Education a Labour election issue
Published: 12 March 2010
AS local, and probably general, elections approach in May I am pleased that Labour, the Conservatives and the other parties vying for your vote are making education one of the big issues in the campaign.
Despite not running the council, Islington Labour is working to improve schools in our borough.
For example, we have won our campaign to introduce free school meals for all under-11s, which boosts education and behaviour for the whole class. But it is worth taking a look at what, exactly, having Labour in government has meant for education in Islington.
You do not have to be a Labour loyalist to recognise that there have been huge steps forward in education over the last years. These have had real and tangible benefits for our borough and the completion of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) work in Highbury Grove School is a good chance to take stock of this.
It is sometimes hard to find reference to this in the glossy and expensive council publicity but BSF is the Labour government’s initiative to improve the fabric of our schools.
Thirteen years ago, our children were too often taught in aging buildings from the 1960s or earlier.
My mother taught in a large secondary school where nearly two decades of Tory cuts meant that teachers spent their valuable time moving buckets around to catch rain coming through the roof.
Now, after £140million of investment through the government’s BSF programme, we are in the process of rebuilding every secondary school in the borough.
The first of these new buildings are opening now with wonderful facilities such as a refurbished swimming pool, more space for classrooms, better games areas and new library.
The space our children are taught in is important.
I want to see an end to the days of draughty classrooms, leaky roofs and out-of-date facilities for our children.
By the end of 2013, all of our local authority run secondary schools will have been through the process, and that is something to be very glad about. After all, the child who sees that their education has been valued is more likely to be a child who values their education.
But it is not just a question of the buildings that our children are taught in, it is what they are taught and how well. This is another area where families in Islington have benefited enormously.
By 2006, school funding per pupil had doubled in real terms, taking inflation into account. This year, in the middle of a recession, school funding per pupil is expected to rise 4.4 per cent.
Another element of the renaissance in our children’s education over the last 13 years has been the national curriculum and the basic standards it has imposed on what our children learn.
It was controversial at the time, but I will challenge anyone to explain why they think it was wrong for government to say that children should get a basic grounding in literacy and numeracy.
Our education must stretch young people and allow them to grow and challenge intellectually, but how can they express those thoughts if they lack the basic tools of language and mathematics?
It is easy to be cynical about the improvements in exam results we have seen over recent years but the truth is that if you invest in the best teachers and facilities, you are making an investment into our children’s future.
Islington recently received its best ever set of GCSE results.
Although the weakness of the Liberal Democrat administration means we are still bottom of the inner-London league table for GCSE results, more of our children are getting good exam results than ever before.
It is also important that we make an investment into children’s early years. Sure Start centres provide childcare, drop-in services and a host of play activities for children under five and advice for their parents.
There are now 16 centres in Islington, each of them made possible, once again, with new funding from the Labour government.
Sadly, the Liberal Democrat council has not done enough to use these centres to tackle some of the serious social issues in our borough. So I want to see their role expanded, with better take-up in the nurseries and much more outreach to ensure that those who most need their services get them.
This early intervention helps put children on the right track to give them a better start in life.
All of these things, and a whole host more, are made possible because we have had a government that is willing to invest in good public services.
But don’t be fooled. It doesn’t have to be like that. None of the programmes I have written about existed before 1997 and they can be taken away easily.
When David Cameron threatens our services or Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg talks about “savage cuts”, they are talking about initiatives such as these.
In the coming months I hope that Islington will send a clear message that we support the decent, properly funded services that provide our children with a better future.
• Richard Watts is Labour councillor for Tollington ward