Gillian Keegan: It is an honour to open today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. Education is the key that unlocks the door to opportunity. Get it right, and it is the single most transformative thing that any Government can do. That is why this Conservative Government have spent the last 13 years doing just that. We have been taking the long-term decisions to ensure that the...
Gillian Keegan: Let me make some progress before I take interventions. Earlier this year, we announced the largest ever investment in childcare in England’s history. Very soon, we will be spending £8 billion a year. That investment will ensure that every child gets the best start in life. It means that working parents will be entitled to 30 hours of free childcare from the end of parental leave until...
Gillian Keegan: I will in a moment, honestly, but this is important. I want to address one of the key challenges we face, which is school attendance. Following the pandemic, we have seen a phenomenon where more children are staying home and not going to school. That challenge is not unique to the UK. At the G7, my counterparts from the US to Japan were all grappling with the same issue. I reassure the House...
Gillian Keegan: The progress we have made on education is phenomenal. The legislation we have put in place has enabled us to make many of these improvements, but we remain committed to legislating to take forward the “children not in school” measures, and we will progress those at a suitable future legislative opportunity. We continue to work with local authorities to improve the non-statutory registers,...
Gillian Keegan: As somebody who grew up in Liverpool, I have had many a fabulous holiday in north Wales. In terms of the education department, unfortunately Wales suffers from a poor Administration. Let us move on to schools. Nowhere is the difference between Labour and the Conservatives clearer to see than in our school system. When we came into office, Labour had overseen a decade of decline in our...
Gillian Keegan: We published our special educational needs and alternative provision improvement plan in March 2023—the hon. Lady may have missed that as she was not yet in her place—and we have backed the plan with investment of £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025. That will fund new and alternative provision places, and it is also a significant investment in the high-needs budget. We know that we need...
Gillian Keegan: We have some initiatives in place. First, we are raising the starting salary to £30,000 for all new teachers across the country, and more in London. Secondly, we are increasing—in fact doubling—the premium we pay to maths, computer science and some science teachers to enable them to earn more. That is the plan. We are also updating our retention and recruitment strategy before the end of...
Gillian Keegan: I will in a second. We believe in the values that I have talked about—aspiration, standards and rigour—precisely because they deliver a brighter future for our young people, and one that means that, as they grow into adulthood, they can be sure that they are getting the skills they need to succeed in life, to get a good job and to earn a good wage. That is the purpose of education: to...
Gillian Keegan: I will; just give me a second. The hon. Gentleman might want to answer this point. One thing that Labour did do was set an arbitrary target of 50% of young people going to university—a policy that favoured the most advantaged in society and only widened the gap. Today, under the Conservatives, children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds are 71% more likely to go to university than when...
Gillian Keegan: I am happy to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. I always want things to improve in Wales, and I very much care about the Welsh children. It is not my words; it is the OECD and the international league tables—which I believe they have actually withdrawn from now because they do not want the scrutiny. We have to be open and transparent and put ourselves forward for international...
Gillian Keegan: I will give way one more time to the hon. Lady.
Gillian Keegan: I am happy to come to that later. I am concerned about ensuring that children and young people in Knowsley, Manchester, Hull, Blyth, Teesside and all over the country get fantastic opportunities, so that their earnings rise. That is what we in this party will continue to do.
Gillian Keegan: The right hon. Gentleman made a good point. Local authorities usually work with us to capacity plan for demographic changes, which often happen from time to time—they go up and down. When we were first elected in 2010, we had to find 1 million more school places because the previous Administration had failed to do so. In some London inner-city schools, the pandemic has changed that more...
Gillian Keegan: The Government introduced fairness into school funding. Under Labour, we got disproportionately inflated school budgets in places such as London, while constituencies such as mine were underfunded for over a decade. It was the Conservatives who introduced the national funding formula, which funds schools fairly, objectively and, most importantly, based on the needs of pupils, not political...
Gillian Keegan: I am conscious of the pressures that many local authorities have faced on their high needs budgets. Nationally, high needs funding is set to increase by 60% between 2019-20 and 2024-25. Next year, Worcestershire will receive more than £89 million for its high needs budget. The Department is also supporting individual local authorities to tackle financial sustainability through two...
Gillian Keegan: I take the error in the July notional national funding formula figures very seriously, but it is important to note that schools do not receive notification of their actual budget until February-March. The Department acted quickly to correct the error—well before schools set their final budgets. There is no cut: £59.6 billion, which I have talked about many times from this Dispatch Box, is...
Gillian Keegan: It is our intention to legislate, but I cannot give a date for that at the Dispatch Box. I will keep my hon. Friend informed.
Gillian Keegan: The introduction of the NFF will direct resources according to need. That has meant that funding has been redistributed to catch up with these changes. Those with the highest number of pupils with additional needs will also be targeted via the NFF.
Gillian Keegan: Improving attendance is one of my top priorities. Our attendance hub now supports 800 schools, benefiting more than 400,000 pupils; 86% of schools subscribe to our attendance data tool to spot at-risk pupils; and we have specialist programmes helping some of the most vulnerable, including children with social workers, children with special educational needs, and young people facing particular...
Gillian Keegan: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend: School-Home Support does incredible work in Blackpool. The Government’s supporting families programme, backed by £200 million, focuses on attendance by supporting the whole family. Blackpool is also one of our 24 priority education investment areas, with six family support workers helping 11 schools to improve attendance. I am sure that my right hon....
