Josh MacAlister MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Nov 2025 · Care Leavers · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) for securing this debate at the start of Care Leavers Month. She brings to this place her insights from the prison system, in which she saw the tragic and avoidable over-representation of the care-experienced community. There have been many excellent interventions and contributions by Members from across the House. I particularly want to mention the repeated mention of the important role that supported lodgings can play in our care system. I agree that they are underused—I thank the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) and others for flagging that. I will gladly work with all Members to improve outcomes for this group throughout my time in this role. On calls for a national approach to care leavers in custody, I can share that my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice are looking at this, and will give Members an update by the end of 2025. Let me start by making a point that may seem obvious: the disadvantage faced by the care-experienced community is one of the greatest social justice issues of our time. Ensuring that those who grow up in the care of the state have a shot at a good life is a collective obligation, and for too long, we have been found wanting when it comes to ensuring that the obligation is met. That is in part because meeting it is about providing assets that any Government or service would struggle to provide. These assets are so fundamental. They are the need for belonging—a tribe—and the need for something intrinsic to the human condition: lifelong, loving relationships. That is why, at the start of this first ever Care Leavers Month, I say plainly, as the Minister for Children and Families, that the creation and sustenance of those relationships must become the obsession of the care and leaving care systems in England. When we fail care-experienced people in that endeavour, we leave them with lives that are more isolated, a weaker sense of belonging, and questions about their self-worth. The tragic consequences for some is a life cut short. Suicide and early death are, tragically, a part of the care experience for too many. To start to solve a problem, we must first confront it. That is why I have commissioned the Department for Education to review the shockingly high number of early deaths in the care-experienced community. However, we do not need to wait to act, and this Government certainly have not waited. We have a comprehensive plan to fix the children’s social care system at every single level. That is core to the relentless focus of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on breaking down barriers to opportunity at every stage. Let me give the House a sense of the recent action that we have taken to improve support for care leavers. We have removed the local area connection test in social housing allocations for care leavers. That is crucial for those who have grown up in care and moved around between different local authorities. We have expanded corporate parenting duties to public bodies, especially the NHS. We have committed to expanding Staying Close and local authority offers of support for housing. We have disapplied the intentionally homeless test for eligible care leavers, meaning that they should no longer have to declare themselves homeless to their corporate parent in order to receive housing support. Very recently, the Secretary of State for Education automatically made care leavers able to get the highest level of maintenance support at university. Overall, we have doubled down on the Families First programme, which will see many more families stay together successfully, avoiding the need for the care system, including through much greater support for kinship care.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Children’s Social Care · Hansard source

