Dave Robertson

Again, I thank the petitioners and the petition creator for making sure could discuss this issue. I also thank all those who contributed to this debate: my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), who showed his support for pupils with additional educational needs; my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), who gave her views on the health and wider implications of how such a change might function and its place within the larger debate; and the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), who raised the important issue of teacher retention. The median length of a teaching career has been decreasing for years. When the treadmill is that short, it does not matter how fast people are shuffled on to it if they fall off the back just as fast. However, I caution her on one point: we have world-class teachers in our classrooms up and down the country. I also thank the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) for sharing a rare moment of policy agreement across all the major parties. I am sure normal service will be resumed very soon. We may have to agree to disagree on the simple idea that more education means better outcomes, because I am not entirely certain that it is linear—I think that a maximum can be reached, but I am sure that we can have that debate at length another time. I am also not sure that any robust evidence links school structures, academies and free schools to better outcomes on their own. It is teachers who make excellent education, not school structures. Finally, I thank my hon. Friend the Minister, who has first-hand experience as a teacher, for raising the importance of extracurricular activities as well as the impact that inflexible working has on retention and the ways that we can work around that to support teachers in the classroom. He may, however, have missed an opportunity to flag up Labour’s excellent Employment Rights Act 2025 as part of that. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered e-petition 727514 relating to the length of the school week.