the freeze in the education grant and the national insurance increases?
Character Development — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: Child abuse is rife in the UK, and I welcome the comments about character. Will the Secretary of State support my call for all primary school children to have statutory resilience and child protection lessons to prevent child abuse?; Thank you for spotting the link, Mr Speaker. The original question about character is all very good, but what is the Minister doing to ensure that young people have sound moral judgment and a tough backbone, so that they pick the right side of an argument and accept democratic decisions, supported by their peers and the wider populace?
Elizabeth Anne McInnes (Labour, Centre-left): We would all agree that participation in sport at school is character building, and the Chancellor announced in his Budget that moneys raised from the sugar tax will be spent on sport in schools. How much money is expected to be raised from the sugar tax, and what talks have taken place on how those funds will be spent?
Character Development — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: Child abuse is rife in the UK, and I welcome the comments about character. Will the Secretary of State support my call for all primary school children to have statutory resilience and child protection lessons to prevent child abuse?; Thank you for spotting the link, Mr Speaker. The original question about character is all very good, but what is the Minister doing to ensure that young people have sound moral judgment and a tough backbone, so that they pick the right side of an argument and accept democratic decisions, supported by their peers and the wider populace?
Gordon Marsden (Labour, Centre-left): Character development includes turning young people to the outside world and helping them to gain confidence when thinking and working with people. Work experience in the teens is crucial, and it is damaging that Ministers scrapped the key stage 4 requirement in the curriculum. No wonder business groups urged them to do more, as did the skills commission on careers advice; and a five-year policy and funding vacuum has failed to prepare young people for that world of work. Will Ministers use the new Education and Adoption Act 2016 to restore work experience to the curriculum?
Mindfulness: Schools — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister agree that mindfulness can be helpful not only with the social and emotional aspects of learning but in improving the attentiveness of pupils in schools, and therefore their academic achievement as well as their personal wellbeing?
School Funding Formula (London) — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): Educational standards improved dramatically in London under the previous Labour Government, a timely reminder of the virtue of Labour winning elections. In the Minister’s attempt rightly to increase funding to levels needed across the rest of the country, will he confirm that school budgets in London will not suffer, thereby setting back the enormous progress that has been made?
School Funding Formula (London) — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Ruth Margaret Cadbury (Labour, Centre-left): Is the Minister aware that schools in my constituency in west London are already having to implement the biggest cuts to their budgets they have ever made? Will he assure the head teachers I met this morning that there will be no further cuts when fair funding comes in?
Child and Family Social Work — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Emma Louise Lewell-Buck (Labour, Centre-left): Children can remain in foster care until they are 21, while those in residential care have to leave at 18, which creates a truly unfair system. I have organised for MPs to pledge their support tomorrow to show that we care equally about all looked-after children. Will the Minister sign the pledge?
Childcare — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Karin Marguerite Smyth (Labour, Centre-left): The Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, highlighted the danger that the Government will be unable to deliver their pledge to give three and four-year-olds 33 hours of childcare a week. In view of all our findings, what is the Minister doing to ensure that local authorities manage their childcare markets effectively or intervene if necessary?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: Following a rather poor Ofsted report for the local authority in Portsmouth, will the Secretary of State outline what support her Department can give to help schools in Portsmouth to become centres of excellence?; One of the concerns about the fairer funding formula is what happens to sixth-form students. Can Ministers confirm that fairer funding will apply to sixth-form students in particular, and clarify what is proposed for sixth-form colleges?
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): As the Secretary of State knows, there are already examples of academies ignoring the concerns and views of parents, and removing the requirement to have a parent-governor or parent-governors will make matters worse. The White Paper proposes that parents should be able to petition to have their academy moved from an under-performing multi-academy trust to a different MAT, will she tell us how that will work?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: Following a rather poor Ofsted report for the local authority in Portsmouth, will the Secretary of State outline what support her Department can give to help schools in Portsmouth to become centres of excellence?; One of the concerns about the fairer funding formula is what happens to sixth-form students. Can Ministers confirm that fairer funding will apply to sixth-form students in particular, and clarify what is proposed for sixth-form colleges?; Some schools and headteachers are nervous about becoming academies. I believe they need not be, but what reassurance and guidance can the Minister give them on the path to academisation?; When research shows that six out of 10 LGBT students have experienced homophobic bullying, there is much to be done to improve life for LGBT pupils. Following her support for UK school diversity week, what plans does the Secretary of State have to ensure schools offer an LGBT-inclusive education?; As my right hon. Friend knows, before coming to this place I was a teacher. Teaching colleagues have concerns, which I share, about the appointment of Amanda Spielman as the new chief inspector of Ofsted. She does not hold a teaching qualification or have classroom experience. Does this appointment risk eroding the standing of the teaching profession and teachers’ esteem and morale? What assurances can my right hon. Friend give?
