Election 2017: Education manifesto shakedown!

by David Winfield

CEO & Founder, Independent Schools Portal

For the first time in a generation, voters are being offered a genuine choice at the ballot box by the major political parties and these differences are clearly evident in their respective proposals for Education.

We've spent some time at Portal Towers analysing those manifestos in full to provide you with a complete side-by-side summary shakedown of those pledges, and of the responses of key voices within education.

Liberal Democrats

x

Leading with their belief that teachers should be “given the flexibility to apply their expertise and develop children’s passion for learning”, the Lib-Dems have set the following plan for education if they win this year’s General Election:
​

1. Scrap grammar schools plans and devolve all capital money for new school spaces to local authorities
2. Introduce a fairer National Funding System with a protection for all schools
3. End the 1% cap on teachers’ pay rises
4. Extend the free school meal programme to all primary school pupils
5. Introduce 25 hours of high quality CPD by 2020, to rise to 50 by 2025
6. Tackle teacher workload by reforming Ofsted inspections and focusing on an evidence-based approach
7. Allow Ofsted to inspect academy chains
8. Introduce a curriculum entitlement – a slimmed down core national curriculum
9. Prioritise primary progress measures instead of floor thresholds and work with the profession to reform tests at 11
10. Provide training to all teaching staff to identify mental health issues
11. Amend the Ofsted inspection framework to include promoting wellbeing as a statutory duty of schools
12. Improve links between employers and schools, encouraging all schools to participate in employment and enterprise schemes

The above are the headline pledges, but the Liberal Democrats have published an extended education section of their manifesto which you can read here.

Russell Hobby, NAHT General Secretary, said:

We welcome the pledge in the Liberal Democrat manifesto to put almost £7 billion extra into education. We have been consistently arguing for greater funding. As a minimum, schools need to see a reversal of the £3 billion real terms cuts they face. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have pledged to address funding; the Conservatives should follow suit. School budgets are at breaking point, and all parties must have a plan to address this.
An additional investment in the early years pupil premium is also a welcome commitment. NAHT has campaigned for the early years pupil premium to mirror the level given to primary schools, and a tripling of this would help deliver resources where they are most needed. It is clear that investment in the early years is the best route to boost social mobility. The call to increase the number of those in early years with an early years teaching qualification is also a very positive move.

Geoff Barton, ASCL General Secretary, commented:

We very much welcome the commitment of the Liberal Democrats to improve education funding, as we do Labour’s pledge on this issue. It is the number one priority in ASCL’s General Election manifesto.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have recognised the importance of ensuring that schools and colleges are properly funded, and we are sure that the public will expect the Conservatives to invest in the future of our young people too.

There is also much else to welcome in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, including long-term planning of initial teacher training places, which will help to address the ongoing recruitment crisis. The creation of a body to pilot, phase-in and fund future policy changes, is in line with our members’ calls for a unified, depoliticised approach to education reform. We definitely welcome the proposed involvement of educational professionals and other experts. Such a step would help to put a stop to the scattergun of poorly thought-through reforms which put huge pressures on schools and colleges, and too often waste public money.
It is also good to see the Liberal Democrats’ support for the Foundation for Leadership in Education, which ASCL, along with other education organisations, has established as an independent body to promote high-quality, evidence-based leadership.

Dr Mary Bousted, ATL General Secretary, said:

Opposition parties are giving a clear message that the Government’s school cuts are unsustainable. ATL applauds the Liberal Democrats’ promise to reverse those cuts, ensure funding for every pupil is protected in real terms, and to give a new funding formula the resources it needs to succeed for all schools and all pupils. If the party elected to govern on 8 June doesn’t make, and enact, such a commitment then children will lose out with a narrower curriculum, less support for disadvantaged pupils and those with mental health problems, fewer staff and resources.
We commend the promise to provide resources for early years education to address pre-existing disadvantages.
​
Any attempts to increase the quantity of apprenticeships or the number of providers, must be preceded by significant work to raise the quality of apprenticeships. This will require productive talks with the further education profession and learners.

Conservatives

x

Conservative Manifesto: ‘The world’s great meritocracy’ education pledges

Below are the pledges made by the Party to the education system, based on the Conservatives’ desire to make Britain “a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow”:

• Deliver more school places by ending the ban on selective schools and continuing the free schools programme, aiming to build 100 new ones each year

• Prohibit councils from creating any new places in schools that have been rated either Inadequate or Requires Improvement

• Ask universities and independent schools to help run state schools
• Increase overall schools budget by £4bn by 2022 and ensure no school is worse off as part of the new funding formula

• Open a specialist maths school in every major city in England

1. Introduce a curriculum fund for developing knowledge-rich materials

• Expect 75% of pupils to have entered EBacc subjects by end of next parliament, with 90% by 2025

• Offer forgiveness on student loan repayments for teachers to help retain them within the profession

• Create a jobs portal for schools to advertise vacancies in order to reduce costs and help with recruitment

• Offer free school breakfast to all primary school pupils and scrap universal infant free school meals 

• Introduce mental health first aid training for teachers in every school

• Replace unfair and ineffective inclusivity rules preventing establishment of new Roman Catholic schools

​
The Conservative Party also wants to create more nurseries by introducing the presumption that all new primary schools should include one. They promise to deliver a world-class technical education by replacing 13,000 existing technical qualifications with the new T-levels.

