Our position on School

• People don’t always find it easy to find good schools, and some schools find it difficult to support those who need more help, and classes are often too big for teachers to control.
• As a result too many children leave school without the sort of knowledge and skills that they deserve.
• According to National literacy Trust 1 in six have reading  age below that of an eleven year old. In the 21^st century we need to better educated than ever and that means smaller classes, better support for teachers and help for parents.
• We want lower class sizes as happens in other countries like Denmark, this allow teachers to spend more time in the classroom.
• Schools and teachers need to be free to teach children in ways and to give them the best education.
• Also, we want a full half-day of physical activity a week “when I was at school we had lots more chance for physical activity it’s good for health its good for friendship, its good for communities”.

How schools should be run

• A recent MORI poll showed 96% of electorate are opposed to organisations other than local and national government running schools.
• Teachers unions have said that they welcome our commitment to not wishing to see business running state schools.

Universities and Higher Education

• For many young people university is getting more and more expensive. Young people are landed with thousands of pounds of debt. This makes it more difficult for them when trying to get a job, sort out their housing and pay bills .
• We think university education should be free and everyone who has the ability should be able to go to university and not be put off by the cost.

The problem with Academies

• The Green Party don’t want to see new academies, we want to see new schools, and we’ve campaigned for new schools in Brighton for some time.
• In the short term where Academies already exist we’d instigate a maximum 25% voting rights for sponsor appointees to ensure proper democratic and community representation on Academy boards.
• The problem with the Conservatives’ plans are that parents who have the time and money might want to do it, and we ‘d like to see more parental involvement in schools, but most people just want a decent school in their area.
• Local authorities can feel trapped by central government into going down the Academy route. There is nothing they can then do to prevent Academies opting out of their admissions schemes refusing to meet children’s needs, excluding disproportionate numbers of pupils, or failing. Yet it is the local authorities that are often left to pick up the pieces.
• In some Academies the parents have the right to vote for as little as one parent governor. This also removes the democratic control by local authorities of institutions that are financed by national and local taxation.
• Under current provision local authorities are not allowed more than 20% of voting rights on the boards of academies. Where academies are in operation, and the removal of that status would harm the education and welfare of children, we would instigate 50% voting rights for local authorities, to ensure proper democratic representation on academy boards

Bringing Private Schools into the State System -  “ You want to abolish all private schools don’t you?”

• We’ve suggested there be a voluntary assimilation  scheme for private schools to go into the state sector, similar to the opportunity given to private medicine in the founding of the NHS. Our scheme would mean that where private schools exist they can choose the sort of partnerships with the community they wish to and many do wish to work more closely with the state sector and with their local communities and we are the only party that has come up with that idea.

You want to abolish SATs don’t you?

Yes we do, and so do the NUT and the National Association  of Head Teachers has also called for the govt to change its approach .   We think it’s vital that those who work on the front line as teachers and headteachers should be listened to by the government  ratheR than ignored., and that they should be given more freedom over testing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 1st, 2010 at 10:37 pm and is filed under Category1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.