In a country as rich as ours, there’s no excuse for cutting perpupil spending even more
On Friday I joined hundreds of parents, pupils and teachers at a Save Our Schools protest in Brighton. Their message is simple: our schools simply cannot withstand further government cuts, and local communities are not going to stand by and watch while children’s education suffers from cruel austerity.
The situation as it stands is dire. Schools have resorted to asking parents to contribute to slashed budgets. According to PTA UK a third of parents have been asked for financial donations, and I’ve heard of multiple examples from across Britain of parents being asked to donate pens, paper and glue. At one school in Sussex parents were even asked to contribute toilet paper.
It’s worth stepping back for a moment and thinking about what’s happening here. Britain is fifth largest economy in the world. We are a rich country, but with our political priorities so skewed that the Government is failing to provide even the basics for children’s education. The crippling of our schools is no mistake, it is the direct result of Government policy which prioritises tax cuts for corporations and the rich over public spending that benefits all of us.
It doesn’t have to be like this of course – and in their manifesto the Tories have, to some extent, reacted to the upswell of anger from parents and teachers over these cuts. But the truth is that their plan to invest £4bn into the schools budget will, according to the IFS, still lead to an overall cut in spending per pupil. In reality that may well lead to a loss of teachers, increased class sizes and cuts to all-important extracurricular activities.
Indeed the Conservative Party’s attitude to the wellbeing of children in the UK is further revealed by their plans to scrap free school lunches for infants. Their costings for free breakfasts, which they attempted to use as cover for their lunch snatching, have been estimated to fall short by up to £340m per year. Critics have calculated that if the country’s 4.62 million primary school children attending state schools were to be fed a free breakfast on the Conservative’s £60m budget, each meal could cost no more than 6.8p. And there really is no such thing as a 6.8p breakfast.
As with all public spending cuts since 2010 the Government has cloaked its decision-making on schools with the language of “tough choices”. The truth, however, is that giving our children the best education possible shouldn’t be considered a choice, it’s a necessity.
The Green Party has bold plans on education, which we’ll be revealing in depth next week, but when it comes to schools’ budgets we follow the advice of those in the profession. That’s why we’re committing to following the recommendation of the Association of School and College Leaders to increase the schools budget by £7bn a year by 2022. We know that such money isn’t easy to come by, but our plans for a more progressive taxation system – including a wealth tax and a cut in corporation tax – recognise that world class public services do require higher levels of taxation.
This country is not destined to have declining schools, the future for the next generation is still up for grabs. But it’s only by electing politicians who stand up to false choices and back brilliant campaigners like Save Our Schools, that we’ll begin the process of making every school in Britain a world leader in education.