Labour announces plan to improve education standards for all children

Thursday, 5 December 2019 00:01

Labour is today (Thursday) announcing a plan to improve education standards for all children after the OECD revealed on Tuesday that school children in Britain are more likely to be miserable compared with children in other countries. Labour will: Cap all class sizes at 30 by recruiting nearly 20,000 more teachers Guarantee that every child is taught by a qualified teacher, ensuring around 25,000 currently unqualified staff are...Request free trial

Labour will:

Cap all class sizes at 30 by recruiting nearly 20,000 more teachers
Guarantee that every child is taught by a qualified teacher, ensuring around 25,000 currently unqualified staff are fully trained during Labour’s first term in office
Ensure teachers will have more time for lesson planning and professional development
Invest in ensuring that all school buildings are safe, with a new fund of over £7bn to tackle the backlog of vital but overdue repairs and install safety measures such as sprinklers
Close the gap in funding for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, with extra funding to reverse deficits in the High Needs Budget
Fully reverse cuts to the Pupil Premium, and increase spending on it above inflation to support the most disadvantaged pupils.

The total additional investment in schools over three years will amount to £25 billion compared to £14 billion promised by the Conservatives.

The extra funding will be used to raise school standards across the country, with a range of new policies aimed at improving educational outcomes.

There are hundreds of thousands of children currently being taught by unqualified teachers who will be taught by a properly trained and fully qualified teacher under Labour’s plans.

Taken alongside the recruitment of more teachers to meet growing demand for pupil numbers, this means there will be around 50,000 more qualified teachers in our schools in 2023-24 compared to now.

This new investment follows a decade of austerity in schools, with a real terms freeze in schools funding. As the Conservatives have failed to invest in schools, the impact on children’s education has been clear. There are:

Over 600,000 children being taught by unqualified teachers, up by hundreds of thousands since 2012
Nearly half a million children crammed in to super-sized classes, up by 29% since 2010
128 'titan' primary schools with over 800 pupils, a sevenfold increase since 2010, and over 27,000 children are taught in primary schools of over 1,000 pupils. There were none in 2010.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Labour’s plans for school spending would almost double the increase in per pupil funding being put forward by the Conservatives. IFS data had revealed that the Conservatives' promised spending would not fully reverse their own cuts to school budgets.

The Conservative manifesto did not commit to maintaining the Pupil Premium, a fund of over £2 billion to support disadvantaged pupils, leading to concerns that it could face further cuts, or even be scrapped altogether.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said:

“Labour will transform education standards in this country for every child, capping class sizes and ensuring every child is taught by a qualified teacher in a safe school building.

“We will invest in record per pupil funding, restore the Pupil Premium and close the gap in support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, to give every child the support they need.

“The Tories cannot be trusted to do this. They have slashed school funding for the first time in a generation, leaving pupils taught by unqualified teachers, crammed in to super-sized classes, and not receiving the support they need."

Ends

Notes to editors

These commitments are funded out of the £5.5 billion increase to schools funding above the baseline outlined in Labour’s fully costed manifesto, and the accompanying document Funding Real Change. Capital spending is allocated from the Social Transformation Fund https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Funding-Real-Change-2019.pdf

The £25bn of additional funding corresponds to the Government’s £14bn figure derived from Table 2.3 of Spending Review 2019, which includes funding above 2019-20 levels over the following three years.

Labour will cap all class sizes at 30, and employ tens of thousands of additional teachers to ensure that schools have the staff they need to implement it.

There are now 24,958 unqualified teachers in state-funded schools – a rise of 28 per cent since 2012.

Unqualified teachers (thousands)

November 2012

November

2018

% Change

All publicly funded schools

19,500

24,958

DfE, School workforce in England: November 2018

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2018

DfE ,School workforce in England: November 2012

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2012

· New analysis shows that up to 608,975 pupils are being taught by the 24,000 unqualified teachers in state-funded schools in England.

	Number of unqualified teachers	Average class size	Total number of children taught by unqualified teachers
All publicly-funded schools	24,958	24.4	608,975

· The average class size is the average size of one teacher classes across all state-funded primary and secondary schools that provided this information in the January 2018 School Census.

DfE, School workforce in England: November 2018,

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2018
DfE, Schools, pupils and their characteristics, January 2019

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019

· Areas that unqualified teachers have no guaranteed training in include:

o How pupils learn and how this impacts on teaching

o Developments in their subject and curriculum areas

o Adapting teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils

o Distinctive teaching approaches to engage and support all pupils, including those with special educational needs; those of high ability; those with English as an additional language and those with disabilities

o Managing behaviour effectively to ensure a good and safe learning environment

o The need to safeguard pupils’ well-being.

DfE, Teachers’ Standards, July 2011, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teachers-standards

· There are now over seven times as many ‘titan’ primary schools (those with over 800 pupils) than there were in 2010.

	Jan-10	Jan-19	% change since 2010
Number of primary schools with over 800 pupils	16	128	700%

· The number of children crammed into these ‘titan’ primary schools has grown considerably in the last seven years, with 119,571 children currently crammed into primary schools of over 800 pupils.

	Jan-10	Jan-19	% change since 2010
Number of pupils in schools with over 800 pupils	13,700	119,571	773%
Number of pupils in schools with over 1000 pupils	0	27,027

DfE, Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2010

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2010

DfE, Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2019

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019

Labour analysis of data from the House of Commons Library shows that in 2019 there were nearly half a million (470,104) children in super-sized classes, compared to 365,150 in 2010. This is an increase of nearly a third (29%)

The Tories have made no mention of the Pupil Premium in their most recent manifesto. In previous manifestos they have promised to protect funding for the Pupil Premium, which support children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Their failure to provide this assurance raises serious concerns that it will be cut further or scrapped.

The Conservatives' 2017 manifesto committed to “protect the Pupil Premium to support those who need it” https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/conservative-party-manifestos/Forward+Together+-+Our+Plan+for+a+Stronger+Britain+and+a+More+Prosperous....pdf, p51

But the Pupil Premium has already been cut by around £200 million in real terms since 2015. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/pupil-premium-funding-schools-poorer-pupils-conservatives-austerity-a9113936.html

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies have found that Labour’s plans for school spending would increase spending per pupil by 14.6% by 2022-23, compared to 7.4% for the Conservatives and 8.3% for the Liberal Democrats https://twitter.com/lukesibieta/status/1198627426777124864

The independent Education Policy Institute have previously found that the Conservatives’ plans to “level up” school funding will disproportionately benefit affluent pupils: “Overall, the average pupil eligible for free school meals would attract an additional £56 under this proposal, while the average pupil not eligible for free school meals would attract an additional £116.”

“All but 12 of England’s 163 grammar schools would benefit under this proposal, at an average of over £130,000 each to their total budgets.”https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/analysis-the-prime-ministers-promise-to-level-up-school-funding

British schoolchildren among least satisfied, says OECD report https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/dec/03/british-schoolchildren-among-least-satisfied-with-their-lives-says-oecd-report