Tag: Nadhim Zahawi

The speech made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, on 22 April 2022.

Hello everyone,

I hope that you are as thrilled as I am to be standing in this incredible hall, in one of the most famous museums in the world.

I really do feel very honoured to be with you.

None of us can be in any doubt just how critical climate change has become.

I want to thank all of you, and my colleagues from parliament but also my team, Minister Walker who’s led on this project, and are already doing so much to reverse the damage, to put our planet on a safer, more sustainable course. We will continue, I pledge to you, that we will continue to work tirelessly with you and of course to listen, listen to you, teachers, leaders, and of course young people themselves who are shaping much of what we do in the department.

But while the scale of the challenge is great, there is still much that we can do now and we are already making sure happens.

This is not, I think, a time for doom and gloom. This is a time, as Phoebe just reminded us, for positive action.

The entrepreneurial, that can-do, Bear Grylls spirit in this country can make all of us, certainly me, much more confident that we will win this fight.

At COP 26… it was the first time that I was able to bring together fellow ministers of education to a COP gathering. Environment Ministers coming together for that summit and I hope to build on that at COP27 in Egypt and COP28 in the United Arab Emirates. It was a proud moment to be able to announce how we are putting climate change and sustainability at the heart of education.

Today we see the proof of those words of that with the final version, I hope, of the Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy that we announced.

Young people have to be given a reason to believe that they can change the world for the better. If you give them the facts about a situation, it gives them the levers to change it for the better. And that will, I hope, give them hope. That move from anxiety to agency. We want them to be fired up by determination and not cast into despair.

So how are we going to do this?

Well, I announced two important measures at COP that we will be launching this autumn. The National Education Park, the education estate is the size of Birmingham, and we’re going to link it up so that students all around the country, and I hope that other countries, the Italian Minister when I shared this with him immediately thought this was something we could hopefully build together. They can do geospatial mapping, and they can see through sharing videos how they can rewild the education estate, as I know the Natural History Museum is determined to do here as well. This is alongside, The Climate Leaders Award. Both of these are going to shift the dial in how we approach sustainability in education.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that young people are already very committed to a greener, more sustainable planet and I want to do everything to continue and to back them in this encourage this passion.

One of the most exciting announcements in our strategy is to capitalise on that passion and to extend learning about the natural world.

So we will introduce a natural history GCSE, giving young people a real chance to develop a deeper knowledge and understanding of our amazing planet.

We want to inspire the next generation of David Attenboroughs, on the day he was recognised by the United Nations for his work in preserving our wonderful planet, it really is a privilege to be here, and of course the future scientists and tech entrepreneurs who will preserve and protect our planet who will make the leaps we need to keep our world safe.

We are also taking steps to extend teachers’ skills and new professional development support, so that they can be confident in the classroom in teaching about climate change and sustainability.

We’re going to speed up carbon literacy training throughout our education communities, so that by 2025 every nursery, school, college and university can put in place a climate action plan.

But innovation and green growth will not flourish unless we deliver a workforce with the right skills to make them a reality.

It is not enough to simply hope that talented people find green career pathways, we need to build these career pathways and provide those people, who want to join in this endeavour with the skills they need to fulfil that career in the future.

This strategy sets out how we are rapidly skilling, reskilling and upskilling our workforce for green jobs.

For example, there are a wide range of green apprenticeships already up and running from nuclear desk engineers, wind turbine maintenance and research scientists.

By September 2023 students will be able to apply for a T Level – a T Level is a fusion between an A Level and an apprenticeship and I am determined to make them as famous as A Levels – in agriculture, land management and production.

We have already promised that all new schools and colleges are going to be net zero in operation and of course resilient for a 2oC temperature rise. It means that our school building standards will be the best in the world.

We are committed to building four new schools and one college using this innovative technology, so that one day all our schools can be built in this way, from natural materials.

I would urge you to have a look at our wonderful Gen Zero prototype– we’ve brought a portion of the prototype that we had at Glasgow, here to the Museum tonight. Have a look at it, it really is a remarkable piece of engineering and design.

Future generations will judge us on how we responded to this challenge. This strategy shows how we will not let them down.

Education is how we will equip young people with the future agency to make real difference, with the skills they need to look after this precious Earth.

Education is how we unlock the unlimited potential of the next generation to make that difference.

We must not, and I am determined, that we will not, give in to despair.

Together, I know that Phoebe and her generation can do this, and they have our full backing.

