Education Policy Institute publishes detailed analysis of political parties' education plans: policy commitments do not meet the parties’ bold aspirations to close the opportunity gap

EPI, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has carried out an analysis of the manifesto education plans of the five main parties (Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green and Brexit parties). Our researchers have assessed each party's education policies, as they affect England (education being a devolved matter in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), considering the extent to which they are based on research evidence and whether and how they are likely to impact on overall attainment and the gaps between more vulnerable children and the rest.

Where possible, we have compared each party’s spending commitments with our own estimates of likely costs. We have not attempted to analyse in any detail the credibility of the revenue assumptions which underlie the education spending commitments.

Overall conclusions:

• Although all parties have made bold pledges about reducing opportunity gaps and raising educational attainment, the policies in their manifestos are unlikely to deliver on these aspirations.

• Despite a large proportion of the attainment gap between poor children and the rest emerging before entry to school, party policies seem to focus on improving childcare for employment and cost of living reasons, rather than focusing on high quality early years education. While Labour and the Liberal Democrats are making major funding commitments in this area, there are serious questions about whether their policies can be delivered effectively and secure high quality and value for money over the limited implementation periods envisaged. The Conservatives give no indication of whether they will take action to improve the quality and progressiveness of early years entitlements.

• All major parties are pledging additional funding for schools, colleges and special needs education - with Labour and the Greens committing to the biggest increases. This could help to deliver effective interventions and may improve teacher retention. But under Conservative policies, there will be a relative shift in funding away from schools with higher levels of disadvantage - and this attempt to "level up funding" could widen the disadvantage gaps in attainment. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats may have under-estimated the cost of their policies on free school meals, and this could require funding to be diverted from other parts of the schools budget.

• Large policy differences have opened up between the parties over school inspection, school testing and performance tables. The current system of accountability is in need of improvement, but education research suggests that Labour and Liberal Democrat plans to scrap primary tests and move to lower stakes inspection could damage attainment, and might particularly pose a risk to improving outcomes for the most vulnerable learners. The Conservatives do not commit to improving the current system or addressing any of its negative incentives and impacts.

• Party policies on post 18 education are particularly disappointing. Labour proposes that its most expensive education policy should be allocating around £7bn to scrap university tuition fees, even though this may not improve participation, or the access of vulnerable groups. The Conservatives offer few policies on higher education, and the one concrete measure (reduced interest rates on student loans) would disproportionately benefit higher earners. The Liberal Democrats appear to be offering a similar "Review" to those included in their two previous manifestos.  

• While all parties are committed to additional education funding over the years ahead, there  is a high level of uncertainty about the revenues which have been earmarked for such funding. The Conservative plans assume that the growth impact of Brexit will be moderate; the Labour plans assume the same, and also rely upon large tax revenues from a limited number of sources; meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are banking on a "Remain Bonus", and revenues from uncertain sources such as tax avoidance. With all parties, it is unclear how education spending plans would be altered if revenues prove less robust than planned.

We now turn to the detail of each party manifesto, and highlight our principal findings:

For the Conservative Party, we find the following:

• We conclude, overall, that the Conservative manifesto proposals are unlikely to deliver on the party's bold stated pledge to give "every child the same opportunity". Instead, there is a risk that the policies envisaged could cause the disadvantage gap to stagnate or increase. 

• In most areas, it seems clear that the current policy direction would be maintained. This would include retaining the current accountability system and commitment to increase the starting salaries of teachers to £30,000.

• The manifesto has little to say about improving early years education - and there are no convincing policies to narrow the very large, pre-school, disadvantage gaps. Under these plans, England would continue to fund early years education at a lower rate than any other education phase, and England would likely maintain a low paid and low skilled early years workforce.

• On school funding, Conservative plans would reverse the real per pupil cuts since 2010. This is obviously helpful. However, it would still leave per pupil funding in 2022-23 no higher in real terms than in 2009. Funding would also become less progressive - with the Pupil Premium declining 15% from 2014-15 to 2022-23 - and with additional funding skewed towards lower funded schools, generally with lower levels of disadvantage. Our analysis finds that half of the most disadvantaged secondary schools outside London would see no real rise in per pupil funding next year, in spite of likely cost pressures.  These plans to skew funding towards more affluent areas may cause the disadvantaged gap to widen.

• The Conservative manifesto does not address key concerns affecting vulnerable learners - including high levels of unexplained school exits, pressures on young people's mental health services, and funding pressures relating to special educational needs provision.

• The commitment to "ensure that parents can choose the schools that best suit their children" is sufficiently vague that it is unclear what it means for further structural reform. It does appear to leave the door open to a further expansion of selective education, which would harm social mobility and widen the disadvantage gap - particularly in places that already have a high density of selective school places.

• The funding landscape for further education remains uncertain - with only a one year settlement currently announced - and there is no commitment to close the funding gap between the 14-16 and 16-19 phases, which at present appears to lack any coherent rationale.

• The manifesto is surprisingly vague about the party's plans for higher education, given that a comprehensive review has just been completed for the government by Philip Augar. The one clear indication of direction appears to be on student loans, where a lower interest rate is envisaged. This has no obvious educational benefits, and the gains would go disproportionately to the highest earners. 

For the Labour Party, we find the following:

• Overall, we conclude that Labour's commitments on early years education, school and college funding, mental health services and teacher pay could all help raise attainment and reduce the disadvantage gap. But the commitments on reduced accountability, further structural reforms and higher education could impact negatively (not least on disadvantaged children) and offset the gains which might otherwise occur. It is unclear how large the latter impacts might be. In addition, Labour's large spending pledges on education all come in the context of a very large manifesto commitment to additional resource spending, which arguably could be more at risk than other parties’ plans if the sources of additional revenue prove unreliable.

