Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills further to her oral statement of 25 October 2005, Official Report, column 170, on the Schools White Paper, if she will set out her proposals for incentives to encourage schools to tailor educational provision to the needs of each child.
Answer
Many schools have tailored the curriculum and teaching methods to meet the needs of pupils with great success for many years. We now want this to be common practice across all schools, particularly for children at either end of the ability spectrum whose needs can be the most challenging to meet.We will therefore allocate £335 million by 2007–08, specifically earmarked within our Dedicated Schools Grant, to provide the resources secondary schools need to start delivering personalised learning for pupils in Key Stage 3, particularly for those who have fallen behind in literacy and numeracy and for those who are gifted or talented. For those schools with the highest numbers of children who have fallen behind we will provide a further targeted £60 million in each of 2006–07 and 2007–08, shared across the primary and secondary sectors, to provide more effective one-to-one and small group tuition. We will also provide all schools with best practice materials, guidance and access to training on the most effective teaching and learning strategies to personalise learning to the needs of each pupil.Through School Improvement Partners and the new Ofsted inspection regime we will challenge every school to demonstrate they are planning and delivering effective tailored teaching and learning for every child, including the gift and talented. And the achievement and attainment tables for 2006 will show schools' success in ensuring pupils achieve not only five good GCSEs but also in the fundamentals of English and mathematics.