Focus on...Education Select Committee

31st January 2012

Education Secretary Michael Gove was subjected to his regular grilling by the Education Select Committee this morning and SCHOOLS NorthEast was in Westminster to watch.

Whilst we have often complained about the lack of North East education voices in the corridors of power this certainly can’t be said of the Education Committee in which three of the 11 MPs represent North East constituencies – Pat Glass MP for North West Durham, Ian Mearns MP for Gateshead and Alex Cunningham MP for Stockton South.

Unsurprisingly therefore, issues close to the heart of our region’s Head Teachers were on the agenda.

Topics covered included:

  • Accountability and performance measures
  • The Ebacc and vocational qualifications
  • Pupil premium and how you know if it is working
  • Rates of academy conversions and academy chains
  • Government intervention in ‘failing’ schools
  • Governance
  • Early intervention
  • Teacher quality
  • Teaching conditions
  • School to school support
  • And, the Secretary of State’s use of private emails for Department business

 

In addition, local issues touched on included:

 

  • School transport
  • Local Authority school improvement services in Durham
  • Free Schools in areas where there are still places at existing high performing schools
  • The fall in applications at all NE Universities, except Durham

We were particularly pleased that Gateshead MP Ian Mearns raised a specific point regarding Ofsted Inspections brought to his attention at the SCHOOLS NorthEast MPs Lunch last week.

Prior to the hearing, the Committee had taken the novel step of asking the public for their questions to ‘ask Gove’, on Twitter. Apparently, 5000 responses were received and the Committee put many of them to the Secretary of State in a quick fire round.

Our full report of the session will be available on the Blog section of our website tomorrow morning and you can watch the session on the Parliament website .