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  I certainly will. The recognition is there that we need to provide a children’s social care system that is able to intuitively wrap itself around all sorts of shapes and sizes of families, who may have very different needs. Too often, the system is not able to do that, and when it fails to, problems often escalate, costs go up and the state ends up picking up the bill anyway, but it is much greater, provision is much less effective and the outcomes are worse. So I do recognise the description that the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset has given of that. On kinship care, we will be bringing forward a pilot for kinship allowances soon. It will benefit up to 5,000 children, and I can confirm that, as part of the pilot, payments will be equivalent to foster rates. I am looking at whether we can widen out some of the support that comes with that as well, and information on that will be shared soon, with a launch. Carers with special guardianship or child arrangements orders will receive payments equivalent to foster rates. I want to be clear about that. There will be an independent evaluation that goes alongside this, to inform the roll-out, and that should give us very strong data and hopefully a strong case in the course of this spending review period. In terms of regulation and profit, I am concerned about the level of profiteering in the children’s social care system about the level of profiteering in the children’s social care system and the rising reliance on private providers, particularly of residential children’s homes. The Bill will strengthen Ofsted’s powers, improve oversight and make more data publicly available. I strongly believe that regional care co-operatives can be a powerful vehicle for getting back control of the broken care market. The Government will use the profit cap if necessary; that is why we have taken those powers in the Bill. I understand the case made for a fresh, universal set of care standards that are more intuitive and that allow us to regulate and set packages of care around children, regardless of where they live, while they are in the care of the state. The Government’s focus at the moment has been on the Bill, but I will continue to look at opportunities to improve care standards. In the meantime, I want to make sure that the options for 16 and 17-year-olds meet their needs. During the review, I met young people who felt abandoned at 16 and 17 because of the type of accommodation they were in. But I have also met 16 and 17-year-olds who do not want the same type of children’s home care they may expect to get at the age of 11 or 12. We must design care standards that work for the whole population. In terms of the children’s social care workforce, we are introducing changes to support those in the residential care system. Specifically on social workers, the Government have a sharp focus on improving post-qualifying support, so that we can build expertise through training, both to support the roll-out of multidisciplinary family help teams and to strengthen the expertise we need in multi-agency child protection. Regarding disabled children, we will consider the Law Commission’s 40 recommendations, which have recently been published, and provide a full response. Regarding advocacy, changes will be made, but I am keen to look at what more can be done even once those have been shared. Advocacy can be an important and protective factor for many children who are in institutions where they do not feel as though their voices are heard. To respond to the Chair of the Select Committee regarding family group decision making, the reason not to push for a specific model of family group decision making in primary legislation is that there is always the possibility in the next few years—I would love it if this did happen—that more impact evaluations come out that show a slightly different model of FGDM, which local authorities should have the choice to use. As a Government, we are trying to build an infrastructure that sets the national framework with the outcomes that we want children’s social care to achieve; practice guides that lay out the best available evidence, and I hope to have practice guidance for FGDMs as part of the roll-out; and then an expectation, through inspection and accountability, that service designers and practitioners are following the best available evidence in order to achieve the outcomes set out by the Government. I hope that reassures the Chair of the Select Committee. In closing, I give deep thanks to the Committee for its interest in this issue. Children’s social care is an area of Government policy that is often overlooked. On the eve of Care Leavers Month—this is the first time we are celebrating it as a month, with an Adjournment debate I am looking forward to taking part in—I thank everyone for their contributions, and I welcome their interest and challenge on this important set of changes. I reassure Members—as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen asked me to—that this issue is my top priority, and I encourage them to get behind it, as part of a cross-party endeavour that can truly transform children’s lives.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Children’s Social Care · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank all Members for their contributions to this important debate. Particular thanks go to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I acknowledge the Select Committee’s inquiry and important work, on which I will say more in a moment. The report highlights a system under pressure, with rising demand, rising costs and inconsistent experiences, which requires urgent reform. Too many children are experiencing childhood without the essential components of connection and love, which should be the central obsession of the care system, but too often are not. As chair of the independent review of children’s social care in 2022, I called for a radical reset. Today, as Minister for Children and Families, I am determined to deliver it. I will respond to Members’ contributions before I respond to aspects of the Committee’s report. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) in congratulating the young people and organisations that have championed additional rights for care-experienced young people. I encourage people to get behind the Labour candidate in the Scottish parliamentary elections, who has so successfully championed those causes. I also acknowledge Terry Galloway’s work across the UK to champion and secure additional rights for care-experienced young people. I will continue to engage with Terry. I do not really have a choice, as Terry makes sure I engage with him—as does Chris Wild. I will follow with keen interest the development of local authorities adopting care experience as a protected characteristic. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) has direct experience of the care system. Indeed, one of the strengths of this Parliament is that we have so many parliamentarians who have a foot in some aspect of the care system as well as in the nation’s Parliament. Ahead of National Care Leavers Month in November, we are focused on ensuring that the Government celebrate role models for care-experienced young people. My hon. Friend is one of those role models. I am sure many care-experienced young people will look at what he does here in the UK Parliament and consider what they can go on to achieve themselves. I was struck by the clarity of Atlas, Mac, George and Ethan when I met them earlier this week. I thank my hon. Friend for bringing them into my office. They cut through a lot of the noise I hear as a Minister. Having had hundreds of conversations with care-experienced people over the years, I was again reminded of just what it is that we need to get on and deliver. