Passing the buck over dire state of our education system

It’s school time again and lots of you have been contacting me about the dire state of our education system. We all know that teachers are struggling with rising class sizes, the continual focus on a seemingly endless regime of testing and coping with everchanging rules on what should or shouldn’t be taught.

However, the real problem in our area, as in the rest of the country, is a lack of money. On one side head teachers in Kent are having to ask parents for cash to buy arts and crafts materials, classroom equipment and for other activities that can develop learning.

On the other, Kent County Council is cutting Higher Needs Funding for some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged youngsters. Pupils with extra and special educational needs are being left with no appropriate school to go to by this lamentable failure of our local education authority.

We are supposed to have a state-funded system but the reality is that the state is starving our schools of money and then trying to blame local services when things go wrong. And everywhere there is buckpassing. Last week in the House of Commons, Robert Goodwill, Education Minister, said: “I am absolutely determined to do what we can to help the parents of children with special educational needs.” Sorry Robert, I just don’t believe you.

High Needs Funding students in Kent are being left behind and that’s directly due to the policies of your Tory government.

I wrote to Justine Greening, Education Secretary, about the problems in Kent. Her answer was to blame Kent County Council saying: “We do not prescribe in detail how much local authorities should allocate to their schools for their pupils with SEN”. Sorry Justine, this is not good enough. It’s your government that has left virtually every school up and down the country having to make plans to sack competent teachers just to “balance the books” for your department.

We must look again at how we can do the best for all pupils in Kent. There is no such thing as a comprehensive school in Kent – non-grammar schools are not comprehensives. The Kent Test, which many local pupils sat last week, is torturous, flawed and arbitrary. Yes, our grammar schools are excellent, but so they should be. They skim the “cream” of our young people and give them a privileged education. They are not a vehicle for social mobility: less than two per cent of students at the excellent Simon Langton Boys and Girls schools in Canterbury, for example, are eligible for free school meals, compared with an average of 18 per cent at other state-funded schools.

Some people say “if you don’t believe in grammars,don’t send your kids there”. However that’s the system we have in Kent and lots of parents, myself included, have our children in grammar schools, while campaigning for the same levels of attainment and resources to be framed within a comprehensive setting. You can use a service while still challenging the politics behind it. I don’t support the Tory privatisation of some elements of our NHS, yet I still use the service when I have to. That’s not hypocrisy, it’s life.