(Wirral West)
(Lab):...The National Education
Union has reported that pressure on teachers and
children from cramming for SATs
“is extreme and school staff have very little time to deliver
interesting, varied lessons, as they feel forced to ‘teach to the
test’”.
Will the Government scrap SATs and put pupils’ wellbeing at the
forefront of education policy?
There needs to be a proper look at the curriculum too, to ensure
that all children have the opportunity to develop their
creativity and are given the opportunity to study and engage in
subjects such as art, music, drama and dance—I note the comments
by the Minister for School Standards earlier. The OECD’s
programme for international student assessment, known as PISA,
measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics
and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.
The OECD is introducing a creative thinking assessment to PISA in
2022 as an optional additional assessment. It is immensely
disappointing that England has opted out of that, and I ask the
Minister to explain why.
There are other things that the Government should be doing to
improve children’s experience of education. They should reinstate
the £20 uplift to universal credit, because we all know that
children who are hungry struggle to learn, and that it is no good
for children’s wellbeing when their parents are struggling to pay
the bills. Ministers should get behind the “Right to Food”
campaign of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby
() and end the scandal of hunger
and foodbanks once and for all. The Government should also get
rid of the two-child limit in universal credit that punishes
families with more than two children. The Government have
responsibility for the wellbeing of every child. They should give
every child access to qualified in-school counselling staff, as
Labour would do, to provide psychological support for children
when and where they need it.
If we are to look after our children, we need to look after their
teachers too. The Government cannot be getting it right when,
as National Education
Union research has shown, two thirds of teachers in
state-funded schools in England feel stressed at least 60% of the
time and over half of teachers say that their workload is either
“unmanageable” or “unmanageable most of the time”. Education
policy has to be about the wider social environment in which
children are growing up. If we have a Conservative Government who
are determined to destroy public services, as we do at the
moment, then our children will suffer and their futures will
suffer too...
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