argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
University Church of England Academy — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): Ofsted judged University Church of England Academy to be inadequate in June 2017. The west midlands regional schools commissioner has been working with the University of Chester Academies Trust to help improve academic standards at the school, and an educational adviser visited the school in July to provide support. The trust has appointed a new chief executive officer and chair, and an application for emergency strategic school improvement funding and support from a local outstanding secondary school has been submitted.
University Church of England Academy — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): Actually, the academies and free schools programmes are increasing parental choice, because parents now have a choice of provider. It is not just the local authority providing schools; up to 500 new free schools have now been established, by parent groups, teachers and educational charities, and they are raising academic standards right across the board.
University Church of England Academy — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): Wakefield City Academies Trust had taken over many schools that had been underperforming for years. We were not happy with the performance of that multi-academy trust, which is why we took swift action, and why the schools in that trust are being re-brokered to more successful trusts such as Tauheedul Education Trust, one of the most successful multi-academy trusts in the country. We will not stand still while schools underperform; we take action. We re-broker academies, or we turn failing schools into academies.
University Church of England Academy — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Speaker May I follow up the question asked by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)? As the Minister will know, owing to the spending moratorium that Wakefield City Academies Trust imposed on High Crags Primary School, which is in my constituency, the school built up a surplus, or balance, of £276,000. In recent days that money has been transferred from the school’s account, without its authorisation and without its prior consent, and transferred to the trust. Surely the Government cannot stand aside and allow £276,000 to be taken out of the budget of a school in one of the most deprived parts of my constituency. Will the Minister do something to ensure that the money is reinstated for the benefit of pupils at that school?
University Church of England Academy — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. High Crags Primary School was put into special measures in June 2015, before it became a sponsored academy. In 2016, just 23% of its pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared to a national average of 53%. The school is now being re-brokered to be supported by the highly successful Tauheedul Education Trust, and Wakefield City Academies Trust will not be able to retain any of the reserves that it holds at the point of dissolution. Schools, including High Crags, will receive the resources and support that they need in order to raise academic standards.
University Church of England Academy — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): The issue of Wakefield City Academies Trust was not about finances, but about academic standards in the schools in that trust. That is why we are re-brokering all the schools in WCAT to other, more successful multi-academy trusts in the area. We are concerned not with making party political points, but with raising academic standards in each of the schools that serve pupils in those areas.
Universities UK/Universities Scotland — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Jo Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I have regular contact with sector bodies such as Universities UK as part of our wider engagement with the sector. I met representatives of UUK in October and also in September, when I made a speech to its annual conference entitled "Embracing accountability and promoting value for money in Higher Education".
Universities UK/Universities Scotland — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Jo Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): There is no cap on the number of international students who can come to study in Scotland, or in any other part of the United Kingdom. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the fact that there has been a 24% increase in the number of international students coming to study at Scottish institutions since 2009-2010.
Universities UK/Universities Scotland — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Technology
Jo Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): We want the UK to remain the go-to place for scientists, tech investors and researchers in the years to come post-Brexit. We have given many assurances to EU researchers around the continent that they are welcome in the UK. We want their contribution to continue, they are hugely valued, and we have every expectation that that is going to continue to be the case.
Special Educational Needs — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): The Children and Families Act 2014 heralded a transformation in support for children and young people with special educational needs. The transition period between the old and new systems, from statements to education, health and care plans, will end in March 2018.
Special Educational Needs — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely agree; we are on the same page on this. In Kent, schools have not been experiencing any reduction in high needs top-up funding in respect of pupils for whom they are receiving funding in the last academic year.
Special Educational Needs — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady must have been looking very hard indeed to find a parent who does not welcome these changes. Unlike statements and learning difficulty assessments, the new plans run from ages 0 to 25 where appropriate, and bring together in one place an assessment and details of planned provision for a child or young person’s education, health and social care needs. The plans are driven by outcomes, have a strong focus on preparation for adult life, and include a section describing the views and aspirations of the child or young person themselves and their parents or carers.
Special Educational Needs — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Huw William Merriman (Conservative, Centre-right): One child in 100 is on the autistic spectrum, and 70% of those children will go to mainstream schools. The Government have a proud record in supporting autism; what more can be done to encourage best practice across the mainstream school sector?
Special Educational Needs — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): Schools receive up to £6,000 for each child as part of their funding formula, and if they need to apply for additional money, that money is forthcoming. We are keen to ensure that children with particular problems, including autism, are quickly identified and given the help they need, and the new scheme does that.
Special Educational Needs — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Miriam Jane Alice Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): Extracurricular activities including sport ensure a well-rounded education for all our students, and this is particularly important for those with special educational needs. Can the Minister tell me what support schools can get to provide those extracurricular activities?
Special Educational Needs — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): It is absolutely true to say that all children benefit from better access to sports provision, not only physically but academically. I am pleased that we have doubled the primary sport and PE premium using money from the soft drinks levy. I am also a big fan of cadet forces, and we have used £50 million from the LIBOR fines to fund that activity. I would like to see more state schools with cadet forces.
