Labour’s new shadow education secretary Lucy Powell has used Schools Week’s fringe at her party’s conference in Brighton to outline her priorities for education.
Teacher recruitment and retention
Issues with the number of teachers leaving the teaching profession and problems recruiting new teachers were mentioned first by Ms Powell at the event.
She said: “We have seen huge numbers of teachers leaving the profession, recruitment numbers are down on what they need to be. This is something that I don’t think the government are even noticing to be honest, let alone doing anything about.
“The government has a lot to answer for in terms of some of those numbers. If you spend your time putting down teachers, moving the goalposts constantly in terms of curriculum and exams, and at the same time effectively cutting pay. I think the era when we could just do down the workforce because they haven’t got anywhere else to go is long gone.”
She described teachers as “very mobile and very desirable employees”, who were “unfortunately” choosing to go elsewhere.
Post-16 funding
Flanked by her newly-appointed shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden, Ms Powell signalled a newfound focus on FE by adding this key area of policy to her top three priorities.
She said: “We have said we would protect the whole education budget. The Tories have said they would just protect schools budgets, and in fact they’re not really doing that. It’s going to put massive pressure on early years and post-16.
“We’ve got a comprehensive spending review coming up, and we need to be pushing on these issues, especially in a world where we are now asking post-16 to take on many more pupils who are having to re-sit English and maths.”
.@LucyMPowell says FE is "absolutely" going to be a big part of Labour's campaign. "We absolutely need to take this on" #Lab15
— Freddie Whittaker (@FCDWhittaker) September 27, 2015
.@LucyMPowell warns sixth form colleges could be closed as part of the govt's area reviews. #Lab15
— Schools Week (@SchoolsWeek) September 27, 2015
Early years
Ms Powell held the childcare brief during her previous stint in the shadow education team, and she is keen to put her experience of the area to the test.
She said: “Lots of promises were made at the election, that I was pleased about, to see the government move onto Labour’s territory on offering more support for the early years. We actually now need to see those policies turned into reality, and we’re some way off that.”
"There's more creative thinking we can do with things like the early years pupil premium," says @LucyMPowell #Lab15 #fringe
— FE Week (@FEWeek) September 27, 2015
.@LucyMPowell says we should be demanding quality and quantity from childcare. "Poor childcare can do more harm than good" #Lab15
— Freddie Whittaker (@FCDWhittaker) September 27, 2015
If Labour scrap Universal FSM for infants how much of the £750 mill+ this year could be redirected to FE & Early Years provision.FSM should only be available on basis of need. Quality & taste should be priority. Funding meals for children whose parents can already afford them is just bribery.
Still no hard evidence of link between increase in concentration & attainment because meals are free. Ch don’t choose nutritionally balanced meals, ingredients are not high quality and horrendous amounts of food are wasted because the serving are unappetising. The doctors and heads who have written letters to media are misguided and heads have been encouraged by government funded PR company.
Complete lack of oversight of millions of pounds, bar some very small scale pilots that don’t stand up to scrutiny.