ALISON PHILLIPS

...and another thing!

Thankless Tories fail our teachers

Collections have begun at the school gates. Envelopes are shaken and fivers and tenners dropped in for class teachers who’ll be saying goodbye to our kids at the end of next week.

It’s a small gesture from us parents across the country who know our children’s futures lie in the hands of those who teach them.

The energy they put into their work determines the energy our kids put into learning.

Yet it’s a reality seemingly lost on Theresa May and her current government.

From them, there will be no end-ofterm thank you to teachers – no attempt to lift their Scroogeish one per cent pay cap. And it effectively means teachers’ salaries will have fallen by 15 per cent since 2010. But at least they’re still in a job. Vast numbers of teaching assistants have already been given the boot.

Why would the brightest, most talented teachers stay in a profession where they are underpaid and undervalued? Commitment to other people’s children can only last so long. Teachers also have providing for their own families to think about.

And we have a Government with no commitment to providing for them.

Our education system is being driven into the ground. Subjects are being erased from the timetable, extra-curricular activities dropped, teachers’ hours getting longer and tougher, and class sizes growing.

There is a lesson to be learned from what we see happening right now in our schools (unless you’re rich enough to afford private school, of course). And it is that you can never trust the Tories with our children’s education while they put an empty anti-austerity philosophy before the future of our kids.

Summit wrong

Donald Trump has been defending having his daughter sit in for him at a table of world leaders at the G20 summit while he nipped out for “brief meetings with Japan and other countries”.

Mrs May reckons it was “entirely reasonable”. Although when you’ve only got two friends on the planet and one of them is Arlene Foster you’re never going to say the other is anything other than reasonable.

Some reckon the criticism of Ivanka’s role is simple sexism.

Oh no. There’s only one stinking “ism” going on here. And that’s nepotism.