Oral Answers to Questions — Education – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 19 January 2015.
David Morris
Conservative, Morecambe and Lunesdale
2:30,
19 January 2015
What steps she is taking to improve the status of vocational education.
Nicholas Boles
The Minister for Universities and Science, Minister of State (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) (Jointly with the Department for Education)
We have removed thousands of low-quality qualifications from performance league tables, introduced the requirement to carry on studying English and maths for young people who have not yet achieved Cs at GCSE and invested in 2 million high-quality apprenticeships since 2010.
David Morris
Conservative, Morecambe and Lunesdale
Will the Minister join me in praising the fact that last month we celebrated having more than 2 million apprentices? What else are the Government doing to promote apprenticeships in areas such as mine?
Nicholas Boles
The Minister for Universities and Science, Minister of State (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) (Jointly with the Department for Education)
I had the great pleasure of meeting the 2 millionth apprentice, a young woman working in an extraordinary business whose work I could not understand because it was so complicated. She is doing something very clever in engineering near Oxford in the Constituency of my hon. Friend Nicola Blackwood. We are supporting smaller employers who create apprenticeships with a grant worth £1,500 and we are working closely with the fantastic apprenticeship ambassador network, led by David Meller and championed in this House by my hon. Friend Andrew Jones and Gordon Birtwistle—[Interruption.] Not that David Mellor.
John Bercow
Chair, Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Chair, Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, Speaker of the House of Commons, Speaker of the House of Commons, Chair, Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Chair, Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission
That is a great relief to all of us to learn.
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