Read the 2017 Conservative Manifesto here.

Russell Hobby, NAHT General Secretary, commented:
All the evidence shows that school budgets are at breaking point. The Conservatives’ decision to pledge an increase in the schools budget of £4 billion by 2022 is therefore welcome. But £4 billion over five years is short of what is needed, and we need to be clear when this is to be delivered and any ring-fencing that may apply.

There is finally an admission here that there is not enough in the mainstream schools budget, which is welcome. The Conservatives now accept what those in education have been saying. However, they are short of what is needed for schools to just stand still. Moreover, their remedy to take money away from universal infant free school meals to help plug this gap is disappointing. This is just moving money around inside the system.

Geoff Barton, ASCL General Secretary, said:

We welcome any improvement to school funding, but unfortunately the Conservative pledge of a £4 billion boost includes a large element of sleight of hand. The schools budget would have to increase by about £2.8 billion in any case because the pupil population will rise by 490,000 by 2022. So, the ‘extra’ money is in fact just over £1 billion, which is not enough to counteract the rising costs which are hitting schools and will amount to £3 billion a year by 2020. We calculate that the schools budget would need to increase by a total of between £6 billion and £7 billion to counter the impact of rising costs and implement the planned National Funding Formula in a way which is truly equitable.

We support the proposed investment in technical education, but we are very disappointed that there is no recognition of the urgent need for improved funding in post-16 education in general. The current level of funding is woefully inadequate and is leading to cuts in A levels and other courses.

Labour

x

Labour Manifesto: ‘For the many, not the few’ education pledges

The Labour Party officially launched its manifesto for the 2017 General Election on Tuesday, 16th of May. Labour is proposing to commit an extra £25.3bn for education, which will be funded from extra tax revenue:

1. Create a unified National Education Service (NES) as one of the “central institutions of fairness” for the 21st century.
2. Introduce a fairer funding formula to redress the historical underfunding of certain schools, which would leave “no school worse off”.
3. Reduce class sizes to less than 30 pupils for all five-, six-, and seven-year-olds.
4. Introduce free school meals for all primary school children, paid for by removing the VAT exemption on private school fees.
5. Abandon baseline assessments and review SATs
6. End the public sector pay gap and consult on introducing teacher sabbaticals and placements with industry.
7. Give teachers “more direct involvement” in the curriculum
8. Reduce “monitoring and bureaucracy”
9. Reintroduce national pay bargaining for teachers.
10. Undo requirement for schools to pay the apprenticeship levy
11. Extend schools-based counselling to all schools to improve children’s mental health, at a cost of £90 million per year.
12. Deliver an inclusive SEND strategy and embed it more substantially into training for all school staff

Labour also promised to extend free childcare to 30 hours for all two-year-olds, scrap tuition fees in England and reintroduce maintenance allowances.
Last week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated that extending free school meals to all primary school pupils would cost a Labour government £950m each year.
Read the 2017 Labour Manifesto here. 


Russell Hobby, NAHT General Secretary, commented:
It is encouraging that the Labour Party is committing to extra funding for education. We have been campaigning for the £3 billion real terms cuts to be reversed, and all political parties need to sign up to this. This is NAHT’s top priority for education, and formed the first in our five priorities campaign.
Over previous years we have seen costs increase for schools, so it is particularly welcome to see the pledge to remove schools from the obligation to pay into the apprenticeship levy. It is unlikely schools would benefit from this, so this is a welcome commitment.
We know that the school funding crisis is hitting all schools. Committing to reduce class sizes to under 30 for all 5, 6 and 7 year olds is welcome. Rising class sizes is a consequence of real terms funding cuts, and one that school leaders are being forced to make.
Dr Mary Bousted, ATL General Secretary, said:
We are pleased the Labour Party is willing to address the Government’s school cuts. The current situation is unsustainable. Only by increasing per-pupil funding in real terms will these problems even begin to be addressed. Scrapping the requirement for schools to pay the apprenticeship levy will help by cutting the costs on schools.
Lifting the public sector pay cap and setting up a School Support Staff Negotiating Body should certainly help with the recruitment and retention of staff.
But ATL members will be concerned that plans to charge VAT on independent school fees pose a real risk to the job security of teachers and support staff. We believe it is important to address the disadvantage and poverty which can limit educational attainment but would want to be assured there is strong evidence to support universal, rather than targeted, free school meals.
Geoff Barton, ASCL General Secretary, shared his thoughts on the manifesto in an article for the TES, available to read here.

Please leave a comment down below  - we'd love to hear your thoughts!