Thank you.

The statement made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, in the House of Commons on 28 March 2022.

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the publication of the schools White Paper.

Since 2010, we have been on a mission to give every child a great education. We have made huge strides, but we know there is still further to go on that journey, which my predecessors began and I am proud to lead today. Too many children still do not get the start in life that will enable them to go on and make the best use of their talents and abilities. Sadly, disadvantaged pupils or those who have special educational needs are less likely to achieve the standards we expect for them. Since 2010, we have been rolling out many changes to our education system—changes that have driven up standards, lifted us up the league tables internationally and given us measurable evidence of what works. We will now put that evidence to use and scale up what we know will create a high-quality system for children, parents and teachers.

We have an ambition that by 2030 we will expect 90% of primary school children to achieve the agreed standard in reading, writing and maths. In secondary schools, I want to see the national GCSE average grade in both English language and maths increase from 4.5 in 2019 to 5. By boosting the average grade, we show a real determination to see all children, whatever their level of attainment, do better. A child who goes from a grade 2 to a grade 3, or one who goes from a grade 8 to a grade 9, contributes to that ambition as much as a child on the borderline who may go up from a grade 4 to a grade 5. So every parent can rest assured that their child is going to get the attention they deserve, however well they are doing.

It goes without saying that every child needs an excellent teacher. This White Paper continues our reforms to training and professional development, to give every child a world-class teacher. The quality of teaching is the single most important factor within a school for improving outcomes for children, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our vision is for an excellent teacher for every child in our country, but if we are to do that, we need to make teaching even more of an attractive profession. To make sure that it is, we will deliver 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities by 2024, giving all teachers and school leaders access to world-class evidence-based training and professional development, at every stage of their career. We will also make a £180 million investment in the early years workforce. Teachers’ starting salaries are set to rise to £30,000, as we promised in our manifesto, and there will be extra incentives to work in schools with the most need.

A world-class education also needs environments in which great teaching can have maximum impact. Therefore, we will improve standards across the curriculum, behaviour and attendance. Making sure that all children are in school and ready to learn in calm, safe, supportive classes is my priority. All children will be taught a broad, ambitious, knowledge-rich curriculum and have access to high-quality experiences. We will set up a new national curriculum body to support teachers, founded on the success of the Oak National Academy. This body will work with groups across the sector to identify best practice, deepen expertise in curriculum design and develop a set of optional resources for teachers that can be used either online or in the classroom. These resources will be available across the United Kingdom, levelling up education across our great country. We will continue to support leaders and teachers to create a classroom where all children can learn in a way that recognises individual needs and abilities. In addition, we are going to boost our ability to gather and share data on behaviour and attendance.

We will move forward with a national behaviour survey to form an accurate picture of what really goes on in schools and classrooms and, of course, to modernise our systems to monitor attendance. We will introduce a minimum expectation for the length of the school week to the national average of 32-and-a-half hours for all mainstream state-funded schools from September 2023, at the latest. Thousands of schools already deliver that but a number do not and that needs to change.

Too many children, especially those who are most vulnerable, routinely fall behind and never catch up with their peers. The awful covid pandemic has made that worse. Even though I am relieved to tell the House that the latest research on learning loss and recovery shows that pupils continue to make progress, there is still much more to do. That is why today’s White Paper sets out a really ambitious plan for scaling up that recovery, building on the nearly £5 billion of recovery funding that has already been announced.

My children are the most important thing in the world to me and I know that I am not alone in saying that. All parents want their children to be happy and to grow up to a future that is full of promise, so I am today making a pledge to parents; it is a pledge from me and this Government via schools to all families. The parent pledge is that any child who falls behind in English or maths will receive timely support to enable them to reach their potential. A child’s school will let parents know how their child is doing and how the school is supporting them to catch up.

Tutoring has been a great success and that is making a difference. It is here to stay and we want it to become mainstream and a fundamental pillar of every school’s approach to delivering the parent pledge. There will be up to 6 million tutoring packages by 2024.

We know that the approaches that I have outlined make a huge difference to pupils, so I have asked myself this. We have 22,000 schools in England; how do we ensure that these happen systematically in every school for every child? How do we get that consistency across the system? It has become clear from my six months in the Department studying the evidence that well-managed, tightly managed families of schools are those that can consistently deliver a high-quality and inclusive education. It is one where expertise is shared for the benefit of all and where resources and support can help more teachers and leaders to deliver better outcomes for children.