• Labour proposes significant changes from the existing policy approach - including a large increase in funding for each education phase, reformed and reduced school accountability, a significant investment in children's mental health services, action to reduce the size of the private school sector, and a return to a much increased education role for local authorities, at the expense of existing multi-academy trust freedoms. This would constitute the most significant change in education policy direction for a number of decades.

• Labour proposes a significant increase in spending on early years education, including doubling real spending on free early years provision by 2023-24. Labour policy emphasises the importance of early years quality, as opposed to low cost childcare, and proposes measures to raise workforce pay and qualifications. However, the plans proposed would require a significant increase in staffing over a very short period of time - and this could impact negatively on quality and value for money. 

• Labour plans the biggest rise in school funding of any of the major political parties, with a 14.6% rise in per pupil funding by 2022-23. This could help recruit and retain teachers and might help fund proven educational interventions. Labour is also the only party to clearly pledge to keeping the existing progressivity of school funding - including protecting the Pupil Premium in real terms - and it proposes further funding for special education needs. This additional school funding would be partially offset by the impact of other policies - including moving more pupils from the private school system into state education by raising VAT on school fees, and because we estimate that Labour's policy on extending free school meals would be more expensive than they have budgeted for.

• The manifesto envisages major changes in school inspections, testing, assessment and accountability. These plans run counter to evidence that strong systems of accountability can help deliver improvements in attainment and are important in supporting policies to narrow attainment gaps. The manifesto lacks a convincing and coherent strategy for improving school quality, not least in areas of the country with few high performing schools.

• The manifesto commits the party to move to more local authority oversight and seeks to reduce the powers of multi academy trusts. It is not clear how these policies would improve attainment, and the disruption involved could be counter-productive. It is also possible that the changes could undermine some of the forms of school-to-school working which have been shown to be effective.

• The focus on reducing unexplained school exits (including "off rolling") is welcome, as is the general commitment to improve out of school services for vulnerable children.

• Commitments to improved 16-19 funding, and better access to Level 4-6 training are welcome and well-grounded in evidence.

• Labour's largest education spending pledge is on higher education, where it proposes to abolish tuition fees and restore maintenance grants. There is no evidence that these costly measures will be effective in improving education outcomes, access or participation, and given Labour's strong stated commitment to social justice, it is surprising and disappointing that it has decided to make this its highest priority. There is also a risk that greater reliance on taxpayer funding could lead to reduced overall funding, which could impact on the unit of funding, or participation (for example, by leading to the reintroduction of student number controls) or both.

For the Liberal Democrats, we find the following:

• In summary, there are some Liberal Democrat pledges on early years education, mental health services and wider child support, which could help close gaps and raise attainment. But reductions in school accountability and real cuts in the Pupil Premium could reduce, or undermine, the benefits of such policies. And while the Liberal Democrat plan on early years is bold and offers potential for impact, a much more carefully phased strategy is needed, with more action to follow through in later education phases.

• The Liberal Democrats chart a policy course which lies between the status quo policies of the Conservative Party and the significant changes envisaged under Labour plans.

• Most strikingly, the Liberal Democrats have committed most of their upfront funding to early years education, where they propose dramatic changes - including more than trebling both the average funding for children in non-working families and the Early Years Pupil Premium, improving staff quality and funding rates, and raising spending on Children's Centres. These dramatic commitments would mean that for the first time ever in England, early years education would receive significantly higher funding per pupil than in the primary phase. While this appears to be an encouraging set of policies for narrowing the gaps and raising attainment, there are some obvious concerns. Some of the policy platform seems more driven by a focus on childcare than on delivering high quality early years education, and it is very unlikely that such enormous increases in spending could be managed effectively while delivering value for money. A more sensible plan would have phased some of these measures in over a much longer time period, and in the meantime put in place robust plans to deliver the improvement in workforce size and quality.

• The Liberal Democrat pledge on school funding (up to 2022-23) is little different from the Conservative promise and would still mean real school spending per pupil would be little higher in 2022-23 than it was in 2009-10. In addition, we judge that the Liberal Democrats have underestimated the costs of their programme to extend free school meals - meaning that this could use up some of the additional monies allocated for school spending.

• It is surprising that the Liberal Democrats are not proposing to uprate the Pupil Premium for inflation - which means that its real value will have fallen by 15% between 2015/16 and 2022/23.

• The manifesto commitment to "increase teacher numbers by 20,000" may not be deliverable, as central government has limited levers to guarantee the total. 

• Like Labour, the manifesto commits to replacing Ofsted and scrapping National Curriculum tests, but there are significant risks that this could lead to worse value for money and a reduced focus on the attainment of poor children and the performance of less effective schools.

• A series of policies to improve mental health and out of school support are welcome and could help vulnerable learners.

• A new "Skills Wallet" for lifelong learning is committed, but with limited policy detail. It is not clear if this would offer good value for money.

For the Green Party, we find the following:

• A large commitment to spend more on schools.

• A series of policies on school accountability, and free university tuition, which would do little to raise attainment or improve access and which could widen the opportunity gaps.

For the Brexit Party, we find the following:

• Relatively few manifesto commitments on education, and none which appear likely to raise attainment or reduce the disadvantaged gaps.

*   *   * 

Commenting on the launch of the new analysis, Natalie Perera, Executive Director and Head of Research at the Education Policy Institute, said: 

"All of the main parties are united by one thing - bold ambitions to raise attainment and close gaps. However, our analysis shows that while each party has some well-designed and helpful policies, none has a properly evidence-based strategy to meet their ambitions. In order to address the inequality gap at age 16, parties should commit to policies which build on the evidence of what works, which includes high quality early years education and ensuring that children in the most disadvantaged schools have access to the best teachers."

Jon Andrews, Deputy Head of Research and the report's lead author, said: