{"id":4518,"date":"2025-06-16T10:48:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T10:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4518"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:48:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:48:41","slug":"education-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4518","title":{"rendered":"Education Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Harpreet Uppal&nbsp;Labour, Huddersfield<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bridget Phillipson&nbsp;The Secretary of State for Education, Minister for Women and Equalities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week\u2019s spending review was about investing in Britain\u2019s renewal and investing in excellence for every child, so that background will not determine what they can go on to achieve. Through our settlement, we will continue to make high-quality early years education more accessible and affordable. We will rebuild our crumbling schools estate, and we will improve outcomes for children with special educational needs and disabilities with our support-first approach. We will also continue our overhaul of children\u2019s social care, opening up training opportunities for young people to get great jobs in growing industries. Crucially, we will lift 100,000 children out of poverty through an historic expansion of free school meals to cover all families in receipt of universal credit. It will save parents nearly \u00a3500 per child per year. That is the difference that a&nbsp;Labour Government&nbsp;makes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>John Whittingdale&nbsp;Conservative, Maldon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although the Department is providing some extra funds to meet the additional costs of NICs in schools, those with a high number of SEND pupils such as&nbsp;All Saints\u2019 primary in Maldon will still receive less than 50% of the increase. Will the&nbsp;Secretary of State&nbsp;look again at that aspect, which is another disincentive for mainstream schools taking SEND pupils?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bridget Phillipson&nbsp;The Secretary of State for Education, Minister for Women and Equalities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In wider reform later this year through the schools&nbsp;White Paper\u2014including to the SEND system\u2014we will look at every way in which we can improve outcomes for children, including those with SEND. That will include looking at the funding mechanisms we inherited from the Conservative party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sir John Whittingdale questions Ministers on funding for SEND pupils, the pace of nuclear investment, and security threats from Iran, seeking clarity on government commitments and operational details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speeches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5878,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions\/5878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}