With that in mind, by 2030, we intend for every child to benefit from being taught in a family of schools, with their school in a strong—I underline the word “strong”—multi-academy trust or with plans to join or form one. That move towards a fully trust-led system, with a single regulatory approach, will drive up standards. We also want to encourage local authorities, if they think that they do well in running their schools, to establish their own strong trusts, and we will back them. There will be a clear role for every part of the school system, with local authorities given the power that they need to support children. We will set up a new collaborative standard requiring trusts to work constructively with other partners.

I know from my experience in business and in rolling out the covid vaccine that the hardest thing for any complex system, whether it is health or education, is scaling up, but I have faith both in the brilliant leaderships that we already have in our school systems and in our educationalists to be able to deliver on this White Paper. We want to spread brilliance throughout our country, levelling up opportunity and creating a school system where there is a clear role for every part of the system, all working together and all focused on one thing: delivering outstanding outcomes for our children.

Soon, everyone will see what we all know—that this Conservative Government are busy making our schools the very best in the world. We should be so proud of how far we have come and rightly hopeful about where we are going next. For that reason, I commend this statement to the House.

The speech made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, on 11 March 2022.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am really pleased and honoured to be here for my first ASCL conference.

I have been looking forward to being with you.

As we gather today, the Ukrainian flag flies over the Department for Education. It does so because we stand shoulder to shoulder with all Ukrainians against the barbaric, criminal invasion of their sovereign, democratic country.

For us in our country, it is almost impossible to imagine the horror they are going through, because we know that more unites us than separates us, and we are lucky to live in a safe, secure country where we resolve our differences through debate, discussion and of course through and the ballot box.

We will continue to support Ukrainians in any way we can. I know schools and colleges are doing what they can to support their students make sense of what they are seeing on television.

And we have a team that’s already making plans for a capacity of 100,000 Ukrainian children that will come in and take their places in our schools.

To support schools’ efforts, I asked Oak National Academy to roll out an auto-translate function across all 10,000 of its online lessons. And I can share with you today that they have delivered on this, meaning Ukrainian children arriving in the UK can access education in their native language as they transition into life and safety here.

In that same spirit of unity and support, after the two years we’ve just been through, I’d like to thank you on such a well-chosen and positive theme.

I think all leaders should aim to be ambitious but there has never been a more critical time for leaders to make ambition really count.

Actually, ambition is what gets me racing to the office in the morning …

And before you say it, well there’s a surprise… he’s another politician…

My ambition isn’t for me, but for every child, every teenager, every adult learner to get the absolute best chance to succeed in life.

Which I know is exactly what you want for every child.

So, with that in mind, as I speak to you, I want us to ask ourselves, why are we here today?

Before I go any further, I just want to say thank you for the magnificent way you have responded to Covid – I know the past two years have been absolutely bruising.

Now, typically when you hear from an Education Secretary, you might expect to hear about accomplishments in the sector – and certainly, in this room, there are enough accomplishments to fill the entirety of my speech.

I will in a moment talk about what we have achieved together.

But before I do that, I want to tell you why this is so important to me personally.

I came here aged 11, unable to string a sentence of English together. I hid at the back of the class.

Even the thought of going to school was a scary one.

If my parents hadn’t had the wherewithal to push me to take advantage of the education this great country provides, I don’t know where I would have ended up.

And if my teacher Bob Hiller hadn’t reminded me to funnel my – how should I put it – creative, disruptive energy into something good, I certainly wouldn’t be here today. Bob, wherever you are, thank you.

Skills, schools, families. These are my priorities, and these are informed in many ways by my own life story.

They are what made the difference to me and what I think can make a real difference in the lives of children across our country.

Because there are children in our country, right now, who need the support that I needed.

And those children will achieve incredible things if given that chance.

Colleagues, we are going on a journey – I hope together – to do exactly that.

The next chapter of this journey is the Schools White Paper.

Since 2010 we have been on a mission to give every single child a great education, and I think we’ve made huge progress, but we have not yet achieved every goal that we need to.

Too many children still do not get the start in life that will enable them to go on and fulfil their potential.

Even before the Covid pandemic, about one in three primary school students did not reach expected standards in reading, writing and maths.

And we all know that children who are on free-school meals or who have special educational needs are less likely to achieve the standards we want for them, and that gap widens as children get older, making it harder and harder for them to catch up…

I know you’ll agree with me that this has to change. This is going to change.