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) for sharing his own experience, and I strongly associate myself with his remarks, particularly on the need for changes in the fostering and adoption system. I will come back to that later. I welcome the cross-party nature of this debate. I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), and I will return to aspects of adoption support and the ASGSF, as she raised some important points. I also thank the Conservative spokesperson, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), for the spirit in which he approaches this issue. I recognise the importance of the connection between the overall children’s social care system and how essential it is that we strengthen the country’s child protection arrangements. A major part of that is tackling harms outside of the home, child abuse, child sexual abuse, group-based violence and the rape gangs he mentioned. We need to recognise much more than we have in our debates in this Parliament that some of the underlying vulnerabilities of young girls stem from failings in our care system. I see far too many instances of young people who, when something has gone wrong, are sent to live in an institutional setting far away from people who know them and what their face looks like. Because of the vulnerable position that the care system puts them in, they are far too often left prey to violent and appalling criminals. We need to root that out at source. The Government’s overall response is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is landmark legislation that we tabled within weeks of coming into government. There will be £2 billion of investment over this spending review period, with hundreds of millions being put into the Families First Partnership programme, which is all about building a multidisciplinary family help system. We are now shifting gear—and this responds directly to a point made by the Chair of the Select Committee—away from pathfinders and tests to whole-system programmes of change that take in the entire country. I am grateful to the Committee for its work, carefully considered recommendations and the in-depth evidence it took, particularly from those with direct experience. I will move briefly through the areas covered by the Committee’s recommendations. First, regarding the need for early intervention and intensive support, I reassure hon. Members that, at their centre, our reforms are about creating multidisciplinary family help teams in every corner of England. These will be staffed not simply by social workers working in a high-assessment, high-referral, paper-based, bureaucratic administration, which is the description that many social workers have of the current orthodoxy. This is about moving towards multidisciplinary, locally based, low-stigma and well-evidenced support for families when they need it, with a focus not only on child protection but on the vast majority of families who are not posing significant harm to their children but simply need support and help. To reassure Members, I should say that that is not being taken forward solely by the Department for Education, but is a cross-Government endeavour. In a couple of weeks, I will be taking other Ministers and senior officials from the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care to see one of the most successful examples of multidisciplinary family help teams and multi-agency child protection teams. I am meeting ministerial colleagues at the Ministry for Communities, Housing and Local Government next week to have explicit conversations about how we grip the money we are putting into family help reforms, so that we can get effective change through the system. This is not simply about handing money out to local authorities and expecting change to happen; it is about managing a nationwide programme of reform, with investment alongside it, and holding each other to account to deliver the change that families urgently need. Secondly, on foster care, I made the point—not as a Member of Parliament, but as someone who chaired the review, giving evidence to Select Committees in this place—that, within a year, we were able as a country to do a remarkable thing in creating 100,000 homes for Ukrainian families from a standing start. If we could do that, why was it not possible for us to do better than approving only 1,800 foster carers last year? That number is not even large enough to replace those who are retiring and leaving the vocation of fostering. I reassure members of the Committee and Members of this House that we will invest tens of millions of pounds very soon in major changes to the fostering system. Regional care co-operatives and fostering hubs will sit at the heart of those changes. I will come forward soon with a comprehensive set of measures to ensure that we boost the numbers of foster carers and the types of foster care that children need. It is a personal priority for me as the Children and Families Minister. On multi-agency child protection, the Government are taking forward bold structural changes to create multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority across the country, by fusing together different professionals from across the safeguarding partnerships so that, within one team, they can share the information they need and take joint expert action. The Government will put in place more guidance and extra support for the practitioners in those teams, because identifying significant harm, doing that with accuracy, taking action with pace once harm has been identified, and then holding other agencies to account for results is often what is missing in serious incidents where things go wrong. Included in that will be a sharp focus on harms outside the home—I make that point because the Chair of the Select Committee emphasised it. During the review, I saw too many times that agencies were coming together in lots of meetings and describing the same concerns, but were not taking action. Parents themselves were sometimes the ones crying out for help when their children were at risk outside the home. Our child protection framework has to work in keeping children safe from harms where those harms are not based on the family network. I will also be setting out details of a consultation on the child protection authority very soon, which will support some of these efforts.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Children’s Social Care · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for raising what sounds like the very important idea for Georgia’s law. I would be really delighted to hear more from her about that. If there are aspects that I can take forward with Ministers in other Departments, I will do so. Regarding information sharing, we are making big changes to set the expectations in different systems, so that they can confidently share information. We have a single unique identifier that enables that to happen. Those pilots are under way at the moment, and the Bill will allow for that. We want to see support for care leavers that is consistent and strong. The Bill includes national Staying Close support, and we will set out soon more details about what that support should include and the expectations across the country for it. It will help care leavers to live independently, but I stress that one of the changes that I would like us to see as a Government is a shift away from always talking about getting care leavers to the point of independence, because what they actually need from the care system is not independence, but inter- dependence, connection, a sense of belonging and love. That should be the driving purpose of both care and the leaving care system. Many of the things we are trying to provide through a state function are much more naturally provided through organic family networks. Specifically on the question about the Government’s recent announcement of support for higher education, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, we will guarantee the maximum maintenance support for care leavers going to university, without a means test. That change, announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education at the Dispatch Box last week, has been widely welcomed. Ofsted inspections will, and have already started to, provide a dedicated grade looking at the experience of care leavers, which means that there will be a focus on that. On the question of the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase and the Front-Bench spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset, I am attracted to my hon. Friend’s idea about wider support. There are options for wider support. I met adopters and adoption support staff myself in recent weeks, and especially during National Adoption Week, and there are a number of options. I want to bring forward a longer-term plan for the ASGSF, to provide confidence and certainty, and I want to continue speaking to Members of this House, but also to members of the adoption community and to special guardians, who are part of that community. We will come back with more detail on that issue, but I recognise the importance of what it provides.

