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Order. Order.

Hello, I'm Sean Curran, and this is today in Parliament from BBC Radio 4 for Monday the 3rd of February.

When an education minister defended plans to change the way, schools in England were graded.

Labour is delivering a new era for school standards, overhauling school inspection and accountability.

MPs try to find out why AstraZeneca's plans to expand a vaccines factory have been scrapped.

It's like hearing that two people are madly in love with each other and yet the wedding is off.

And the cladding scandal goes on. Why are people living in blocks of flats still waiting

for their homes to be made safe? There's too much buck passing, there's too much blame games

going round. But first, the Education Secretary Bridget Philipson has promised a new era of school standards in England.

She used a speech to a think tank to spell out her plans to help struggling schools,

including proposals to change inspections by the regulator Ofsted.

Last year, Offstead scrapped the system of single-word judgments.

Now the Department for Education and the Watchdog have set out proposals for a new report card system.

They're consulting on plans to grade schools across a range of areas using a colour-coded scorecard.

Making a statement about the shake-up, the school standards minister, Catherine

McKinnell, told the Commons the changes would bring high and rising standards to every corner

of the country. Schools that are stuck but have the capacity to improve must be supported and pushed

to do so. We will get our new rise teams, expert school leaders in early. We will use

them to facilitate faster improvement using knowledge, experience and the reports of reformed

high-quality inspections to turn schools around. The new report cards will be introduced in the autumn,

but the changes are controversial. Teaching unions have criticised the plans,

...