I want us to really come together… work together… so that we can work out how we are going to achieve this.

The biggest asset we have in changing the lives of children for generations to come is the energy and expertise of our teachers, and of course the school and college leaders in this room and around the country.

You can’t have a great education if you don’t have a great teacher.

You will already know that I have set an ambitious target that 90% of children leaving primary school should meet the expected standards in literacy and numeracy, up from 65% today.

Every child must be able to read, write and do basic maths fluently.

They’re important in their own right, but also act as a door to other wonderful and joyful subjects that can inspire young minds as they make their way through school, college and beyond.

Let me be clear: these are ambitions for the whole system. They are about making sure that we are ambitious for every child across our country.

The White Paper sets out a plan to deliver on this strategy, and it is an achievable vision only because I know that in this room, we have the excellence and leadership to make it a reality.

I know that investing in teachers and leaders – in you and your staff – is the single most important way to improve pupil outcomes.

I am determined to make our system of training and support for teachers and school and college leaders world-class.

We will deliver our promised 500,000 teacher training opportunities to make sure that every teacher, in every corner of our country, benefits from evidence-based professional development at every stage of their career.

I am proud to be able to confirm today that more than 25,000 teachers and almost 23,000 mentors have taken part in our flagship Early Career Framework programmes this year.

This is beyond even my most optimistic estimate, and, I think, testament to the support you as leaders are providing.

But I also know that embedding this programme has been a huge undertaking for you and your colleagues, particularly mentors. We are listening to your feedback and we will be making improvements in areas that you have told us are causing real difficulties.

And I want to keep working with you now and in the future to make sure we take forward this shared priority and to ensure that we achieve our shared goal of giving every early career teacher their entitlement to a high-quality, structured induction to the teaching profession.

Building on this success, our golden thread of high-quality teacher development programmes includes a new Leading Literacy National Professional Qualification, available from this autumn.

This will mean every school can have a trained literacy expert, driving higher standards of literacy teaching, kick-starting our 90% literacy mission.

With this, as with the rest of the reformed suite of National Professional Qualifications, these will be freely available to all teachers and leaders in state-funded schools and colleges.

What I ask, for those here or watching this speech, is that every leader here today walk away from this with a commitment to enrol their staff on a National Professional Qualification from the autumn.

Alongside world-class training, we will also continue to invest in top graduates with generous bursaries and scholarships for those who choose to train to teach.

And we will deliver on our manifesto commitment to the £30,000 starting salary.

As an engineering graduate, I know the wonders of science and I want more children to be exposed to and inspired by science – not least to help save the planet.

I want them to be taught by well-trained science teachers, equipped to give future generations of scientists the knowledge they need to tackle climate change, develop new vaccines and maintain our place as a scientific superpower.

Through our Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free for maths, physics, chemistry and computing teachers, we will retain more teachers in some of the most important subjects and of course in places where they are needed most.

And because teaching is an increasingly global profession, I want to attract the very best teachers from across the world.

That is why we will also introduce a new relocation premium to help with visas and other expenses for teachers and trainees moving here from abroad.

But even this is not enough: I want our country to be known around the world as the place to train and practise teaching, rivalling the likes of Shanghai, Canada and of course Finland.

But of course, great teachers need support.

I want to empower teachers to focus on delivering the best possible lessons, and support schools by giving them access to resources and approaches that have proved their effectiveness.

Oak National Academy has certainly been one of our great achievements.

It was created by teachers, for teachers, and showed brilliantly what the profession was capable of in the hour of need.

Over 500 teachers from over 50 schools, trusts and partners worked together, delivering over 140 million lessons during the pandemic.

Building on this success, we will now establish Oak as a new arms-length curriculum body, working independently of government and collaboratively with the sector.

Why is this important?

The data backs up what you all know anecdotally: a recent survey showed 46% of primary teachers plan lessons from scratch. This is a drain on teachers’ time and I want to help fix that.

Curriculum design is complex, and we want to share the very best practice so teachers can draw inspiration from examples of evidence based, carefully sequenced curriculum design.

Instead of each teacher reinventing the wheel, they will be able to access content, for free, that continuously evolves and gets better and better on the back of feedback from teachers across the country – saving time and of course improving lessons immeasurably.

Under the framework already provided by our excellent national curriculum, the curriculum body will lead the creation of curriculum maps and thousands of downloadable lessons and resources… and all freely available to all teachers, parents and children.

