The comments made by Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, on 21 August 2021.
Providing all schools with CO2 monitors will help them make sure they have the right balance of measures in place, minimising any potential disruption to education and allowing them to focus on world class lessons and catch up for the children who need it.
By keeping up simple measures such as ventilation and testing, young people can now enjoy more freedom at school and college.
The comments made by Toby Perkins, the Shadow Minister for Further Education, on 10 August 2021.
Labour congratulates the 230,000 students who have achieved their Level 3 BTEC qualification today.
They should be proud of their achievements through the most challenging of circumstances and against the backdrop of a Conservative Government looking to devalue their qualifications.
Despite the high value placed on BTECs by employers and universities, the Government plans to scrap most of these qualifications putting young people’s life chances at risk.
The Government’s alternative T-Level qualifications are currently unproven and a hasty charge to abolish Level 3 BTECs would be hugely irresponsible.
The comments made by Michelle Donelan, the Universities Minister, on 4 August 2021.
Our schools, colleges and universities have worked tirelessly to make this programme a success, and I am grateful to them and their global partners who have truly embraced this opportunity for international collaboration.
I look forward to seeing the innovation and expertise our students, pupils and vocational learners bring back to this country from their journeys to every corner of the globe – from Canada to Japan, and Australia to the United States.
The comments made by Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, on 4 August 2021.
The chance to work and learn in a country far from home is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – which broadens minds, sharpens skills and improves outcomes.
But until now it has been an opportunity disproportionately enjoyed by those from the most privileged backgrounds. The Turing Scheme has welcomed a breadth of successful applications from schools and colleges across the country, reflecting our determination that the benefits of Global Britain are shared by all.
By strengthening our partnerships with the finest institutions across the globe, the Turing Scheme delivers on the Government’s post-Brexit vision, and helps a new generation grasp opportunities beyond Europe’s borders.
The comments made by Matt Western, the Shadow Universities Minister, on 4 August 2021.
The Conservatives’ rhetoric on the Turing Scheme does not match the reality. Ministers are claiming to be targeting disadvantaged students, but their scheme provides no support to cover tuition fees which will make accessing this incredible opportunity impossible for many students.
Boris Johnson has yet again created confusion for students and chaos for providers, by breaking his promise to keep the UK in the Erasmus+ programme. Subjecting the Turing Scheme to future spending decisions will create financial uncertainty for organisations and young people. It’s being reduced to the status of Erasmus minus.
Ministers must ensure the Turing Scheme maintains the UK’s status as an attractive study destination for international students, protecting and promoting our global standing.
The comments made by Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 3 August 2021.
I’m thrilled that apprentices and employers in freelance industries such as film and TV can start to benefit from our new flexi-job apprenticeship scheme as part of our Plan for Jobs.
Together, we’re creating exciting new opportunities for apprentices and employers – harnessing the skill and talent of today for the jobs of tomorrow.
The comments made by Gillian Keegan, the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, on 3 August 2021.
We want to build an apprenticeship system that enables everyone to get the experience and knowledge they require to get the job they want, while ensuring employers have a diverse talent pipeline to meet their skills needs.
Our flexi-job apprenticeships will unleash exciting new opportunities in sectors such as the creative industries and construction where employment is increasingly flexible and project-based, while also helping larger organisations to grow starts in their supply chains, levelling up chances for people to build the life they want.
The comments made by Kate Green, the Shadow Education Secretary, on 3 August 2021.
Under the Tories the number of new apprenticeships is plummeting, with tens of thousands of people unable to access these opportunities.
Support for greater flexibility does little to end the stark decline in apprenticeship starts, particularly for those young people who could benefit most.
The Government must get a grip, stop tinkering at the edges and put forward a credible plan to put education and training at the heart of our economy recovery from the pandemic.
The comments made by Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, on 31 July 2021.
We know Latin has a reputation as an elitist subject which is only reserved for the privileged few. But the subject can bring so many benefits to young people, so I want to put an end to that divide.
There should be no difference in what pupils learn at state schools and independent schools, which is why we have a relentless focus on raising school standards and ensuring all pupils study a broad, ambitious curriculum.
Latin can help pupils with learning modern foreign languages, and bring broader benefits to other subjects, including maths and English.
The speech made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 29 July 2021.
Well, good evening, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thank you and congratulations to you all. Great to see you in person, by the way, isn’t it wonderful that the vaccines have liberated us to be able to come to this conference in London, a wonderful thing.