Free Childcare — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): The early intelligence that we are gathering about the autumn term is very encouraging. More than 216,000 parents have received eligibility codes for this term and more than 90% have found places. Independent evaluation of the early delivery areas found that a quarter of mothers and one in 10 fathers had increased their working hours. Providers are willing and able to deliver the offer to working parents.
Free Childcare — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): We carried out detailed work using Frontier Economics, which reported in July 2017, and we have increased the funding to £4.94 on average from £4.56. I have met a number of nurseries that seem to be outliers that, unlike most, are unable to deliver for that price. We have asked them to supply detailed information to find out why that is. Is it because they are not working to the ratios that others are? Is it because they have high property costs? We would be keen to see that detailed information and to find out why they are outliers, so that we can work with them to ensure that they can deliver within the money, as the majority of providers are doing.
Free Childcare — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, it is certainly up to them. The evidence that I get when I visit nurseries up and down the country is that many parents are actually taking extra hours and paying for the wraparound hours. When I was at a nursery in Wolverhampton two weeks ago, parents there told me that they already had their children in the nursery and were having trouble finding the funding for that, but that when their children turned three in January, they would then get access to the 30 hours funding. So the vast majority of parents are accessing the full 30 hours. Also, they can mix and match between childminders, nurseries and other voluntary sector providers.
Free Childcare — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Rebecca Faye Clark (Pow) (Conservative, Centre-right): Last week, I met Cheryl Hadland, the managing director of Tops Day Nurseries, which includes the much-valued nursery at Musgrove Park Hospital, to discuss what the 30 hours of free childcare means for nurseries. The recruitment and retention of nursery workers is that organisation’s ongoing challenge, and staff account for 70% of its costs, which relate to the minimum wage and the living wage. I applaud this Government’s commitment to the 30 hours of free childcare, which has been welcomed by parents. However, will the Minister ensure that any increases in the living wage and the minimum wage are taken into account, so that nurseries can successfully deliver this service in Taunton Deane?
Free Childcare — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): We are of course well aware of the cost pressures that may fall upon nurseries, and we are keen to work with them to address some of the business management decisions that they may need to make in order to live within the funding that we are making available. As we have discovered, the mean cost of funding is £3.72 per hour, and our funding is £4.94 per hour and therefore allows for adequate funding, as the evidence has shown.
Free Childcare — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: Nearly 200,000 children in Britain fall behind by the age of five, and one children’s centre closes every single week. In order to improve life chances, does the Minister believe that funding for Sure Start should be ring-fenced and that the closures should be stopped?
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): Local authorities make decisions about how best to address the needs of children from underprivileged backgrounds. Much has changed since 2010, including the early years pupil premium and the 15 hours of free childcare for those who would qualify for free school meals, for example. It is up to local authorities to decide how best to deliver that. Indeed, my local Sure Start centre raised with me the issue of the many children who should be at the centre who are not. That is a role for those who are going out to mentor people in their communities.
Free Childcare — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: Nearly 200,000 children in Britain fall behind by the age of five, and one children’s centre closes every single week. In order to improve life chances, does the Minister believe that funding for Sure Start should be ring-fenced and that the closures should be stopped?
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): No, my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) was not correct. Indeed, she made that clear when I spoke to her about it; she had misheard something that was said to her. The hon. Lady keeps falling into the trap of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Indeed, she has also lured some journalists into that trap. Will she finally admit that the policy is working successfully and that children are receiving the childcare they need?
GCSE/A-level Standards — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): We are reforming GCSEs and A-levels to make them more knowledge based and academically rigorous, to match the best education systems in the world and to keep pace with the demands of universities and employers. The reforms are intended to ensure that pupils, employers, colleges and universities can have confidence in the qualifications.
GCSE/A-level Standards — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Theresa Anne Villiers (Conservative, Centre-right): A teacher came to my surgery on Saturday to say that while she was determined to provide the best teaching of the new history course, which has a tougher exam, she was finding it hard to do that when asked by the school to cover for a colleague on maternity leave whom the school did not feel that it could replace. Is there any help that can be given to schools as they face the twin challenges of budget pressures and the introduction of a completely new history course?
GCSE/A-level Standards — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): I am pleased to tell my right hon. Friend that help is available. While core school funding has been and is being protected in real terms, we understand that schools are facing cost pressures due to higher employers’ national insurance contributions and higher contributions to teachers’ pensions. We will continue to work to deliver the initiative set out in the schools buying strategy to help schools get the best value for their non-staff expenditure, such as through regional purchasing hubs, and we will support schools in managing their staff and workloads by implementing flexible working and by deploying support staff effectively.
GCSE/A-level Standards — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): We looked carefully at that issue. We found that controlled assessments were consuming vast amounts of teaching time and a culture of resits was taking up more teaching time. Ofqual said that the controlled assessment system was not the most reliable way of assessing pupils.
Education Spending — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): We have been very clear that, with the additional £1.3 billion we are investing in our schools, overall funding will be maintained in real terms per pupil for the next two years, as the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed. Of course, if parents want to check the actual funding for their school, they can see it on the Department for Education website, which has to comply with Office for National Statistics standards, unlike some of the websites that put up inaccurate data.
