Webchat with Conservative Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, TUESDAY 28 April at 11.30am

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We're pleased to announce the second of our three politics webchats this week with Nicky Morgan, who was Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities until Parliament dissolved earlier this month. She will be joining us for a live webchat on Tuesday 28 April at 11.30am.

Nicky is the Conservative candidate for the Loughborough seat. She has done a couple of webchats with us before; in one of them she made some headlines after saying that 'no option is off the table' when questioned about whether the Conservatives should consider all-women shortlists to improve women's representation in Parliament.

Since becoming Secretary of State for Education, Nicky has been perceived by some as taking a less combative approach to teachers and the education sector than her predecessor, Michael Gove. She has emphasised the importance of 'freedom' for schools, and has said that tackling unnecessary workload is a priority. There has been some controversy about her vote against the Equal Marriage Act; she has also announced plans to include issues like consent in sex education lessons.

Do join us at 11:30am on Tuesday 28 April to talk politics, education and other important issues with Nicky. As ever, if you can’t make it then, do leave a question for Nicky on this thread. And please remember our webchat guidelines.

Thanks
MNHQ

Thank you for the answer. So you are in favour of 4 yo being discriminated against on the basis of their (parents) religion.

Are there other areas of life you would like to see made exempt from equal opportunities legislation? Shops maybe? Or hospitals?

@YBR

Like many people I live in an area with increasing pressure on Primary School places. Not only is there the general population increase but in the ward where I live there is a large proposed development - thousands new houses with no new schools planned.

All the primary schools in the town are academies so the LEA cannot expand them to provide places.
I hear that it is not possible for local government to start new schools because they must be Free Schools - is this true?
Is there any plan in place to ensure there are sufficient school places?

I live in Loughborough.

Hi YBR,

Glad to be chatting to a fellow Loughborough resident.

I know school places are absolutely an issue across the country, and without wishing to be too partisan the last Government left us with a massive backlog having cut 200,000 places.

That's why we've invested £5bn in new school places across the country, including in Loughborough. It isn't true that basic need can't be used to expand academies, in fact quite the opposite. Over the next parliament we've said we'll invest a further £7bn in school buildings and places to help meet the growing need. In fact today there's an article in the Leicester Mercury about the extra 600 places the County Council are building for across the county.

I think the development you're referring to is the Garendon site and there are plans for at least one school to be built there.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30533044
UK Statistics Authority tells Nicky off for talking rubbish about reading levels.

@ReallyTired

Thank you for answering my question on the phonics check. I am really pleased with the way my daughter has been taught literacy. Sorry another question, if you have time. Why is the results of the year 1 phonics check not shown in league tables?

Hi ReallyTired,

We deliberately excluded the phonics check from school league tables because we didn't want this to become another hard accountability measure putting pressure on teachers - instead we publish data on a local authority level. However I know that Nick has written to the top performing schools to congratulate them on their results.

Do you recognise the importance of the early years as a foundation for all future learning as well as an important stage in itself?
What ideas and policies do you have to support this crucial stage of education for children and families?

@Pico2

What will you do to address inequalities in school funding across the country? We live in one of the worst funded counties in England and our village school could employ at least two more experienced teachers if it was funded at the average rate per pupil.

Hi Pico2

Disparities in school funding is something that gets raised with me a lot and something we're committed to sorting out.

As a starter measure we announced last summer an extra £390 million for the most poorly funded local authorities and in our manifesto we've committed to going further to ensure a fair national distribution of school funding.

Unfortunately LEAs are not putting the child's best interests at the heart of their decisions, regarding requests to defer summer born infants entry to reception. The additional changes to the code have not taken this issue far enough, why are summer born infants not entitled to the same proportion of access to the foundation stage curriculum if their parents wish for them to start at CSA? The DfE are well aware of the issues for these children throughout education. How the LEA make a decision in the best interests of the child if they do not know the child? This goes against parental choice.

The previous Government closed schools in response to falling school roll predications. Tories have frequently done the same.

The previous Government closed schools in response to falling school roll predications. Tories have frequently done the same.

@pingwing

Dear Ms Morgan. If Ofsted isn't political (as you repeatedly claim it isn't) why is it going to be used to force schools to teach Ebacc by effectively marking them down if they refuse?

Hi pingwing,

Ofsted isn't political in the sense its inspections are independent of political interference (to answer another post I've seen). But it's job is to make sure that schools are raising standards and reflecting Government policy.

We want to make taking the EBACC subjects (maths, science a humanity, English and a language) the norm because we know that these core academic subjects play a key part in keeping young people's opportunities for the future open. That doesn't mean that we don't value other subjects and our new Progress 8 measure will look at performance across 8 different subjects leaving space for the arts, sport and music.

One of the things which is little known is that since we introduced the EBACC entries to arts subjects have actually risen by 8% at the same time as the number of entries overall has gone down.

Nicky

I've just managed to get back on line for this. Late to the party as ever...

Thank you for answering my question on equal marriage and for accepting you made a mistake with how you voted. We all live and learn and I hope that your change of head and heart is genuine, and not simply political expediency.

