I’ve written to the Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds, regarding the alarming trend of cuts to school budgets.
In Reading East, there is not a single school that is better funded now than in 2010.
Conservative cuts are starving schools of the funding they need to deliver a first-class education. Crippling under-funding is driving up class sizes and forcing schools to cut corners. A narrow curriculum and a culture of assessment is driving away teachers, creating a recruitment and retention crisis.
A Labour government would reverse this damaging trend, by investing in a National Education Service based on the following 4 principles:
1) Investment – we will make sure schools are properly resourced by reversing the Conservatives’ cuts and ensuring that all schools have the resources they need. We will introduce a fairer funding formula that leaves no school worse off while redressing the historical under-funding of certain schools. Labour will also invest in new school buildings, including the phased removal of asbestos from existing schools.
2) Quality – we will drive up standards across the board, learning from examples of best practice, such as Labour’s London Challenge, to encourage co-operation and strong leadership across schools. We trust in teachers and support staff professionalism to refocus their workload on what happens in the classroom.
3) Accountability – Labour will ensure that all schools are democratically accountable, including appropriate controls to see that they serve the public interest and their local communities. We will require joined-up admissions policies across local schools to enable councils to fulfil their responsibilities on child places, to simplify the admissions process for parents and to ensure that no child slips through the net.
4) Inclusion – Every child is unique, and a Labour-led education system will enable each to find their learning path through a wide choice of courses and qualifications. We will invest in measures to close the attainment gap between children from different backgrounds.
I will continue working on this issue, and pushing for an education policy that delivers the skills our children and young people need to tackle the challenges of the future.