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State will be aware of the recent report by the Traveller movement showing that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children are four times more likely to be excluded from school than other groups, yet 100% of appeals against exclusions from Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children are successful. What action is the Secretary of State taking to address this state of affairs?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: Following a rather poor Ofsted report for the local authority in Portsmouth, will the Secretary of State outline what support her Department can give to help schools in Portsmouth to become centres of excellence?; One of the concerns about the fairer funding formula is what happens to sixth-form students. Can Ministers confirm that fairer funding will apply to sixth-form students in particular, and clarify what is proposed for sixth-form colleges?; Some schools and headteachers are nervous about becoming academies. I believe they need not be, but what reassurance and guidance can the Minister give them on the path to academisation?; When research shows that six out of 10 LGBT students have experienced homophobic bullying, there is much to be done to improve life for LGBT pupils. Following her support for UK school diversity week, what plans does the Secretary of State have to ensure schools offer an LGBT-inclusive education?; As my right hon. Friend knows, before coming to this place I was a teacher. Teaching colleagues have concerns, which I share, about the appointment of Amanda Spielman as the new chief inspector of Ofsted. She does not hold a teaching qualification or have classroom experience. Does this appointment risk eroding the standing of the teaching profession and teachers’ esteem and morale? What assurances can my right hon. Friend give?; The principal of Paignton academy, Jane English, recently received a lifetime achievement award for teaching and inspiring generations of students, yet the school has been held back by having some elderly buildings that urgently need replacement. Can the Minister update me on when funding will be made available to do this?
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Durham county council is part-way through the legal process of merging South Stanley infant and junior schools to form a primary school, but on Friday the Department issued a notice that the infant school will now be part of Greenlands junior school as a new academy, completely ignoring any consultation with local parents. How does that fit with what the Minister has said about the involvement of parents in these decisions?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Education
Questions: Following a rather poor Ofsted report for the local authority in Portsmouth, will the Secretary of State outline what support her Department can give to help schools in Portsmouth to become centres of excellence?; One of the concerns about the fairer funding formula is what happens to sixth-form students. Can Ministers confirm that fairer funding will apply to sixth-form students in particular, and clarify what is proposed for sixth-form colleges?; Some schools and headteachers are nervous about becoming academies. I believe they need not be, but what reassurance and guidance can the Minister give them on the path to academisation?; When research shows that six out of 10 LGBT students have experienced homophobic bullying, there is much to be done to improve life for LGBT pupils. Following her support for UK school diversity week, what plans does the Secretary of State have to ensure schools offer an LGBT-inclusive education?; As my right hon. Friend knows, before coming to this place I was a teacher. Teaching colleagues have concerns, which I share, about the appointment of Amanda Spielman as the new chief inspector of Ofsted. She does not hold a teaching qualification or have classroom experience. Does this appointment risk eroding the standing of the teaching profession and teachers’ esteem and morale? What assurances can my right hon. Friend give?; The principal of Paignton academy, Jane English, recently received a lifetime achievement award for teaching and inspiring generations of students, yet the school has been held back by having some elderly buildings that urgently need replacement. Can the Minister update me on when funding will be made available to do this?; More schools in Medway are now being rated outstanding and good. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the excellent work of Councillor Mike O’Brien, the cabinet member for children’s services at Medway council, who, alongside council officers, school leaders and parents, is working hard to raise standards in Medway?
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): The children of Thoresby primary school have an abundance of common sense and kindness, and I was delighted that they were awarded the National Character Award last week by the Children’s Minister. Does he agree, however, that we also want to instil determination, grit and tenacity in our young people?