Tag Archives: sarah teather

Clegg and Teather announce free childcare places set to rise

By The Voice | Published 12th November 2011 - 7:55 pm

Here’s a party press release worth sharing…

140,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds to benefit from free early education

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Liberal Democrat children’s minister Sarah Teather have published proposals to give 140,000 disadvantaged toddlers 15 hours of free early years education.

This is a key Liberal Democrat policy delivered by the Coalition Government. It builds upon our achievement of extending free childcare to 15 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds.

Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said:

“Giving children a fair start in life is at the heart of what I and the Liberal Democrats are about. It

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Posted in News | Also tagged nick clegg | Leave a comment

LibLink: David Laws – Could do better: how to stop our schools failing

By Nick Thornsby | Published 21st October 2011 - 9:56 am

Earlier this week, Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil and former education spokesman, David Laws, had a piece in the London Evening Standard defending the government’s record on education policy to date, but also urging a more ambitious programme over the coming years.

Here’s what David has to say on what Michael Gove and his Lib Dem colleague Sarah Teather have done so far:

Our qualifications system was also undermined by Labour - which was determined to “prove” that standards were rising, even if this just meant making exams easier. Targets distorted teaching: too few pupils took key subjects.

Under

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged david laws, education, michael gove | 10 Comments

The Independent View: Lib Dems need to champion new ideas for tackling child poverty

By Laura Bradley | Published 12th October 2011 - 12:25 pm

Figures released this week by the IFS show that the UK will witness a severe and sustained increase in child poverty over the coming decade, with almost a quarter of British children set to be living in relative poverty by 2020, compared to one fifth in 2009/10. This is despite a projected 7 per cent reduction in real terms median income over the next three years, reducing the amount of income it takes to cross the poverty line.

These figures highlight the growing gulf between the targets set out under the Child Poverty Act, which require the government to reduce …

Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Also tagged child poverty, institute for fiscal studies, universal credit | 3 Comments

The significant part of Tim Farron’s speech

By Mark Pack | Published 20th September 2011 - 12:55 pm

Tim Farron is probably the Parliamentary Party’s best funny speech maker (though I’d pay good money to see him head-to-head in a laugh off with Alistair Carmichael), so it’s not a surprise that Tim’s speech to Liberal Democrat conference caught the headlines mostly for his humour and his stress-testing of political marriage analogies to destruction.

Yet there was a significant section about how Liberal Democrat ministers act and his own role:

There are 18 Liberal Democrats who don’t have the luxuries that I do.

They can’t just sound off if they don’t like government policy or trot through the no lobby on

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged alistair carmichael, danny alexander, george osborne, michael gove, tim farron, vince cable | 4 Comments

The perils of projecting the impact of boundary changes from previous election results

By Mark Pack | Published 6th June 2011 - 10:35 pm

There’s been an understandable flurry of interest in The Guardian’s reported projections of what boundary changes might mean for the parties, but there are two major caveats about the nature of such projections.

From what I’ve seen, Lewis Baston (as I would expect) has done the numbers well, but not only do we not yet have the actual boundaries on which to make projections but also projections based on looking at previous election results have a decidedly ropey record when it comes to Liberal Democrats MPs.

That is because the party’s voting support is far less polarised demographically than that of …

Posted in News | Also tagged brent central, lewis baston, malcolm bruce, parliamentary boundaries, parliamentary boundary review | 14 Comments

LibLink | Sarah Teather: Q&A on special needs provision

By Helen Duffett | Published 24th May 2011 - 4:15 pm

Children’s Minister Sarah Teather recently took part in an interview followed by a readers’ Question and Answer session for the Guardian about special needs provision:

Sarah Teather, the children’s minister, comes across as genuinely passionate about helping children with special needs. So much so that at one point in the interview, she got quite cross. The health service is failing some of our most vulnerable children, she said. The chance of a child receiving speech and language therapy is “between low and nil”, while the wait for a wheelchair can be “really long”, she said.

On free schools and academies helping …

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged academies, special educational needs | Leave a comment

Internet and politics: how it worked back in 2003

By Mark Pack | Published 19th January 2011 - 10:25 am

A quick trip down memory lane for some historical perspective on the impact of the internet on political campaigning with this piece that I wrote for an academic email newsletter (the Political Marketing Group Newsletter) after the 2003 Brent East by-election. The lessons still look extremely relevant – making the point that principles of good campaigning and communication last as individual technologies, programs and companies come and go.

Winning Brent East: did the internet matter?

When Sarah Teather won the Brent East Parliamentary seat for the Liberal Democrats in the by-election on September 18th 2003, it was one of the party’s most …

Posted in Online politics | Also tagged brent east | 5 Comments

Delivering a fair start for every child‏ – Sarah Teather on new Schools White Paper

By Helen Duffett | Published 24th November 2010 - 3:26 pm

Video also available on YouTube here.

