Education: How the tories have failed our children
Conservatives in power at Westminster and in Suffolk have caused lasting harm to children's education. From closing the vital Sure Start programme to making tuition fees unaffordable, they have failed children all the way from infancy to their teenage years. Enforcing the wasteful and unaccountable Academy and Free School programmes, allowing school buildings to crumble, creating a narrow and rigid curriculum, selling off playing fields, all are examples of Tories putting private fee-paying schools first and State schools last or nowhere. But State schools are where 9 out of 10 children go.
In Suffolk the Conservative-run County Council has behaved appallingly to children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND). An independent enquiry in 2022 found that its treatment of thousands of these children and their parents was unacceptable and illegal. The Council issued apologies and promised change, but families went on struggling to get consistent and appropriate education for their disadvantaged children. Then in January this year OFSTED reported that families "still have not received the improvements they should from the area's leadership". They upheld parents' complaints and listed a catalogue of continuing failures. Three Conservative councillors resigned their education responsibilities as a result.
The Council leader could have grasped this chance to work with Opposition councillors, led by the Green Party's Andrew Stringer, to help solve the crisis. Instead he just reshuffled Conservative councillors into positions for which they are unqualified. Or he could have asked his own councillor Sam Murray, parent of a SEND child, to lend her experience. Instead she was suspended for making critical comments.
Although Suffolk is an exceptionally bad example, the difficulties for SEND families are nationwide. Late last year a cross-party group of MPs, including the Conservative chair of the Education Select Committee, asked the Government to provide substantial extra funding and to make major SEND policy changes "or the situation will only deteriorate". In response the Government did absolutely nothing, and problems have worsened as predicted.
Education is not safe in Conservative hands either nationally or locally, except for one small minority – the children of the rich.
The Green Party would remove charitable status from private schools and charge full VAT on fees.
A properly funded education policy, financed by this measure and others, could provide additional support for SEND children and begin to tackle the enormous school maintenance backlog.
State schools should be made locally accountable to the communities they serve, and freed from inspection by OFSTED (which should be replaced by a collaborative system of assessing and supporting schools locally) and also from league tables, rigid curriculum rules and constant interference.
Arts, music and creative subjects would be restored to their proper place in State schools, alongside provision for adequate time and facilities for individual and team sports.
Adult education would be revived with a broad range of learning choices. Although not confined to vocational subjects, some would be integrated with projects to teach or re-skill men and women for the well-paid jobs that rapid transition to net zero will require.
These policies have been developed in consultation with parents, teachers, children, SEND campaigners and independent experts. They will transform schools and young lives.
