argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Alan James Carter Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is right. This has significance across the world because large amounts of drugs are trafficked through Venezuela. Of course, one cannot tackle that problem with the Government of Venezuela because they are party to that inappropriate drug trafficking themselves. Therefore, the solution for the streets of Harlow when it comes to Venezuela is to deal with a legitimate Government who are prepared to tackle the problem head-on in Venezuela.
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew James Bridgen (Conservative, Centre-right): It is the only way to be noticed, Mr Speaker I welcome the urgent question. For too long, the House has stood by and watched Venezuela, which should be a prosperous country, slip into tyranny and destitution. Did my right hon. Friend hear the comments made on the radio by Ken Livingstone, the former Labour Mayor of London? He said that the reason for the problems in Venezuela was that the Marxist regime, when it seized power, did not execute enough people.
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): It takes a special kind of socialist incompetence to turn a country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world into one where 90% of the population live in poverty and 3.5 million citizens, 10%, have fled to neighbouring countries. The Minister has quite rightly insisted that there be full, fair and free elections in that country. What role will the United Kingdom play in ensuring that the elections are fair?
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Alan James Carter Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): When it comes to elections, we often offer very substantial advice and assistance to ensure that electoral registers are properly drawn up, and that the conduct of elections is properly monitored and financed. In this case, I hope it will be far more than just the UK taking an interest. I hope there will be a global effort to ensure that, together across the world, we can help to rescue the country from the tyranny it has been facing from Maduro.
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Alan James Carter Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his good sense and for his sense of humanity in analysing what is going on in Venezuela. I noticed that, as he said what he said, he cast a glance at his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson). It astonishes me that some of those who are so unreconstructed, who are nothing more than throwbacks to an old communist era, bleat about the poor and are then happy to support someone who has done nothing other than make poor people poorer.
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Alan James Carter Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): As the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) said, there are very many in Venezuela who are absolutely starving. This could be the richest country in Latin America, yet it has been reduced to poverty and destitution by the regime. Many are starving and many of the Venezuelans who are not are those who have managed to escape the country and go to generous countries next door.
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Alan James Carter Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): The Government absolutely recognise that Baroness Massey’s reputation is intact. We fully acknowledge that her name was wrongly put on that letter, and we in no way associate her good reputation with the other signatories The hon. Lady is absolutely right that it will take a lot of international effort to replace the corrupt electoral practices with ones that can be trusted. I will speak to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, and it will be absolutely central to the Foreign Office’s policy for Venezuela that we do all we can to assist in the holding of free, fair, trustworthy and properly democratic elections as soon as possible.
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: International Affairs
Alan James Carter Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): One of our hopes is that most of the many millions who have fled to neighbouring countries will want to return. Venezuela is not like Syria, where the infrastructure has been completely flattened by conflict. We will design plans with our allies and partners, and I hope that many of those millions will want to and will return to their homes and livelihoods in Venezuela.
Venezuela — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alan James Carter Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is one of those rare moments in history when a country’s inflation must be measured in millions of per cent. It is almost impossible to get one’s mind around that extraordinary statistic I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words about my appearance on television. Normally, I appear much more on foreign television screens, and therefore am much better known and popular abroad than at home.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): Last year, we recruited more than 34,500 trainee teachers into the profession—more than 2,000 more than the year before—but the growing number of pupils means that we need even more teachers at a time when we have the most competitive labour market on record. Today, the Government launched the teacher recruitment and retention strategy, outlining our priorities ahead of the spending review. First, we are creating the right climate so headteachers can establish the right culture in their schools. Secondly, we are transforming the support for early career teachers. Thirdly, we are building a career structure that remains attractive as teachers’ lives and careers progress. Fourthly, we are making it easier for great people to become teachers At the heart of the strategy is the early career framework. Developed with teachers, headteachers, academics and experts, and endorsed by the Education Endowment Foundation, it underpins what all new teachers will be entitled to be trained in at the start of their career, in line with the best available evidence. The early career framework will underpin the fully funded two-year package of structured support for all early career teachers, including additional time off-timetable for teachers in their second year and fully funded mental health training By the time the new system is fully in place, we anticipate investing at least an additional £130 million every year to support the delivery in full of the early career framework. This will be a substantial investment, befitting the most significant change to the teaching profession since it became a graduate-only profession. In addition, the recruitment and retention strategy outlines how the Government will create the right climate for headteachers to establish supportive cultures in their schools in which unnecessary workload is driven down. This includes consulting on replacing the floor and coasting standards, with Ofsted’s "requires improvement" as the sole trigger for an offer of support The recruitment and retention strategy, including the early career framework, has been developed closely with the sector. Its publication marks a crucial milestone for the profession, as well as the start of a conversation between the Government and the profession about how best to deliver on the promise of this strategy.