Tag Archives: pupil premium

LibLink: Mr Clegg Goes to Peterbrook

By NewsHound | Published 29th January 2012 - 5:55 pm

We’ve not often LibLinked through to the ‘Breaking News’ section of Peterbrook Primary School’s website. In fact we never have before. But their report of Nick Clegg’s visit, alongside local Solihull MP Lorely Burt, deserves a wide audience, and here’s a snippet:

Together with Solihull M.P Lorely Burt and an entourage of press and media broadcasters, Mr. Clegg came from London to see us so that we could share with him our curriculum developments using ‘Pupil Premium’ funding to support the learning and personal development needs of all pupils, with a specific focus at times, on those pupils who are eligible

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Ian Swales MP writes: 12 CUTS Labour don’t talk about

By Ian Swales MP | Published 30th December 2011 - 12:30 pm

The Labour party think they can win the economic argument by just wailing about cuts on behalf of their public sector union paymasters. They give no credible alternatives for what they would do about Britain’s economic crisis.

What they also like to ignore is some of the changes that are being made towards making this country fairer. Here is a list of cuts WE should be talking about because they are mostly happening through Lib Dem action and pressure.

  • The CUT from £250,000 to £50,000 in the maximum annual pension contribution to receive tax relief – clawing back a staggering £4,000,000,000 (£4bn) that Labour was giving to the rich.
  • The

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , | 55 Comments

Tim Farron’s Christmas message

By Tim Farron MP | Published 23rd December 2011 - 12:57 pm

Well that was quite a year, wasn’t it? It was a good one too!

I know, I know, after the referendum and the horrible results in May you’d be forgiven for believing we were sinking faster than Blackburn Rovers (how it pains me to write that), but you know what, it’s not true.

This year we did some amazing things, things you and I have wanted to do for years but never had the power to actually get done.

For one, we put an end to the horrific practice of locking up innocent kids behind bars for months on end in immigration …

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Nick Clegg responds as more Labour councillors deride extra money for poor pupils

By Nick Thornsby | Published 22nd December 2011 - 12:27 pm

Following Manchester Labour’s extraordinary attack on the pupil premium – describing the policy as a “sham” – news reaches The Voice via Lib Dem councillor Steve Beasant that a Labour cabinet member on North East Lincolnshire Council has joined his Manchester colleagues in their criticism.

As Paul Walter reported earlier, Nick Clegg was asked about the comments of Manchester’s Labour councillors at Tuesday’s Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions by Lib Dem MP Duncan Hames. Here’s the full exchange:

Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD): Wiltshire schools have long felt short-changed by funding allocations for education, so they will welcome the doubling of pupil

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LibLink: In defence of the Lib Dems

By Prateek Buch | Published 16th December 2011 - 3:00 pm

Yours truly has a post on the New Statesman rolling blog The Staggers, responding to Mehdi Hasan’s rather provocative question, “What’s the point of the Liberal Democrats?”

Hasan pointed out five areas in which the Lib Dems had (in his view) “sacrificed their distinctive beliefs and principles and received little in return.”

I responded with my own 5 points, including:

1) Ask the nearly 1 million low-paid workers who have been lifted out of paying income tax altogether thanks to a Lib Dem manifesto commitment delivered in government. With the prospect of further significant reforms to come to make

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Opinion: One year on from Tuition Fees: why I’m still a Liberal Democrat

By Harry Matthews | Published 9th December 2011 - 12:51 pm

It’s one year on from the vote on Tuition Fees, so I thought I would lay out some reasons why I, as a student, am still a Liberal Democrat after our great ‘betrayal’.

Although our ministers are having to make tough choices, Liberal Democrats have won a major victory – having a tax cut for the low paid, rather than the very rich, as the Tories would have preferred. Raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 is a good way to correct the disaster Gordon Brown created when he scrapped the 10p tax band. Plus it is a tax cut …

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Extra £11million funding for disadvantaged pupils is a “sham”, says Manchester Labour Party

By Nick Thornsby | Published 8th December 2011 - 4:54 pm

There’s rather bizarre news from Manchester, where the Council’s ruling Labour group has passed a motion declaring the pupil premium a “sham” and calling for the policy to be scrapped.

The pupil premium – which was a key Lib Dem policy at the last election – has meant a funding boost of almost £11million for Manchester’s schools this year (rising to £20million next year), with the money targeted specifically at pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

As Lib Dem councillor for Gorton North, Jackie Pearcey, says:

I know that in Gorton and Abbey Hey, this money is making a real difference to

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What does the public think about income inequality?