A follow on question on flexible school admission for summer born may include a clarification that what the new Code has done is increased the number of hoops the parents have to jump to persuade LAs to allow their CSA age children to go to school at the "crucial" and "critical" Reception year. Yet, can it ever be in a child's best interest to skip a whole year of education?

Thank you for your reply re summer borns. Again you state that flexibility exists, but in reality it really doesn't. LA are inconsistent in the message they're sending to parents about it, if they are at all sharing the information.

What is the point of the Equalities Act 2010 if arguably the single most important service provided by the state (education) is exempt from it?

I work in a university, can you imagine what would happen if we started giving preference to Christian students during applications?

@wildpoppy

How do you teach your own son about politics? Is he interested? Or does he think it's something boring that his mum does? My kids love spotting posters in the windows at the moment.

Hi Wildpoppy,

I know what you mean about counting posters, that's something that's stayed with me into adulthood.

As with all 7 year olds interests my son's interest in politics vary by the day - although he does increasingly blame me for the amount of homework he's started to get.

In terms of teaching young people about politics I don't know if you've read the fantastic book "The Election" by Eleanor Levenson - it's a fantastic and simple picture book (illustrated by Marek Jagucki) which I'd highly recommend.

Re pingwings question and your response: doesn't that go against what you have previously said regarding arts subjects? www.thestage.co.uk/news/2014/education-secretary-nicky-morgan-arts-subjects-limit-career-choices/

I appreciate time is short here, but maybe you could read this document at some point which explains what is really happening? I've tweeted it before so can share it there also. The "flexibily" you talk about is really anything but!

summerbornchildren.org/2015/03/31/dfe-promised-flexibility-but-look-what-it-chose-to-change-in-the-code/#more-1412

Good point, IceBeing.

@Quiero

I work with 16 and 17 year olds and have seen a real dip in their abilities as they leave compulsory education. I see young people with B and C grades at GCSE who are unable to grasp basic spelling and maths. They have few life skills and resilience. Do you think this is partly due to schools being forced to teach to the test rather than actually educating children in a way which will benefit them for years to come?

Hi Quiero,

One of the reasons that we brought back marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar in exams was precisely because young people weren't getting these basics right.

I think you're right that too often teaching has been to the test and often aimed at getting young people over an artificial C/D borderline. I think that will change with the introduction of Progress 8 which will ensure schools (which most already do) focus on the progress of pupils across the ability spectrum.

But I couldn't agree more with you on life skills and resilience. That's why I added "making sure children leave school as well rounded young people" as a departmental priority when I took on the job of Secretary of State. Since then we've started some fantastic work supporting projects which build character, resilience and grit among young people and I want to do a whole lot more.

Following your comments on the RS GSCE, why was Humanism excluded from the list of possible world views?

boffin thanks - but apparently we're wrong.

Nicky Morgan, Education Secretary, is perfectly content with religious discrimination in the state school system....

Why will the Conservatives not open more Grammar schools?

IceBeing makes a crucial point, there.

@DFSMum

I would like to ask Nicky Morgan why the Durham Free School was treated so starkly differently from schools with far worse OFSTED reports and with much less scope to improve. Whilst the findings of the Ofsted report are widely disputed, the school accepted that there were some issues that needed addressing, however they were making significant improvements under the new Headteacher and yet have been treated vastly differently to other schools in special measures who have had equally bad (if not worse!) Ofsted reports recently. They were all given numerous monitoring inspections by Ofsted (which they have repeatedly failed) and yet they all remain open, however you announced your decision to close Durham Free School the day before their first monitoring inspection was due - why was that??

How can you claim to have made an 'informed' decision without waiting for the results of this monitoring inspection? We all strongly believe this inspection would have shown that the school had made significant progress and been well on the way to coming out of special measures, yet it wasn't allowed to take place - were you afraid of being proved wrong (and thereby having to do another u-turn) or was there a hidden agenda here?

Hi DFSMum,

Lots of questions about Durham Free School so let me answer them together.

The Ofsted report into Durham Free School was absolutely clear that the school was failing on a whole range of measures.

It was failing to ensure children were being looked after with bullying and intimidation widespread. It was not providing an environment in which children were able to learn and it was simply failing to provide the quality of education that we expect. The inspectors and the head of Ofsted Sir Michael Wilshaw were clear about this, and I have to say their views were supported by other people that we sent in to look at the school too. We didn't simply look at the Ofsted report and make a snap decision. I thought about this very deeply and came to a considered view.

I also considered the representations that were made during the consultation period but it was clear to me that there was no imminent prospect of improvement and no clear plan in place to turn the school around. The best thing for the children involved was therefore to act decisively so that they could be found good places in other local schools and to move on with their education.

It's always difficult to make a decision like that - I certainly didn't take the job of Education Secretary to go around closing schools - but I had to make a decision that was in my view in the best interests of the children involved. Any day a child spends in a failing school is a day wasted - a day when they're not getting the education they deserve. And I think it's important that we are prepared to act decisively wherever we identify failure.

In this case, the school was found to be failing on every measure. I am sorry if you disagree with my decision but I hope you will accept that I did what I considered to be in the best interests of the children.