Great to see you all, despite your masks, I see some familiar friends in spite of the masks, some of you have taken your masks off in a daring way, but that’s absolutely fine – you’re socially distanced.
Now listen everybody I want to thank you all for raising your hands, raising your hands high and then thrusting them deep into your pockets in the way that you are, producing this staggering sum of $4 billion going on $5 billion. We often go to summits, we did before COVID struck, and we’d see very often a lot of men in suits, let’s be clear men in suits basically saying that there was a problem before humanity that was so big and so intractable that there was no silver bullet, no quick fix, no simplistic solution. Have you ever been in a meeting like that? Well, this is not that meeting. I want to say this GPE, this Global Partnership for Education, is completely different because this is the silver bullet, this is the magic potion, this is the panacea. This is the universal cure, this is the Swiss Army knife, complete with allen key and screwdriver and everything else that can solve virtually every problem that afflicts humanity.
And I’m absolutely serious, if you educate the world properly and fairly then of course you end a great natural injustice. But also, if you end the injustice that nine out of ten 10 year olds cannot read a story around the country, 132 million kids aren’t in school or in many of the countries represented here, alas, there are too few girls in school, and there is a gross disparity, a gross disparity in the education of boys and girls. If you end that injustice and you give every girl in the world the same education as every boy, 12 years of quality education, then you perform the most fantastic benefits for humanity- you lift life expectancy, you lift per capita GDP, you deal with infant mortality, and if you educate proper people properly in the way that they deserve then of course you end or you help to end all kinds of ignorance and prejudice and by educating people you help to end all the things that ignorance and prejudice help to create so you deal with terrorism and with war and extremism, and you help people to tackle climate change.
And so I’m immensely proud of the achievements of this GPE Summit today, I’m proud of what the UK has been able to contribute in spite of the difficult financial circumstances that we’re all going through. We have lashed out 430 million pounds, as Julia rightly pointed out, the biggest sum we’ve ever contributed and I’m proud of the work we do around the world helping to educate young people across our planet, giving lessons in Hauser on the radio in Nigeria, I think it’s amazing to see what we do in South Asia teaching young girls in schools. Now I know, as Uhuru has said, that this pandemic has made things more difficult and we’ve lost ground and we all know the risk that inequality will now be entrenched but now is the time to make up that ground.
Necessity has been the mother of invention, we’ve all learned how to cope with Zoom, some of us better than others. I think the younger generation probably are getting the hang of this electronic technology perhaps even better than some of us here in this room and they understand how to impart and imbibe information through the internet and I think we’ve got to make sure that we support through our GP, we support Edtech, we support the technical progress that we can make through laptops, through devices of all kinds, we should support the creation of infrastructure of classrooms, of course that’s the right thing to do.
But never forget fundamentally what this is all about, what is education? Education is the imparting of knowledge of instruction by one human being to another. The people we really need to thank and the people we really need to think about are the teachers across the world. Everybody in this room will probably have somebody that you can think of that was the teacher who made the difference to your life, who encouraged you, who gave you confidence, can you think of one Julia? Mr Crow, there you go, well Julia would not be here without Mr Crow, let’s hear it for Mr crow. Uhuru, I seem to remember that lesson, do you remember that lesson we did with your kids. I owe a lot to all my teachers but I think in particular have a guy called Mr Fox, when I was about, I think about 10 years old, and he took me into the library and I don’t know whether he thought I was in need of remedial help, or whether he thought I had potential, it was never clear to me but he said to me I want you to read these books and it made a fantastic difference and a lasting difference to my life.
I just want to say the best thing about this summit here today is that we are supporting with huge injections of cash those amazing people across the world who are inspiring young people to think that they can succeed. And they can succeed. And by the way let me give you one idea, someone somewhere, some child somewhere who is being supported by the over 4bn dollars, [what is it? there’s some doubt about this, oh it’s over 4bn dollars but going to be 5bn over 5 years] but some child somewhere may well be the one who goes on to develop the next vaccine to deal with cancer or whatever other problem afflicts humanity. Some kid around the world will absolutely no doubt have their lives transformed, many many kids will have their lives transformed by these funds and that is the objective- to unleash potential across the planet.
It’s a fantastic thing that you’ve done, I’m very very proud the UK has been able to be part of it and with Uhuru with Julia to offer leadership.
Thank you for coming to London, thank you for supporting the GPE, thank you for digging into your pockets and thank you for investing in education and young people across our planet, it is the single best investment we can make in the future of humanity. Thank you all.