By Mark Pack | Published 29th November 2011 - 3:54 pm

Here, courtesy of the latest British Social Attitudes survey (published last year) is the answer:

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Kirsty Williams writes… The Welsh Pupil Premium

By Kirsty Williams AM | Published 28th November 2011 - 11:51 am

Last week I announced that the Welsh Liberal Democrats will be voting with the Welsh Labour government for the budget on the 6th December.

We have agreed to support the 2012-2013 budget on the basis that we will be introducing a Welsh Pupil Premium.  This means that from April 2012, every child in Wales on free schools meals will recieve an extra £450 of funding – no matter where they live, or what school they go to.  This is a total Pupil Premium spending of £32 million, of which £20 million is brand new money for the education budget.

Some …

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Posted in Op-eds, Wales | Also tagged , | 2 Comments

Pupil Premium comes to Wales

By Mark Pack | Published 25th November 2011 - 5:55 pm

The Welsh Liberal Democrats report:

The Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member for South Wales West, Peter Black has welcomed the budget deal between Labour and the Liberal Democrats that will deliver an extra £450 directly to local schools for each child on free school meals.

The total package will mean that schools in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend will have an extra £5.8 million to spend from May next year, targeted on the poorest children, who are already under-achieving. This breaks down as £2.57m for Swansea, £1.53m for Bridgend and £1.71m for Neath Port Talbot.

Commenting on the outcome of the

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Posted in News, Wales | Also tagged , | 3 Comments

The Independent View: Coalition’s social mobility strategy failing

By Jonathan Clifton | Published 28th October 2011 - 9:54 am

The government’s plan to improve social mobility has been dealt a series of blows over the past week. New education data show that trends towards a more ‘socially mobile’ Britain are pointing in the wrong direction.

Nick Clegg launched the government’s social mobility strategy last April, promising to ‘open the doors of opportunity’ to children from disadvantaged homes as they move into adulthood. Children from poor homes are half as likely to achieve five good GCSEs as their better off peers, and they account for less than one in a hundred Oxbridge students. Clegg rightly pointed out that …

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Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Also tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Opinion: Summer schools? Little more than a sticking plaster

By Alex Feakes | Published 13th October 2011 - 9:25 am

Nick Clegg’s conference announcement of £50m to fund summer schools for the disadvantaged caught the headlines (even in the Daily Mail!), and received some support in editorials and from some Lib Dem bloggers. However, though it might be a crowd pleaser and a nice idea, in truth it’s little more than a sticking plaster for deeper problems.

Would I have them rather than nothing at all? Possibly, but I’d rather the money stayed in the Pupil Premium where it is at least targeted through mechanisms (schools) that are already set up to identify and address students needs. Perhaps even

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Sarah Teather MP writes: Pupil Premium – coming to a school near you

By Sarah Teather | Published 12th October 2011 - 9:47 am

Usually it’s quite hard explaining how being a Liberal Democrat Minister in government makes a difference to the people in my constituency. But the Pupil Premium is an exception to that rule. It is a policy with two key characteristics – it has an identifiable impact in every local area, and it’s distinctively Liberal Democrat.

Today the Government released the final Pupil Premium figures for English schools. In the financial year 2011-12 schools are receiving £488 for each child on free school meals they have on their roll.

Anyone can visit the DfE website and search for their local …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 9 Comments

Poverty and achievement: breaking the link – Sarah Teather’s speech to conference

By Sarah Teather | Published 19th September 2011 - 3:50 pm

Sarah Teather, Liberal Democrat Minister of State for Children and Families, gave this speech yesterday to Liberal Democrat conference:

“Education… beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.“

The quote is from HoraceMann, the great 19th century American reformer. But it speaks to the instincts of liberals here with as much resonance as then.

The scandal is that though it should be true, it isn’t.

You will hear many people talk this week about the shocking state of the nation’s finances that was Labour’s legacy. I want to talk about another …

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Kirsty Williams AM writes: Getting down to business in Wales

By Kirsty Williams AM | Published 15th July 2011 - 2:37 pm

The long running saga of the ‘Welsh Lib Dem two’ has now been resolved but not without some pain. While Aled Roberts was able to re-take his seat as an Assembly Member, it was clear in the National Assembly that John Dixon did not have the same support.

I would like to pay tribute to John Dixon. He has served the public diligently and with distinction on Cardiff Council. He would have been an enormously effective and hard working Assembly Member. He has paid a very high price and I would like to pay tribute to him for the dignity with which he has handled the situation over the past two months.

Aled Roberts too has had a difficult couple of months but he is now back in the Assembly where he belongs and we have wasted no time in getting down to business and I have been able to announce the team that will hold the government to account.

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