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not really know how to react to the hon. Lady’s tone. This is a very effective recruitment and retention strategy, which has the support of the sector, and I should have thought that she would want to support it as well. The concept and structure of the strategy were driven by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and the details were developed by officials and by me in close consultation with the profession, the teachers’ unions and academics. I do not regard that as a matter for criticism The hon. Lady asks whether the £130 million is new money. It reflects what we think schools will need to support a 5% timetable reduction for early-years career teachers, for mental health training and time and for the training programme. The Government are clear that they are committed to that funding, and it is new funding. It does not include the £42 million teacher development premium The hon. Lady asks about more experienced teachers. As she will see when she has a chance to read the strategy, it includes support for non-leadership career pathways for teachers who want to remain in the classroom. There will be a teacher development national professional qualification to enable them to enhance their careers without necessarily taking on leadership positions. We shall be announcing a procurement tender for initial teacher training providers and others The principal challenge that we face in teacher recruitment is the fact that we have a strong economy, with record numbers of jobs and the lowest unemployment since the 1970s. We are competing with other professions, such as commerce and industry, for the best graduates in our economy. A strong economy is not a challenge likely to face any Labour Government. Whenever Labour is in office, it damages the public finances, damages the economy and destroys jobs, whereas the Conservatives repair our economy, take a balanced approach to the public finances and create jobs—millions of jobs.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Robert Henry Halfon (Conservative, Centre-right): I strongly welcome this announcement—particularly amid the Brexit fog—and I welcome the work that my right hon. Friend and the Secretary of State are doing. Has either of them considered the idea of establishing local teacher training colleges in areas of strong deprivation, possibly linked to further education colleges, to encourage people in those areas to take up teaching?
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): The purpose of the phased bursaries that we have piloted with maths in particular is to stagger the payments of those bursaries after three years. For those training to teach maths, there is a £20,000 bursary, followed by a £5,000 payment after three years and a further £5,000 after five years. In areas where there is a record of recruitment challenges, or areas of deprivation, the £5,000 figure becomes £7,500. There is a range of other measures intended to incentivise people to train in the areas to which my right hon. Friend has referred.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): We have been addressing those issues. For instance, we started to deal with workload in 2014. The workload challenge produced 44,000 responses identifying the top three issues: excessive marking work, data collection and lesson preparation. We addressed those with some workload review groups, and accepted their recommendations. This strategy, however, includes more measures to deal with workload. For example, the new Ofsted framework will include tackling teacher workload as an element of the leadership and management judgment that schools will face We are also doing more to ensure that the culture of schools is right. We are changing the accountability regime. There will not be a "football manager" approach. We are consulting today on replacing floor and coasting as triggers for support for schools with the simple "requires improvement" judgment of Ofsted. We have been engaged in a range of measures since 2010, and we are taking a strategic approach to these issues as well. I think that if the hon. Lady reads the strategy, she will find that it addresses all her concerns.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
David Anthony Evennett (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Does he share my hope that this new strategy marks the end of excessive marking and data entry, so that our teachers can spend more time doing what they came into the profession to do, which is teach, and not be overburdened by administration?
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Department and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State take very seriously the issue of tackling excessive workload. Teachers in this country work eight hours a week above the OECD average but work the same number of teaching hours as the OECD average. Those extra eight hours are spent, as my right hon. Friend said, on things such as excessive data collection and excessive marking. We have been addressing those issues, and this strategy continues to address them including through a new approach by Ofsted.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady will know that we are spending a record amount of money on our schools: £43.5 billion by next year. Every local authority is seeing an increase in funding for every pupil in every school in the country. The School Teachers Review Body recommended a 3.5% pay rise for teachers on the main pay scale, and we have accepted a 2% pay rise for teachers on the upper pay scale and have agreed a 1.5% pay rise for headteachers on the leadership pay scale. We are funding that through a teacher pay grant over and above the 1% already budgeted.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Antoinette Geraldine Sherratt (Sandbach) (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the fact that this plan has been co-signed by all the teaching unions. What measures will the Minister put in place to support rural teachers, particularly in underfunded areas such as mine in Cheshire, where they often face additional hurdles around accommodation and transport?
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, we are taking a number of measures to tackle areas that have suffered particular historical challenges in recruiting teachers, including rural and coastal areas and areas of deprivation. The evidence suggests that within those areas different schools face different challenges, so it is often a school-level challenge, but we do have measures in place to direct funding particularly to areas of challenge, and we are rolling out this strategy to areas, including the north-east, Manchester and Bristol, that we know face particular social mobility challenges.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): Teaching remains an attractive profession. There are 450,000 teachers in the profession. Last year, we recruited 34,500 teachers, which is over 2,000 more than the year before, and that year we recruited more teachers than the year before that. We accepted the recommendation of the STRB of a 3.5% pay rise for teachers on the main pay scale. We added an extra £1.3 billion of school funding, which we announced in the summer of 2017. The Chancellor announced an extra £400 million in his Budget for small capital projects. We have announced an extra £250 million recently for special needs funding. And we have issued a pay grant to fund the pay increases over and above the 1% that schools will already have budgeted.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Rachel Helen Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): May I put on the record my thanks to all the teachers in Redditch, who give all our young people such a great start in life? I, too, welcome this strategy, and note in particular the comments from the body that brings people from other professions into teaching as well as the support for the early career framework. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that he will continue to use best practice to attract the best people into the teaching profession?
