Manifesto- Education

Is there any way i could go about making this a bit more radical without sounding like a lunatic...

Help much appreciated

Education

New Labour claim they want to put education at the heart of their policies, yet the entire labour education strategy seems to rely on untested ideas such as ‘’city academies’, corporate sponsorship, privatisation and faith based schools.

Tony Blair puts a lot of faith in faith-based schools, yet should we share his admiration of these institutions. The NUT has repeatedly criticised many of them for the poor quality of teaching or for their homophobic hiring policies, this government may have repealed section 28, yet it seems content to let faith schools turn back the clock and ignore the new legislation, as do many local Tory councils. Are these often privately funded faith schools and ‘city academies’ really to be accepted as a substitute for public education?

The governments strategy seems to be to reduce the number of schools in order to supposedly concentrate resources into a smaller number establishments, while attempting to deal with the shortfall of places in catchment areas by overcrowding certain schools or simply filing away the real numbers of children who don’t have school places, surely this is just another example of our government cutting corners and under-funding vital institutions. Power point and other trendy flash in the pan ideas are not a substitute for small class sizes and good teaching. Just as we oppose explicit privatisation of our schools we also oppose corporate sponsors attempting to influence what is taught, this would be nothing but privatisation by the back door….

Labour also say they want to give parents more say in how their school is run, as sentiment we fully agree with, but how are labour planning to increase parental involvement when they openly plan to cut governing boards to as little as 10 members supposedly to ‘streamline’ these organisations. If we really want to strengthen Parent Teacher Associations and give parents a real say in how their school is run surely we should be trying to include as broad a base of parents as possible not excluding most parents and leaving school boards it to a mere handful of governors. Parents should be meeting teachers face to face to discuss day to day concerns about how the school is run, not going through management and governors, both of whom are far too often more concerned with the financial well being of a school than the education it provides.

We should call for an immediate halt in the selling off of school playing fields, and for the extension of existing sports facilities. These sports facilities, along with the other facilities of the school should also be available to the community after school hours, the school should not be isolated from the community, also school bus services should be publicly owned and free and should not be restricted simply to remote areas.

The Labour Party tell us they’ve brought back free school milk in primary schools in Wales, so what about the rest of the country? The cost of a school milk program is minimal, and to not reintroduce it is one of the most ludicrous examples of a government intent on cutting corners on social spending. Schools should be better funded to provide free milk and better quality and free meals for children, both breakfast and lunch. Parents should be encouraged to come and inspect these facilities and be given a forum to make direct suggestions and implement policy on these issues.

Conservative policies, as always are an insult to the intelligence of the British public, they say they want to ‘simplify’ the curriculum, its not that we disagree with the sentiment, but what does this actually mean? Do they have any coherent proposals whatsoever? They say they want discipline in schools, in effect all Tory policies would do would be to create further problems and lead to the creation of sink schools, because the Tories want to scrap the decree that forces schools to take their share of disruptive pupils.

If we are going to address the national curriculum our first priority should be to look at the effects of over-reliance on examinations. This creates monolithic examination schemes that classes and teachers continually have to wade through, where the objective is not to teach children our have them learn about ideas or scientific methods but to simply get chilren through an array of hoops and examination targets. Examinations are necessary, but the over-reliance on them in ourt current curriculum vastly reducing the quality of learning taking place in our schools, it also increases the level of bureaucracy, gives too much power to outside bodies such as exam boards and fuels the ridiculous league table competition between schools. Children and teachers are not being encouraged to take an active part in education. We don’t have all the answers as regards the national curriculum and would be quite insane to think we did, all we would argue is that their should be more focus on active participation, less focus on examinations and far more flexibility. If anything, we believe teachers should have a direct input into what is taught at their schools with parental supervision, because surely it is teachers who have the experience and the on-the –ground knowledge to know how best to teach children, not some bureaucrat sitting at a desk in Whitehall.

Class sizes should be reduced to a maximum of twenty for all education establishments, this reduction of class sizes is one of the few Liberal Democrat policies we agree on, although we do not think the liberal democrats are ever going to push through such reforms nor does their programme go far enough. Any reduction of class sizes would depend on a large school building program which does not seem to be outlined as a concrete offer in any manifesto, we should also endeavour to make a return to local geographical admission catchment areas which will help tie schools back to the community.

All the parties claim that they will recruit more teachers to end staff shortages if re-elected, but the Liberal Democrats make the only mildly convincing case on this subject, however, they hardly seem to address the real problems behind teacher shortages, the sheer insurmountable level of bureaucracy, and needless paperwork facing teachers and the spiralling lack of discipline in schools combines to make teachers overworked and powerless, unable to make a difference when placed against the sheer weight of management, paperwork and red tape combined, these are the real day to day issues that teachers face and this is why so many leave within the first year of taking their PGCE. Tory policies, for all their extravagant claims, do not deal with the lack of discipline in schools as we have seen, what is needed are clear and constructive community based and determined punishments for repeat offenders in schools. We would also scrap the governments policies on truancy, as these do nothing but victimise the working class, whilst we recognise that truancy is a problem, sending a truants parents to jail is definitely not the answer. Much truancy is caused by a failing education establishment, lack of real opportunities in schooling and the pressures of long work-weeks for parents.

We feel strongly that private schools should be abolished but if they are to remain then surely they should not be entitled to charitable status, they should pay taxes like the rest of us. It is farcical that schools like Eton and Harrow, which are reserved solely for a wealthy elite, hardly pay a penny in terms of tax. These private schools, by not paying VAT and other government taxes are effectively robbing state schools of hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

In higher education Labour are pushing through tuition fees, in theory these will abolish up front payments, in practice they will raise fees from £1000 a year to £3000 and leave students with a crippling debt. Just as the NUS caved in and offered ineffective lobbying when grants were replaced with loans so we are seeing the same story repeat itself. The Liberal Democrats, attempting to win the student vote, claim they will scrap the idea of raising tuition fees, certainly this is a preferable policy, but what assurance do we have that they will keep their promises, after all we remember that Labour said they would never raise tuition fees in 2001. More importantly, is it enough simply to demand an end to top up fees? We hold that there should be a return to grants and a scrapping of tuition fees altogether.

As well as the threat of rising fees students have the problem that many institutions are raising rent far beyond the rate of inflation. We say that students should be able to form tenants’ organisations like any other community in order to fight against rent increases and co-ordinate services. These could either be run by students unions or stand alongside them as entirely separate organisations.

To summarise we believe in handing power in education over to teachers and parents, and in truly bringing schools back into the community, we believe this can be achieved if the day to day running of schools is placed directly into the hands of teachers organisations and parental and community support networks.