• 29 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate: Funding in State Schools · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) for securing this debate and all the Members who have contributed to it. The international baccalaureate can be a fantastic qualification for young people. I commend all the staff and students in international baccalaureate teaching settings. The debate has highlighted the incredible contribution that those teachers and those settings can make to opportunities for young people—we have heard an awful lot about that today. I want to stress a few things in responding to the points made in the debate, first regarding the role that A-levels play in our school and education system. The hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) referred to a school “regretfully” moving to A-levels, as if they are lesser qualifications. A-levels are fantastic qualifications. They are stretching for students. They offer variety, choice and combinations of qualifications that leave doors open for young people at 16 and beyond. They are recognised by the top universities in the world, including those here in the UK. I urge Members to be careful not to suggest that A-levels are somehow secondary or second order to the international baccalaureate, while recognising the contribution that the international baccalaureate can make.

• 29 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate: Funding in State Schools · Hansard source

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  I agree that we need to ensure that opportunity goes to those who are furthest from it. My point is that this system does not provide an equal opportunity for many young people in how it is allocated at the moment. Even in institutions in the south where there are large numbers of young people frozen out of opportunities, the ones offering the international baccalaureate are overwhelmingly not offering it to those young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. That is an important point to make in this debate. Before I move on to overall funding, my final point is that we gave notice of this decision in October, which is ahead of other notifications about the 16-to-19 funding system. We have put in place transitional arrangements for those students who are currently midway through the international baccalaureate. What is the reality of the funding that the Government are giving to sixth form and FE colleges? The Government have made the decision to increase overall spending on the 16-to-19 system, from £7.6 billion last year to £8.6 billion this year. That reflects a significant increase in not only the number of students but the funding rates, including the base rate of funding per student across 16-to-19 settings, going up by 5.4% to over £5,000. The extra funding for low prior attainment and for children in care is going up by 6.8% this year, and an extra level of funding for resit English and maths is going up by 11.5% this year. That represents a significant increase in the 16-to-19 funding settlement for the whole system. Within it, colleges and sixth form settings have the freedom of choice to prioritise across their programmes what they teach, including the international baccalaureate. The LPU adds an additional 20% on top of that. I have already highlighted that the LPU is tiny as a percentage of the overall funding for 16 to 19. As a Government we want to make sure that goes into opportunities for the broadest number of students. Finally, some broad points reflecting on this debate about opportunity and the Government’s priorities. I appreciate the points that hon. Members have made about the choices made by the Government and that many hon. Members wish us to keep the large programme uplift focused as it now is. However, when we add all of the things that hon. Members want to prioritise across the education system, while they may not seem like huge amounts of money individually, taken together they always lead to choices about priorities. The Government are absolutely focused on raising standards, in part because the soft bigotry of low expectations that we have inherited from the 14 years of the previous Government. I want to say a few things about that. Our work on early years and the huge investment in childcare and breakfast clubs—so that young people can start their education on an even basis—is built off the fact that the coalition Government demolished 3,500 Sure Start centres. The long tail of that for young people’s attainment, especially those from deprived backgrounds, is felt to this day.