Sarah Teather MP, Minister of State for the Department of Education has just emailed Liberal Democrat party members about the Schools White Paper, published today by the Coalition Government. Sarah Teather writes:

Liberal Democrats believe that a quality education is the biggest opportunity to improve people’s lives. Nothing is more important than giving every child a fair start in life.

Today the coalition government published its white paper on schools – “The Importance of Teaching”. It sets out our ambitious

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Posted in News | Also tagged education, pupil premium | 3 Comments

Sarah Teather on the education funding settlement

By Mark Pack | Published 21st October 2010 - 8:55 am

I commented yesterday on the good deal Chris Huhne has got for environmental spending (due to go up by a fifth in cash terms over the spending review period). The best settlement for any ministerial area however looks to have been secured for Sarah Teather’s early years education brief – assisted by Nick Clegg’s own repeated insistence on prioritising the area.

Here’s what Sarah Teather wrote yesterday to fellow MPs about the education settlement:

Today’s Comprehensive Spending Review involved some very difficult decisions that we had to take to deal with the black hole in public finances left to us by

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Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne, comprehensive spending review 2010, education | 20 Comments

The Independent View:Big Society by any other name would smell as sweet

By Jonathan Lewis | Published 30th September 2010 - 1:14 pm

I agree with Simon. And Sarah.

At our fringe event at last week’s Lib Dem party conference in Liverpool we were pleased to hear fulsome support for the work of charitable and voluntary organisations, and encouragement for them to get more involved in public life and in public service delivery.

And both Sarah Teather and Simon Hughes emphasised something very important in their remarks – David Cameron may have coined the phrase ‘Big Society’ but it’s a concept that chimes with beliefs about responsibility and community held by all parties.

Simon Hughes reminded us the UK had a long history of charitable organisations …

Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Also tagged ben page, big society, simon hughes | 10 Comments

The Independent View: Please make sure they really do end child detention

By Clare Sambrook | Published 15th September 2010 - 1:27 pm

Liberal Democrats are understandably confused about whether child detention is ending or not.

Nick Clegg got the commitment to end child detention into the Coalition Agreement. Only last Thursday Sarah Teather promised: ‘Rest assured. It will be done.’ She also said: ‘We have to be careful not to rush into this as we are dealing with the safety and well-being of often vulnerable children and it is essential it is done properly.’

Quite how children’s safety might be served by not rushing to end a practice proven to wreck their lives is a mystery that suggests leading Liberal Democrats have been

Posted in Op-eds, The Independent View | Also tagged chris huhne, damian green, malcolm stevens, nick clegg | 26 Comments

Rogerson and Teather: pupil premium will help all children

By Helen Duffett | Published 26th July 2010 - 5:12 pm

Today the coalition Government announced that plans for a Pupil Premium will go ahead, targeting funding at schools that take pupils from deprived backgrounds.

The premium, a key part of the Liberal Democrats’ 2010 election manifesto, will provide additional per pupil funding on top of the existing funding provided to schools, and will be spent as individual schools choose.

Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee for Education, Dan Rogerson said:

Labour’s unequal education system left too many children falling behind.

The Liberal Democrats made clear during the election campaign that a Pupil Premium targeted at the most disadvantaged pupils was an

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Posted in News | Also tagged dan rogerson, education, pupil premium | 3 Comments

Five MPs face questions over election expenses – how good are their answers?

By Mark Pack | Published 23rd July 2010 - 8:55 am

Channel 4′s investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into MPs’ election expenses has raised questions about another five MPs in addition to Zac Goldsmith.

Having already looked at some of the legal questions around Zac Goldsmith, how do the other five stack up? Two raise important points of how the law should be interpreted, one has unclear evidence so far and two appear to involve administrative errors without any actual overspending.

First, the legal issues.

Phil Woolas (Labour), who is already facing a court hearing in the autumn over his election campaign, is accused of not declaring leaflets that …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged ben gummer, dan byles, featured, gavin barwell, phil woolas, zac goldsmith | Leave a comment

Opinion: Nanny no more – a real test of the Coalition

By Prateek Buch | Published 13th July 2010 - 1:40 pm

It was inevitable, it had to happen at some point, the honeymoon couldn’t last forever (insert any other clichés you’d like to add); the Coalition government, drenched in soft summery praise in its opening weeks – enough to spark a nauseating case of cognitive dissonance in the case of Martin Kettle’s latest offering – had to face a stern test of its unity sooner or later, and now we have it. But I’m not talking about the referendum on electoral reform, nor about cuts to public services or even the VAT rise. No, I’m talking about Turkey Twizzlers, fizzy …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged andrew lansley, jamie oliver, martin kettle, school meals | 18 Comments

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