Education secretary Gavin Williamson appeared before the Commons Education Select committee this morning to answer questions from MPs on catch-up, exams and Ofsted.
Here’s what we learned:
Mr Williamson told MPs that he is considering speeding up the timetable of Ofsted inspections.
Asked by David Johnston, Conservative MP for Wantage, about schools wishing to demonstrate their improvement, as well as Ofsted “outstanding” schools that have not been inspected for 14 years, Mr Williamson said he is “looking at a whole range of different options including accelerated inspection”.
Challenged by Jonathan Gullis, Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, on the amount of money schools are being charged by exam boards this year, Mr Williamson said he “would be expecting exam boards to be delivering a rebate to schools at the end of this process as they did last year”.
Also on exams, Mr Williamson said that for the 2022 cohort, an “extensive package of measures that was intended for this year’s awarding session supporting youngsters as they took their exams” would be on offer and that there would be no immediate “switching back” to 2019 assessments.
Mr Williamson said some schools close “far too early”. But he did not have figures when asked if he knew exactly how many stayed open beyond 3.30pm.
“I feel very concerned when I see secondary schools closing at 2.45pm, sometimes even earlier, sometimes at 3pm. I would like to see secondary schools go a bit further,” he said.
Mr Williamson said that “in the summer, we are going to be consulting on proposals to strengthen the Baker Clause legislation”.
He said that schools could be “putting funding in jeopardy” if they do not offer colleges and other FE providers access to provide careers advice on vocational options to students.
Schools must remain politically neutral
Mr Williamson was asked about the term “white privilege”, cited in the committee’s report on Monday regarding the “systematic neglect” of white working-class pupils.
Asked whether the Department for Education (DfE) could intervene and tell a school it was not an appropriate term to be promoted or, if it was, that it should be done in an impartial way, he said schools are “not there to be a political space”.
“Schools are there and they have to be politically impartial,” he said.
DfE gathering more evidence on catch-up funding
Asked by Ian Mearns, Labour MP for Gateshead, about former education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins’ call for a recovery package of £15 billion and his subsequent characterisation of the government’s catch-up programme as “half-hearted”, Mr Williamson said: “I would start off by thanking Sir Kevan for the work he did, it was an absolute real pleasure to be able to spend so much time with him working so closely in terms of a whole range of policy areas, whether that is on teacher quality, whether that is on the issue of the massive expansion of our tutoring programme or whether that has been in the area of time and expansion of the school day”.
He said two of those areas had been brought forward “very rapidly” prior to the spending review and that the DfE was looking at how it could build up a “greater body of evidence”.
Mr Williamson said it was “unusual” to make spending commitments outside of a fiscal event such as a spending review or budget.
