Election pass notes: what are the parties promising on education?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/05/election-how-vote-education-what-parties-stand-for

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All parties make promises about education. How do I know which to believe?

Since no party is likely to get an overall majority, they will all have to make trade-offs. So you can’t have 100% confidence in any of them. But parties usually try to deliver manifesto commitments. The more prominent, detailed and explicit the commitment, the more likely they are to stick by it. Pay particular attention to the Lib Dems because Nick Clegg says, in another coalition, he’d want to control education.

The Lib Dems? Didn’t they break their manifesto promise last time?

Yes, in 2010 they promised to abolish “unfair university tuition fees”. When they joined the coalition, they supported higher fees.

So the manifestos can’t be trusted?

Beware of adjectives, even apparently harmless ones. The Lib Dems convinced themselves that, because students no longer pay “upfront”, fees ceased to be “unfair”.

Are there promises on fees this time?

Labour says it will cut them from £9,000 to £6,000 a year. It has made a lot of this pledge but will almost certainly depend on other parties to get it through.

What would the other parties do?

The SNP abolished fees in Scotland. The Greens would scrap fees and bring back maintenance grants. Ukip favours abolishing fees for science, maths, medicine and technology students provided they “work in their discipline” and pay UK tax for five years. The Lib Dems could well oppose a cut.

The Tories would continue with the present fees?

Yes, but the last budget announced loans for postgraduates: up to £10,000 on taught courses and up to £25,000 on research-based courses. The Lib Dems claim they “secured” this commitment.

Can Labour pay for its fee cut without damaging universities?

The party plans to restrict tax relief on pension contributions but that won’t be enough, so the manifesto says it will also clamp down on tax avoidance, an uncertain source of funds.

Helping university students is all very well. What about the workers?

The parties seem to be in a bidding war to provide apprenticeships, with the Tories offering three million. Labour’s Tristram Hunt refers to “our passion for vocational education”.

Passion, eh? They must be promising loads of money

Not exactly. Top of the education section of Labour’s manifesto is a technical baccalaureate, “a vocational award for 16- to 18-year-olds [that] will combine a gold-standard qualification accredited by employers with a quality work placement”. The manifesto also promises a “gold-standard” apprenticeship for “every school leaver that gets the grades”. Firms that get big government contracts and/or hire non-EU skilled workers will have to offer apprenticeships. There will be “powers to deal with free-riding employers who do not train”.

I detect a whiff of revolutionary gunpowder. “Free-riding employers” will be taken out and shot?

Again, not exactly. We have to be sceptical. Lots of schemes to boost vocational education, most of them promising a “gold standard”, have failed.

What about GCSEs? The Tories mucked them about, didn’t they? Will Labour reverse their changes?

No, Hunt says they need “to embed”. But he wants “a big, hairy conversation” on 14-19 education.

He’ll talk to Russell Brand about it?

Don’t be frivolous. He aims to get rid of GCSEs within a decade and replace them with a single baccalaureate, offering technical and academic programmes and taken at 18 or 19.

Hunt wants a 'big, hairy conversation' on 14-19 education

Will anybody reduce testing in schools?

One party says it will abolish tests for seven-year-olds because they have “destructive, unintended consequences” and “create anxiety”.

My views exactly, I’ll vote for that party

It’s Ukip.

Oh, hell. Surely Labour has something to say on testing?

Nothing from Labour or the Lib Dems. The Tories will set “tough new standards” for 11-year-olds, demanding they know their nine times table and long division. Kids who don’t pass will resit in secondary school.

Scary. Does no party like kids enough to stop testing the poor mites?

The Greens will “free teachers and pupils to rediscover the excitement of learning” and only have compulsory education from age seven. Before that, the focus would be on “play, social cohesion and confidence-building”.

Sounds great. Let’s have a Green government

You’d pay more tax and national insurance and more for fuel, booze and junk food.

But I like my kids to eat well. Anybody offering them a decent meal?

Under the coalition, the Lib Dems secured free school meals for infants. Now they want to extend them to all primary pupils “as resources allow”.

