First, let me say to my hon. Friend and his constituent that there is nothing more heartbreaking than losing a child and we should do everything we can to help with this. The Chancellor announced in his Budget £1 million for defibrillators, including putting defibrillators into schools. I want to see a situation where community buildings, schools, pubs, village halls—all of them—have defibrillators, because we can save lives in this way, and particularly when we are saving such young lives, as in my hon. Friend’s constituent’s case, we must do better.

What we have done is ensure that when schools are not succeeding and when they are coasting, they are taken over and turned around, and I think it very important that we intervene on behalf of local parents to make sure that that happens. However, I will look into the specific case that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.

We are considering the report of the Education Committee very carefully and will respond to it in due course. We believe that all schools should teach personal, social, health and economic education and, within that, SRE. Indeed, the introduction to the new national curriculum makes that explicitly clear. What is important is not whether PSHE is statutory, but the quality of the teaching. That is our focus, and we are working with the PSHE Association and other expert bodies to ensure that teachers have the best resources to teach these very sensitive issues.

Sex and relationship education must be taught in all maintained secondary schools; we believe that most secondary academies and many primary schools also teach it. Any school teaching SRE must have regard to the Secretary of State’s “Sex and Relationship Education Guidance”. The guidance makes it clear that all sex and relationship education should be age-appropriate, and that schools should ensure that young people develop positive values and a moral framework that will guide their decisions, judgments and behaviour.

I co-chair the cultural education group with the Minister for Schools. We are having a meeting next week. I was pleased to see that Ofsted has made it clear that under its new inspections beginning later this year, an inspection must take account of whether a school offers a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum. Music will be a clear element of that.

There are 13 schools in Norfolk registered to participate in the Global Learning Programme, these are:

Archbishop Sancroft CofE High School
Corpusty Primary School
Duchy of Lancaster Methwold CofE Primary School
Howard Junior School
Lakenham Primary School
Long Stratton High School
Sandringham & West Newton CE Primary School
Springwood High School
St Augustines Catholic Primary School
The Iceni Academy
The James Bradfield Church of England Community Primary School
The Norman CofE Primary School
Tivetshall Primary School

However none are currently Global Learning Programme Expert Centres.

The Global Learning Programme in England aims to reach 10,500 schools by 2017, the following Schools in Norfolk have registered.

The Global Learning Programme (GLP) is reviewed on an annual basis and the reports are published on the development tracker website. (http://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-201469/documents/).

To date 2,643 schools have registered for the Global Learning Programme in the UK.

I am pleased to confirm that the Department for Education announced new arrangements to allow schools to purchase automated external defibrillators (AEDs) at a competitive price on 26 November 2014. They are the result of a unique agreement between the Department for Education and the Department of Health, enabling NHS Supply Chain to purchase devices in batches from approved framework suppliers via a reverse auction process. The discount achieved on each batch is then passed on to schools through a reduced unit price.

To help schools in considering whether to purchase a defibrillator, the Department for Education has also published advice on installing and maintaining AEDs on school premises. This has been developed drawing on the expertise of NHS ambulance services and voluntary and community sector organisations.

By encouraging schools across the country to acquire these potentially life-saving devices, the Department hopes to make a vital contribution to ensuring that pupils and school staff who suffer cardiac arrests whilst at school have the best possible chance of survival. I hope that as many schools as possible will take advantage of the new arrangements.

The Department does not collect data on pay and employment conditions for supply teachers employed by agencies as these fall within private commercial arrangements.

From 2015 the Government-funded Talented Leaders programme will match up to 100 excellent leaders with challenging schools, including in Norfolk. We also fund the charity Future Leaders to develop the leadership skills of aspirant head teachers.

My hon. Friend is exactly right that we need not only to get talented head teachers and leaders into those schools, but to ensure that other members of the school community are part of that. That is why,

under this programme, each school will be entitled to a leadership sustainability grant of £50,000, which is ring-fenced for staff and governor development in order to build leadership capacity for the future.

Recent research shows that young carers have significantly lower educational attainment at GCSE level than their peers, equivalent to nine grades lower overall. That’s the difference between nine Bs and nine Cs.

That shows why it is so important that schools are able to identify and support pupils who are young carers. However a legislative approach compelling them to do so is not in keeping with our drive to reduce burdens on schools. It is important that headteachers and governors have the freedoms they need to meet their responsibilities for the welfare of their pupils in the way they consider is most appropriate.

I am very grateful for the support of the National Governors’ Association in raising awareness about the needs of young carers and sharing resources with governing bodies. Whilst there is a lot of good practice in schools, there remains much to do to make this more widely available.

That is why I welcome two exciting new developments led by the voluntary sector. The Big Lottery Fund are financing The Children’s Society’s “Young Carers in Focus” programme to launch a national award scheme that allows schools to be recognised for the quality of support for their young carers. The Queen’s Trust too are funding Carers Trust to develop and test best practice on young carer support in schools. Both of these initiatives will build on the work my Department has been doing with The Children’s Society and Carers Trust since 2011 to share existing tools and good practice. This includes development of an e-learning module for school staff to increase awareness in schools of young carers’ needs. We are planning to update this soon to reflect the new legislation but the current version is available on The Children’s Society’s website: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/Young-Carers-Web-Pub-v13/player.html

The Department of Health are also training school nurses to be champions for young carers. They will speak up on their behalf and help headteachers and governors decide how best to support them at school.

At present we do not plan to extend the pupil premium eligibility criteria to cover young carers (or any other group). Our policy is to allocate pupil premium funding to those pupils who have experienced financial disadvantage but there is a significant cross-over between young carers and the current pupil premium target population. Research indicates that as many as 60 per cent of young carers could be eligible for free school meals, so already attract the pupil premium.

We will continue to encourage schools to use the resources that are already freely available to them and to make links to their local young carers support group.

We do need to do more to support young carers. We changed the law recently to enable all of them to benefit from a proper assessment of their needs, so that they can be given the support that they require. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we also extended the pupil premium recently to cover children in care, children who are adopted, and, more recently, children receiving early-years education. However, I shall be happy to look at the hon. Gentleman’s proposal. I know that he works closely with the Norfolk young carers forum, and I also know that my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools will be meeting representatives of the Carers Trust in November to discuss precisely this issue.

Last week, Mike Richards told me how waiting-time standards had transformed cancer care, and I think the

same can happen for mental health. It is outrageous that somebody with a suspected cancer gets seen by a specialist within two weeks, but that if someone has a first episode of psychosis, who knows what will happen to them. That discrimination has to end, and we are delivering that.

The Secretary of State is in India where he is banging the drum for British business, culture, sport and tourism. Today, he has been giving a speech on the importance of a free internet for the future prosperity of the UK, India and the world. He has also launched a new programme of sport and education for girls, supported museum partnerships between the UK and India and attended a memorial event to commemorate the contribution of Indian soldiers during the first world war. Here at home, his colleagues have also been busy, and we have confirmed our £90 million investment in a new model for English Heritage. In sport, I am pleased to say that all four home nations went undefeated in their European championship qualifying matches.

It is certainly our intention to keep an open mind on this issue. The Government will consider all the relevant evidence fairly and openly and will act accordingly.