• 29 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate: Funding in State Schools · Hansard source

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  I think the logic of that point is that universities will accept three A-levels, and they will accept more than three A-levels, and they will accept an international baccalaureate. The point here is not that the international baccalaureate is the gateway to universities; it is an addition to the system and allows extra stretch for students. I will make a bit more progress and then am happy to take further interventions. The other point to make at this stage is that it is not correct to say that funding has been scrapped for the international baccalaureate. In fact, some of the statements put out by settings that offer the international baccalaureate have been clear to say that the funding has not been scrapped. The large programme uplift application has been changed, and that additional 20% will no longer be available for settings that want to offer the international baccalaureate. I want to spend a few minutes setting this decision in context. We are focused as a Government on raising standards across the 16-to-19 education system. We want to offer opportunity for all young people, and we want stretching and rigorous qualifications for them. The large programme uplift will focus on those taking four or more A-levels that include advanced maths and offer a broad and challenging curriculum. What do we know about the international baccalaureate and how the uplift funding is being used? Only 0.2% of students in 16-to-19 settings are studying the international baccalaureate, and the large programme uplift is only 0.1% of the entire 16-to-19 funding made available. Many of the institutions offering the international baccalaureate are themselves selective in their pre-16 intake. Far fewer students are drawn from disadvantaged backgrounds; I have a list of the rates of free school meals in the main institutions offering it, and they are very low. I am aware of only one LPU-backed setting that offers the international baccalaureate in the entirety of the north and the midlands combined. This is the challenge I put back to those who have contributed to the debate: if their argument is that they want the international baccalaureate to be offered in many more settings across the country, and for it to be a genuinely equal opportunity that lifts up many students, where do they propose finding the money to do that? The Government are putting additional money into the 16-to-19 system, which I will come on to in a moment, but Members are defending a system that applies to only a very small minority, and that is not equally spread. It is a fantastic opportunity for students, but this Government’s focus, as it will always be, is on opportunity for all.

• 29 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate: Funding in State Schools · Hansard source

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  No, I do not agree with that. Combinations of A-levels allow young people to have a wide and rich curriculum. In fact, the large programme uplift changes that we are making prioritise choices of A-levels that extend beyond the standard three, up to five, to include advanced maths and other well regarded A-level subjects. I do not recognise what the hon. Lady suggests.

• 29 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate: Funding in State Schools · Hansard source

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  What the Conservative Government did not do was ensure that there was a fiscal position left to fund those sorts of commitments. I will give the hon. Gentleman and the previous Government credit for building on some of the excellent work that had been started under the last Labour Government around phonics, a focus on improving maths and some of the curriculum changes. I give credit where it is due on those. We now see year 8 students falling behind in their reading—and the Government will be saying more about that in the curriculum and assessment review. That is why we will be introducing reading checks with a focus on standards. Those will mean every young person—regardless of the cash their parents have in their pockets—does well and that on finishing secondary school has equal opportunities and choice to take their talents as far as they can in 16 to 19. Finally, we will have record levels of investment in the 16-to-19 system. That will include a focus on the scandal of the constant cycle of young people not reaching the level of English and maths needed by the time that they finish secondary school, and being washed around again and again in a resit system that is not fit for purpose. We are rebuilding and investing in that system to ensure that we get that second, third or fourth chance for every young person so that they can get into work and benefit from the opportunities that come from it. The soft bigotry of low expectations is growing educational inequality. That is what we inherited. It is a million young people not in education, employment or training and the moral scandal that that represents. It is underfunding our 16-to-19 education system year after year so that far too few young people get the quality of teaching needed and there is not support for staff to ensure that young people have their needs meet. It means that we have not had equal and widespread access to a rigorous curriculum for children and young people in the 16-to-19 system across the country—which is what they deserve.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am happy to correspond with the hon. Member about the situation facing that school. In relation to school buildings, a number of schemes are available to provide support.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am sure that we would be happy to look at the article, but the last thing that people outside this building want is politicians deciding what research should be done, in the same way as we do not want judges being appointed by politicians in this House either.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I would be very happy to find out more about the situation my hon. Friend describes, and to offer any help or support that we can.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  England is an international outlier by not requiring the registration of electively home-educated children, and we are remedying that with the Bill’s measures. Information on non-educational activities will not be required for inclusion in the registers. I will happily meet my hon. Friend to discuss this further.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his advocacy for his constituents and for the school concerned. A number of schemes are available that may be able to support the school with the situation it faces, and I would be happy to speak to him further about that.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for that important question. This is National Adoption Week, which I am sure Members across the House will want to celebrate, recognising the importance of adoption and the need to fill the adoption gap—about 1,500 adoptive parents for children are being waited for at the moment. We are looking at the future of the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which provides essential support, and we have tried to ensure that the scheme is accessible to as many families as possible.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I would be very happy to have a discussion with the hon. Lady about the arrangements, to ensure that we can get students back into proper classrooms as soon as possible.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has been a very effective champion for Bournemouth on these matters. St Joseph’s school in her constituency is benefiting already from solar and other measures, thanks to the partnership with Great British Energy. It is projected to save the school £8,000 a year, which could be spent on extra support for pupils and teachers.

