Labour's Programme on Education

The LRC is publishing extracts from Labour’s 2019 Manifesto It’s time for real change. We hope this will encourage everyone to look in more detail at the manifesto as a whole. It is available at https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/

Here are Labour’s funding pledges:

·         Early years education £5.6bn

·         Schools £5.5bn

·         Skills and lifelong learning £4.7bn

·         Higher education £13.6bn

National Education Service

Education makes our economy stronger, our society richer and our people more fulfilled. Whether it is businesses finding people with the right skills, a tech start-up making our economy more dynamic or more people in better paid work and able to contribute to public services, we all benefit from an educated society. 

But education isn’t just vital to our economy – it lets people develop their talents, overcomes injustices and inequalities and helps us understand each other and form social bonds.

The Conservatives have starved our education system of funding, transferring costs onto students, staff and communities. They have lost sight of its value.

Early Years

Early years education is vital to children’s development. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds start falling behind their peers before they even start school. Early years education also helps parents – usually mothers – by providing a bridge between maternity/parental leave and school.

But the current system falls far short of what is needed. One thousand Sure Start centres have closed since 2010, while the Tories’ so-called free childcare offer is desperately underfunded and excludes many of the most disadvantaged children.

We will reverse cuts to Sure Start and create a new service, Sure Start Plus, with enough centres to provide a genuinely universal service, available in all communities, focused on the under-2s.

Schools                                        

Labour will make sure schools are properly resourced with increased long- term funding, while introducing a fairer funding formula that leaves no child worse off. We will invest to upgrade schools that have fallen into disrepair.

Labour’s funding settlement will ensure pupils are taught by a qualified teacher, that every school is open for a full five days a week, and maximum class sizes of 30 for all primary school children. We will also fund more non-contact time for teachers to prepare and plan.

Schools have faced years of budget cuts, leaving headteachers forced to beg parents for money for basic equipment. Despite promising to reverse their own cuts, the Tories latest funding announcement leaves 83% of schools still facing cuts next year.

Schools are being subjected to intensified testing, inspection, league tables and competition. These aren’t improving pupil achievement or narrowing the attainment gap, but are contributing to a growing teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

The narrowing curriculum is denying many children access to modern languages, arts and music, or technical and engineering skills that will be essential in a world shaped by climate change.

Further Education and Lifelong Learning

With automation and the Green Industrial Revolution bringing major changes to industry, it is more important than ever that people have the opportunity to retrain and upskill throughout their lives.

Under the Tories, adult education has undergone 10 years of managed decline. England already faces a shortage of people with higher-level technical qualifications, and demand for these skills will only grow as we create new green jobs.

Instead of investing in people to prepare them for the jobs of the future, the Conservatives have slashed funding and cut opportunities.

Labour will ensure fairness and sustainability in further education, aligning the base rate of per-pupil funding in post-16 education with Key Stage 4, providing dedicated capital funding to expand provision and bringing back the Education Maintenance Allowance as the Welsh Labour Government has done.

Labour will make lifelong learning a reality, giving everyone a free lifelong entitlement to:

·         Training up to Level 3

·         Six years training at Levels 4-6, with maintenance grants for disadvantaged

Higher Education

Under the Tories, universities are treated as private businesses, left at the mercy of market forces, while top salaries soar and students pay more for less. Tuition fees have trebled and maintenance grants have been scrapped, leaving the poorest graduates with an average debt of £57,000.

Labour will end the failed free-market experiment in higher education, abolish tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants. We will fundamentally rethink the assessment of research and teaching quality, and develop a new funding formula for higher education that:

·         Ensures all public HE institutions have adequate funding for teaching and research.

·         Widens access to higher education and reverses the decline of part-time learning.

·         Ends the casualisation of staff.

We will transform the Office for Students from a market regulator to a body of the National Education Service, acting in the public interest.

We will introduce post-qualification admissions in higher education, and work with universities to ensure contextual admissions are used across the system.