Ensuring everyone in Gosport, Stubbington, Lee-on-the-Solent and Hill Head has access to the best education and training is essential to the future of the area.
Caroline wants all children to get the best possible start in life.
When she was first elected in 2010 nearly half of the infant and junior schools in Gosport were rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate with only 61% of schools rated Good or Outstanding. Since then, she has met with Hampshire Council Education Team, relentlessly, twice a year to go through all local schools, line by line, to help drive improvement.
Every single one of the primary schools across Gosport, Lee on the Solent, Stubbington and Hill Head, as well as St Vincent College and The Key are now Good or Outstanding, due to hard work by both the schools and the organisations who support them. Caroline has now turned her attention to the secondary schools, and in February 2024 organised the first ever Gosport Secondary School Summit - attended by school leaders, their Multi Academy Trusts, and Department of Education and Ofsted representatives.
Since being elected, Caroline has frequently visited the schools and colleges in her constituency, meeting with hundreds of teachers and pupils to discuss their achievements and the challenges they face. She has also welcomed many local schools and home education groups to Parliament, taking part in lively Q&A sessions with pupils of all ages. Caroline played an important role in securing new sports facilities at Bay House and Bridgemary Schools.
Caroline has fought against Sure Start Children's Centre closures, raising her concerns in Parliament and locally. Meanwhile in 2016, as Minister for Women, Equalities and Early Years, Caroline was responsible for the implementation of 30 hours free childcare.
Keeping children safe online is something incredibly close to Caroline's heart. She was the Digital Minister at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport who brought forward the Online Safety Bill which will offer much greater protections to children from the dangers of the online world. She took part in the campaign to keep children safe online as a member of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Child Safety Online and held a Cyber Safety event to help parents be confident with digital parenting. In 2019, Caroline won the star prize in a digital currency competition, winning £10,000 for local schools which she divided amongst them.
For those at senior school Caroline has hosted many futures-oriented events, such as welcoming Baroness Karren Brady to Bay House School and Jacqueline Gold CBE and a cohort of successful local businesswomen to Bridgemary School.
She has strived to encourage more girls into STEM and is a keen supporter of Gomer Junior School’s gSTEM project, bringing Ministers to see the learning in action. In 2019, the then-Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds, accepted her invitation to meet with local head teachers and open the Gosport STEM Centre.
Caroline helped to secure funding for CEMAST, which trains over 1100 engineering students annually. Caroline also backed the funding bid to build CETC based at Daedalus, offering practical training so that apprentices are 'work ready' after an intensive 20 week training course. She took the then-Skills Minister, Anne Milton, to see their unique model.
Caroline was pleased to see CEMAST become one of the first colleges in the UK to offer T-levels, launched in 2020. They offer students the chance to develop technical and vocational skills. These include an industry placement, allowing students to develop practical working experience, as well as develop a network within a given industry. Caroline was pleased to see the first generation of T-level graduates receive their results in August 2022.
She has promoted apprenticeship schemes throughout the area and completed her own mini-apprenticeship at Costa Coffee. She ran a campaign to shine a light on the diversity of apprenticeships in the Gosport constituency, and invited learners to Parliament to meet the then-Apprenticeships and Skills Minister, the Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP
Believing that educational opportunities should be available to people whatever their age, Caroline worked hard to save adult education resources when the Rowner RSR closed and was delighted to help secure the new service at the Nimrod Centre. The project was hailed as a European example of excellence and a blueprint for other adult education schemes. The project moved to St Vincent College in 2018 rebranded as "Choices @ The Clocktower".
Through her engagement with Gosport based reading programme 'We CAN Read', Caroline developed a passion for boosting basic skills among the adult population. She led a landmark debate in the House of Commons on adult literacy and numeracy and played a key role in securing a BIS Select Committee Inquiry into adult literacy and numeracy issues. She also formed an All Party Parliamentary Group for Maths and Numeracy with cross party support and was Co-Chair of the group.
