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793 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDEducation FundingMy noble friend asks important questions, too. The ambassador schools are a new initiative which we are working on at the moment, so I will be happy to write to him when we have…03 Sept 2019HANSARDEducation FundingI am perhaps more optimistic on rural schools than the right reverend Prelate. Coming from a rural background myself, I know the importance of these schools in communities beyond…03 Sept 2019HANSARDEducation FundingThe noble Lord asks important questions. First, I will try to clarify the difference between FE and the school system, particularly the academy system. FE colleges have a…03 Sept 2019HANSARDEducation FundingThe noble Lord is quite right. Sometimes, a local authority may use part-time provision that may be legal but, often, these morph into full-time institutions without the local…03 Sept 2019HANSARDEducation FundingMy Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made in the other place earlier today by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The…03 Sept 2019HANSARDEducation FundingI thank the noble Lords for their questions; I will try to address all of them. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, is worried about the fact that the funding seems to be benefiting…03 Sept 2019HANSARDEducation FundingOn the noble Lord’s concern about teaching assistants, even through a period of what he would consider to be austerity, the number of teaching assistants has risen by some 49,000…03 Sept 2019HANSARDEducation FundingThe noble Lord is correct that they are not under the same restrictions, but there are very few examples of academies paying more. I have come across one or two innovative ideas.…03 Sept 2019HANSARDRelationship Education Lessons in SchoolsThe noble Lord asks a number of questions. The first was on how many schools we envisage will start teaching this voluntarily this autumn. We are up to about 1,500 schools having…16 Jul 2019HANSARDRelationship Education Lessons in SchoolsThe noble Lord made several points. If the school he referred to, where he feels the Government’s response has been too slow, is Parkfield School, I can reassure him that we have…16 Jul 2019HANSARDRelationship Education Lessons in SchoolsI share the concerns of the noble Baroness about these disputes. I am sure she will know, from human experience, that the longer they drag on the more entrenched people become. We…16 Jul 2019HANSARDRelationship Education Lessons in SchoolsI mentioned, in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that we have been in to Parkfield School almost weekly for two or three months. That has involved a number of meetings…16 Jul 2019HANSARDRelationship Education Lessons in SchoolsMy Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made in the other place by my right honourable friend, the Minister of State for School Standards. The Statement…16 Jul 2019HANSARDMulti-academy TrustsI am afraid it does not, my Lords, because the Harris trust is delivering the most extraordinary level of education improvement in the country. If you take the cost of that senior…10 Jul 2019HANSARDMulti-academy TrustsMy noble friend is entirely correct. Again, we have done a lot to strengthen the quality of academy trust boards. We have organised a programme called Academy Ambassadors, finding…10 Jul 2019HANSARDMulti-academy TrustsThe noble Lord is right in saying that we appeared together several years ago at an Education Select Committee. A great deal of work has been done since then. Under my tenure, we…10 Jul 2019HANSARDMulti-academy TrustsMy Lords, I am not familiar with the love-nest situation, but I assure the noble Lord that scrutiny of the sector is robust. From 1 April this year, we brought in a requirement…10 Jul 2019HANSARDMulti-academy TrustsTo reassure the noble Lord, an academy trust is scrutinised not only by the Department for Education; we are co-regulators with the Charity Commission and, when a person becomes a…10 Jul 2019HANSARDMulti-academy TrustsThe noble Baroness is correct that whistleblowers play an important part in the regulation of the system, but I assure her that that is not the whole story at all. We rely on the…10 Jul 2019HANSARDMulti-academy TrustsMy Lords, an academy trust is a single legal entity, so the individual schools are part of that. But the noble Baroness is quite correct that there is a full external audit…10 Jul 2019