Not a very definite promise

Unless you go back to the Greens or move to Scotland, that’s the best on offer. Labour opposed free meals for infants when the SNP introduced them this year.

Labour doesn’t sound as if it likes children much. Does it like teachers?

It believes “a world-class education system is made by excellent teachers”.

All the parties say that sort of thing

Yes, but Labour would stop academies and free schools hiring unqualified teachers, and introduce a “master teacher” status. Labour would also expect teachers “to update their knowledge and skills as a condition of remaining in the profession”.

That sounds a bit threatening

The Lib Dems put it more nicely. As well as banning the unqualified, they would have a “properly funded entitlement to professional development for all teachers”. Clegg promises to increase salaries in line with inflation.

That’s no good. Inflation is zero!

But the Lib Dems will not “issue instructions about how to structure the school day or what kind of lessons to conduct”. Ukip would scrap performance-related pay and cut paperwork “such as overly detailed lesson plans, data collection, excessive internal assessments and dialogue-based marking schemes”.

Them again. Perhaps they’d be good for teachers

Not if you teach sex to under-11s. Ukip would only allow you to tell them that nobody should “touch the private parts of their body”. And in secondary, you’d have to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

What?

Ukip is keen on first aid as well as on grammar schools, which it wants in every town.

That rules them out. I hate grammar schools

They would ensure entry “is not based on a one-time fixed test” and have second-chance exams at 12, 13 and 16.

Still sounds terrible. Tell me if anybody will cut Ofsted inspections

Under Ukip, “inspections will be shorter, classroom-orientated, and more transparent”.

I’ve told you, I’m not voting Ukip

The Tories say they will be “reducing the burden” of Ofsted, and the Lib Dems would ensure inspections are “high-quality and focus on outcomes not processes”.

Too vague. Labour?

Hunt says Ofsted must “move beyond box-ticking and data-dependence” and shouldn’t “adjudicate on whether schools have performance-related pay, whether a good school should be converted into an academy or follow every ministerial fad”.

Ah, yes, academies. There’s a man in Yorkshire – I think he ran an education authority that Thatcher abolished – who writes letters to the papers saying they’re part of a totalitarian takeover

Something like that.

So Labour is against them?

No, Labour invented them to replace underperforming schools. The Tories made academy status available also to high-performing schools.

Confusing. Labour will sort out the confusion?

Perhaps. Academies are exempt from the national curriculum and can set their own pay and conditions for staff. Labour wants this for all schools.

So all schools could do as they liked?

Not really. Labour will introduce “directors of school standards at a local level” to intervene in underperforming schools and act where a majority of local parents “have concerns about a dip in standards”.

That includes free schools?

Yes, and under Labour, new free schools, of which the Tories promise to create 500, won’t be approved. It will use the money saved to cap infant class sizes at 30.

Related: Should the free schools programme be extended? | Francis Gilbert and Natalie Evans

Will that man in Yorkshire be satisfied?

Possibly not. He wants the schools under local democratic control. Only the Greens promise that though. The Lib Dems will introduce a “democratically accountable middle tier” to intervene in schools with problems. There’s nothing in Labour’s manifesto but Hunt wants big local authorities such as Greater Manchester to assume responsibility for schools. Is that clear now?

Not really. What worries me is that companies will run schools for profit

All parties except Ukip rule that out. But the Lib Dems say we’d already have profit-makers running free schools if they hadn’t stopped it happening.

I guess what really matters is whether schools will get enough money

Labour and the Lib Dems promise to “protect” the education budget, from age two to 19, while the Tories promise to protect only schools. The Tories will protect per-pupil spending. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Labour and Tory commitments “could both imply a 6.6% real-terms fall in current school spending per pupil” by 2020. The Lib Dems, however, imply only a 2.1% real-terms fall and Clegg says this (relatively) generous offer would be a “red line” in any coalition deal.

Tricky. Should I vote Lib Dem?

You could have Clegg as education secretary.

Perhaps I’ll vote Labour or even Tory

If either party entered a coalition, you could still have Clegg as education secretary.

And you call this a democracy?