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The early career framework is built on best evidence of the approach to teaching. It is a welcome framework and focuses on those issues that teachers need to be trained in to be effective as teachers. I was struck by how different it is to enter into the teaching profession compared with other professions, such as chartered accountancy. There is a lot of support in the first few years of training to be an accountant, once one is in work. In the teaching profession, there is a steep learning curve in those early years, and we have been concerned about the high drop-out rate in the first few years of people’s careers The strategy seeks to give more support to teachers in those early years, because it is not just a recruitment strategy; it is also about increasing retention of those highly able people so that they stay in the profession—a profession they almost certainly love when they come into it, and which they can be driven out of by excessive workload and a lack of support.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with some of what the hon. Lady says. Data collection has been a burden and there has been an over-obsession with data and its collection. Ofsted has made it very clear in the new framework that it will not be seeking that data; it will not want to see any internal assessment data on the progress that pupils make. It will be looking at the wider curriculum and more substantive issues when schools are inspected The hon. Lady is right about workload, and both I and the Secretary of State take that very seriously. That is why we had the workload challenge in 2014 and why we have taken a series of measures to reduce both workload and data collection. We have a data collection toolkit and we have a leading academic from the Institute of Education looking into the question of data collection to try to get rid of some of the unnecessary data collection points that she mentions. Ofsted has just published its new framework for consultation, and that has landed well with the sector. When the hon. Lady has a chance to see it, she will see that it focuses on those things that really matter to a child’s education On CPD, one aim of the recruitment and retention strategy is to create a more diverse range of options for career progression, including a new teacher development national professional qualification—[Interruption.] I think I have said enough, Mr Speaker.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Peter James Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): As I said in October 1990 when I raised the question of leadership with the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher—especially mentioning Peter Dawson, who had run Eltham Green before becoming general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers—the culture that good heads can set, followed by other senior teachers, can bring people in not just to teach first but to teach second, bringing the experience of their own careers to expand our schools and academies. They can do a great deal of good for children across the country.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Headteachers play an important part in creating the right culture in schools, and the Government have a role to play in helping headteachers to create that culture. We want schools to acknowledge that we live in a strong economy with low levels of unemployment and a competitive jobs market so schools, like other employers, will need to be more flexible in their recruitment approach to allow more professionals to come into the profession on a part-time or flexible basis. We had a flexible working summit last year, because we want to encourage people to teach more flexibly.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): We acknowledge the cost pressures on schools. As I said before, we are spending record amounts on schools, but there are of course increased pressures. We are asking schools to do more. Standards are rising, more children are reading more effectively earlier, we have better maths teaching, and more young people are taking at least two science GCSEs today than several years ago. That is why we are helping schools to tackle budget pressures, including through buying schemes for energy, insurance, computers and so on. We are also helping schools to balance their budgets when it comes to deploying staff. Tackling workload will be an important part of easing the cost pressures on schools.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Abimbola Afolami (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome this strategy. Two primary schools in the villages of Breachwood Green and Redbourn in my constituency have talked to me about the specific challenges they face because they are small rural schools. Will the Minister explain how the strategy will help to deal with such problems? Will he also meet with me to discuss the specific issues in those particular primary schools?
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to discuss funding issues relating to particular schools with my hon. Friend. Small schools receive a fixed sum that helps to deal with some of the fixed costs appropriate to such schools, and there is also the sparsity funding element of the national funding formula. The formula is geared towards helping small or rural schools, but I appreciate that they will face cost pressures, and we are helping schools to tackle them with a range of measures.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): We are investing in new and existing leadership qualifications and will do so disproportionately in more challenging areas of the country. As I said before, we are also developing our new national teacher development professional qualification for teachers who want to rise but do not necessarily want to go into leadership positions.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Education
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): The national funding formula contains an area cost adjustment that takes into account the cost pressures of employing both teachers and non-teachers in such areas. This strategy involves £130 million of new funding, because we strongly believe that we want teachers in the second year of their careers to have time off- timetable so that they can develop their teaching skills with support from a mentor and teacher training programmes.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Nicolas John Gibb (Conservative, Centre-right): The funding will be provided when the strategy is fully rolled out in September 2021. We are rolling it out earlier, in September 2020, to Bradford, Doncaster, Greater Manchester and the north-east—I think I said Bristol earlier, but I actually meant Bradford. The strategy will be fully funded, and £130 million has been agreed with the Treasury despite the fact that it goes into the next spending review period.