Education Spending — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Daniel Robert Kawczynski (Conservative, Centre-right): Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that the additional £3.7 million that we have secured for Shropshire will ensure that there are no cuts to any of our schools? Will she do more to ensure that websites such as School Cuts are confronted about the erroneous information they are putting out, which is causing a lot of concern among parents?
Education Spending — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): Indeed, it is very much scaremongering. The Department for Education’s published formula illustrations show, as my hon. Friend says, that his Shropshire schools are gaining an additional £3.7 million by 2019-20, of which £2.6 million will be allocated in 2018-19. The websites he mentions are fundamentally misleading, and their claims are based on flawed calculations. They say that money to schools is being cut when it is increasing, and they say that teacher numbers will go down although they are going to go up. Of course, that is all contrary to the Leader of the Opposition’s claims last week, but the national funding formula provides cash gains for every school.
Education Spending — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): The story was based, I think, on misleading facts. For example, some of the classes were of choirs or restructured PE classes, which would be expected to have more children. The bottom line is that the average primary class size is just 0.7 of a pupil higher than in 2010, despite there being 506,000 more primary school pupils. In fact, the average secondary school class size in 2018 will be some 0.3 of a pupil higher than in 2010. In other words, the figures are broadly stable. In spite of the fact that we have many, many more pupils in the system, we are making places available.
Efficiency Savings — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): My Department has been working to identify the efficiency savings that will ultimately result in a cash boost for schools and put £1.3 billion directly into the hands of headteachers. That means that, across the country, funding will be maintained in real terms per pupil over the next two years.
Efficiency Savings — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): Most parents would be staggered that the hon. Gentleman is so against my looking across my Department to make sure that I challenge it and its officials to work as efficiently as we are now challenging schools to be. That is quite right, and I am now able to put the fruits of that initiative into the hands of headteachers, providing them with more money on the frontline. We will be making effective savings, which is actually the way to get more out of our education budget.
Efficiency Savings — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): As the hon. Lady should know, the next spending review process is yet to get under way. Of course school budgets, alongside every other budget across government, will be agreed as part of that. We had a question earlier about the fact that money and results are not necessarily correlated, and I have to say that if there is one part of our United Kingdom where a Government are failing their children, it is Wales—where Labour is in charge—not England.
GCSE Results — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): The free school and academy programmes are helping pupils from all backgrounds to achieve their potential. Pupils in converter academies are achieving top GCSE results and, together with pupils in free schools, are making on average more progress than pupils in other types of schools. Secondary sponsored academies have also improved, often from difficult circumstances, with more pupils achieving good GCSEs in English and maths this year.
GCSE Results — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nusrat Munir Ul-Ghani (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Minister for his response. Crowborough’s Beacon Academy, which is in my constituency, has been named as the best school in East Sussex. It is in the top 3% in the country, with 77% of its pupils achieving five or more passes at GCSE. The headteacher, Anna Robinson, has taken this academy to the top of the league tables. Will the Minister join me in congratulating her and the schools’ students on a great job? Is this not another example of the Government’s education policies enabling our children to reach their full potential?
GCSE Results — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Beacon Academy on its GCSE results this year. The provisional 2017 figures show that 56% of its students are entered for the increasingly important EBacc combination of core academic GCSEs. The pupils’ progress puts it in the top 12% of schools nationally on that measure.
GCSE Results — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Questions: As the Government rightly continue to push local authorities to make provision for more housing, the need for additional places at free schools and academies will increase. In my constituency, that makes the case for a new school to serve Radlett, Bushey and Borehamwood all the more pressing. What steps are the Government taking so that there is co-ordination between local authorities and the Department for Education when planning for new school places?
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): One of the first things we did when we came into office in 2010 was to double the amount of capital for basic need funding compared with what Labour had spent. Basic need funding for school places is based on a local authority’s own data, and we fund every place that councils say they need to create. Local authority forecasts include key drivers of increased pupil numbers, such as rising birth rates and housing developments. Hertfordshire has already received £197 million for new places between 2011 and 2017, and it is allocated a further £57 million for the next three years.
Relationship and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): We are pressing ahead with our engagement process with relevant groups and interested individuals. We will be including parliamentarians over the coming months, and we will also seek the views of young people and parents. As has just been announced, Ian Bauckham, the chief executive officer of the Tenax Schools Trust and an executive headteacher, will advise on this work. He has considerable experience that will help us to ensure that schools teach a quality curriculum. Of course, following the engagement, we will consult on draft regulations and guidance, and we will then have a debate and a vote on the regulations in Parliament.
Relationship and Sex Education — House of Commons, 2017-11-06
Topic: Education
Justine Greening (Conservative, Centre-right): We will issue interim guidance this term, but the hon. Lady is quite right that if we are to make a longer-term change in the sort of attitudes that drive unacceptable behaviour in workplaces, we have to make a start in schools, which is why we are now updating the relationship and sex education guidance for the first time since 2000. We all recognise the need and we will approach this responsibly.