These will help schools in a variety of ways depending on their needs. They will be also entirely optional and of course these materials will not be mandated by Ofsted.

Teachers, who know their pupils best, can then adapt these, and the curriculum body will work closely with teachers to ensure it is meeting their needs, including those supporting children with additional needs.

And the body will continue work with the Education Endowment Foundation – the EEF – to ensure its work is informed by the best available evidence and aligns with best practice.

At the heart of this body will be collaboration and partnership, I am committed to building on the “by teachers, for teachers” approach that has been a key success factor for Oak National Academy.

And with the same motivation to use evidence wherever we can, we will permanently put evidence at the heart of the teaching profession by re-endowing the EEF.

As independent evidence guardians in the system, they will continue to generate and spread world-leading education evidence. The EEF will lead an ongoing cycle of reviews of the underpinning frameworks for teacher development at all levels to make sure they’re always based on “what works” to improve pupil outcomes.

They will keep these frameworks updated in line with the best available evidence from this country and of course from abroad, giving an independent badge of assurance to our teacher development programmes… and all the while making sure teachers in England get the cutting-edge training they need to drive up standards.

And we will continue to work with the EEF to scale up and spread effective teaching practice in literacy and numeracy to ensure pupils have the best chance of catching up following the pandemic.

Colleagues, we must be sky-high in our ambitions for every pupil. If we don’t aim for excellence, we’re not going to achieve it by chance.

I’ve listened to you, acted on your insight, and looked at the evidence across the whole educational landscape. And evidence shows that a family of schools that are tightly managed and well supported achieve the right outcomes for their students and deliver those important opportunities for staff.

How? There are three things I want to highlight.

A resilient profession… because high performing families of schools support leaders and give great opportunities to teachers for training and career progression.

Collaboration… because schools can benefit from working together, creating opportunities to share resources and reduce workload, while reinvesting back into frontline teaching.

And Freedom… because leaders spend less time worrying about managing facilities and more time making sure children learn and teachers teach.

I’ve been clear before that I see this future as involving all schools being part of a strong trust – and I will say more about this in my White Paper.

But I will say now that I underline the word strong because, and we mustn’t sugar coat this, some trusts are not high performing. The White Paper will set out how I plan to deal with that challenge as well.

You are the future my friends, and you are going to produce other leaders of the future. We need you – I need you – on this journey.

I know that everyone in this room will have an opinion on this – I’d expect nothing less, but I ask you to consider the data, the evidence, with an as open mind as possible.

What I will pledge to you is that I will be guided by the data and the evidence.

I want evidence to be our watchword, just as it was mine as vaccines Minister and continues to be now as Secretary of State for Education.

In fact, following what the data tells me has shaped the new Schools White Paper.

But that doesn’t mean I expect everyone to agree with me all the time. I am not afraid to disagree with you, and I know you – certainly Geoff – are not afraid to challenge me.

What is important is that we follow what the evidence says. If we have a divergence of views on the evidence, then we will have a healthy debate and I will make my case as I am sure you will make yours.

But no matter what, the priority must be working together.

Because we can’t level up, we can’t deliver for children, if we don’t work together.

Everything we are doing as a government comes back to one core mission and that is that we make life fairer for every child, in every school in our country.

One of the most effective tools we have at our disposal to meet our ambition is targeted support.

A huge part of that is tutoring, which I know will be going on in all of your schools right now.

It’s important to step back and look at what we’ve achieved with the National Tutoring Programme.

Tutoring used to be something only richer parents could afford.

Thanks to the NTP, today it’s benefitting all children who need it, from Bristol to Blackpool and Newquay to Newcastle, helping them realise their potential.

I am proud to be able to say that more than one million tutoring courses have been delivered since we rolled out this programme last year. ASCL, this is incredible.

But there are still children who need this targeted tuition, and I know that many of you have had challenges with the programme. I have listened and I have heard you, and we are making improvements as I speak to you today.

This includes the immediate transfer of up to £65 million into School Led Tutoring from the other two routes. It’s become clear to me that by far the most popular route is the one run by you – the school.

I hope you will agree with me that what we are doing together on tutoring is an invaluable addition to our education system, and I am continuing to look at how we can make sure it is having as big an impact as we can make it.

In addition to this, one of my priorities in the White Paper will be the schools and areas of the country most in need of support.