• 20 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her advocacy for her constituents. This year, per-student funding is rising to £5,105—up from £4,843 last year. These decisions made across the further education system and for sixth-form colleges mean that institutions can make the best choices for their students, including, where appropriate, backing students to study the international baccalaureate.

• 20 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate · Hansard source

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  The Government made big decisions at the spending review to increase the overall funding available to 16-to-19 courses. Next financial year, there will be an increase of over £800 million. [ Official Report , 30 October 2025; Vol. 774, c. 4WC.] (Correction) That means that per-pupil funding is going up substantially. The large programme uplift sits on top of that, and the Government have made the decision to prioritise the large programme uplift for students doing multiple A-levels in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. We still support the international baccalaureate and recognise it as a programme that can work for many students.

• 20 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate · Hansard source

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  The system provides the level of funding necessary to 16-to-19 providers. The Government have made big decisions, which have not been backed by the Conservatives in spending reviews or Budgets, to ensure that the funding is there for colleges to make those choices. On top of that, there is the large programme uplift. In that respect, we are rightly making the decision to prioritise the vast majority of students who are taking more than three A-levels, especially in STEM subjects. We are prioritising those subjects, and we are being frank and honest about that choice. The international baccalaureate can be chosen by colleges where that is right for students.

• 20 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate · Hansard source

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  Funded institutions for those aged 16 to 19 have the freedom to decide how to use their funding for the provision they offer, including whether they offer the international baccalaureate.

• 20 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate · Hansard source

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  I know that my hon. Friend is a champion for Ashcroft academy and has visited it many times. I can confirm that the changes that the Government are making will mean that the international baccalaureate can still be studied. We are providing funding for 16-to-19 provision so that sixth-form colleges can make those decisions.

• 20 Oct 2025 · International Baccalaureate · Hansard source

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  The decision is essentially about where in the system resources go. Over 75% of students in receipt of extra support from the large programme uplift are studying A-levels, and we want to prioritise support for the vast majority of students who are studying A-levels and taking extra A-levels, including further maths. That is right for our economy, and it is also right for the vast majority of students. We still recognise the international baccalaureate as an important course and we want to support it.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Vocational Training: Under-19s · Hansard source

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  This is where I think the last Government got it wrong. We can be pro-further education, pro-technical education and pro-higher education; there is absolutely no need to trade them off against one another. Under this Government, we have 120,000 new training opportunities, up to 30,000 foundation apprenticeship starts and an unprecedented £3 billion being invested in apprenticeships. It is great that the hon. Member and his constituents in Stockton are benefiting from that.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Vocational Training: Under-19s · Hansard source

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  We have cut red tape, put in record investment and tilted the system in favour of young domestic talent, and the proof is in the pudding. Apprenticeship starts, participation and achievement are up, up, up under this Government.