Areas including County Durham, Cornwall and Hartlepool will get extra investment, to build strong trusts, enabling them to retain and recruit the best teachers and tackle those problems that have stopped them achieving what they should be achieving.

I want to get this right, and I want you to have your say, so I will be announcing a consultation shortly on tackling school underperformance.

Ahead of that, we must build on what we have already accomplished.

We must make the most of the £7 billion increase in core spending 2024-25 – with an increase in real terms per pupil funding of 4% next year alone – really count.

And, we cannot say we care about children’s education if we ignore those most in need. So, we must protect the pupil premium to support schools in improving outcomes for disadvantaged students.

Because I have the same high ambitions for children with special educational needs and disabilities as I do for every child. And I know that they benefit from excellent teaching that allows them to fulfil their potential.

I also know that headteachers are doing an incredible job at supporting children with SEND, and worked tirelessly to support them throughout the pandemic.

So, before I come to a close, I want to say that the plans I am setting out today – for teacher development, for evidence-based practice, and for high quality curriculum – will all help to support children with SEND. But there is further to go.

The forthcoming SEND Review will set our ambitious proposals for how we will deliver a system that ensures every child and young person gets the right support in the right place and at the right time.

Geoff, I began by asking everyone why we are here today.

I am here today to deliver on the promise in this room.

I am here to embark on a journey together – one that means every single child and learner gets the start in life to be the best version of themselves….

I couldn’t hope to deliver this vision if it wasn’t for you…

Thank you.

 

The statement made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, in the House of Commons on 21 February 2022.

Last week, the Department for Education published non-statutory guidance on schools’ legal duties on political impartiality, as set out in sections 406 and 407 of the Education Act 1996, part 2 of the schedule to the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014 and many academies’ funding agreements.

These requirements have applied to schools for many years, and most schools are experienced in meeting them. However, the Government are aware that a number of recent issues have raised concerns and have made some teachers less confident to apply them in practice. Therefore, we have developed this guidance, working with the sector to ensure it is comprehensive and helpful.

Teaching about complicated and sensitive political issues can be challenging, but it is important that teachers can cover the full range of political issues they need to with confidence. The guidance is clear that it is not seeking to limit the range of political issues and viewpoints schools can and do teach about.

It is important that children are supported in their education to understand a range of perspectives and form their own views, without being unduly influenced by the personal views of those teaching.

This is what helps children and young people go on to become active citizens who can engage in our democratic society and who have an understanding and respect for legitimate differences of opinion.

This guidance will offer assurance to most schools that their legal duties in this area are being met without issue and help them continue their good work. For other schools the guidance should help them put in place the necessary processes to ensure adherence going forward.

Importantly, this guidance should also help all parties—including parents, carers, and others—to understand how schools should go about meeting their legal duties, allowing issues around impartiality to be taken seriously and resolved calmly through dialogue.

The comments made by Nadhim Zahawi, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, on 29 March 2018.

We want every child to have the support they need to unlock their potential, whatever their background and no matter what challenges they face. Our new Education, Health and Care Plans are putting the views of young people with special educational needs and disabilities and their families at the heart of the process so they can help shape the support they receive.

It’s been a huge task to transfer every young person to one of these plans but local authorities have risen to the challenge with almost 222,000 cases reviewed and I congratulate them for it. We are now working with councils to make sure they carry out the remaining reviews and the new EHC plans are of the highest quality.

To complement this work we are also opening new special free schools across the country that will provide tailored support for over a thousand children to ensure they have access to the excellent education that every child deserves.

The comments made by Nadhim Zahawi, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, on 15 March 2018.

Social workers do an incredible job providing some of our most vulnerable children in our society with life-changing care and support.

This investment for our Partners in Practice Programme will help the fantastic work councils are doing to deliver high-quality services and make a real difference to children’s lives.

I am also pleased to support the Local Government Association to drive good leadership, which is crucial if we want to support and encourage frontline staff to deliver excellent care for children and young people.

The comments made by Nadhim Zahawi, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, on 5 March 2018.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the social workers and other professionals who support the most vulnerable in our society, especially those who have been victims of abuse.

The response to this consultation shows the strength of feeling among the sector on this extremely important issue, and it’s vital that we work directly with people on the ground, supporting them to carry out their work sensitively and efficiently.

Decisions we make as a government should be with the ambition of improving outcomes for as many in society as possible, which is why we must listen to the views and experience of the sector as we progress further with our reform agenda.