Today, the Liberal Democrats will announce plans to spend £10 billion more a year on schools and hire 20,000 more teachers by the end of the next Parliament. This comes ahead of the Liberal Democrat manifesto launch later today.
A Liberal Democrat government will reverse frontline school cuts since 2015 with an emergency cash injection of £4.6 billion next year.
By 2024/25, the party will spend £10.6 billion more on schools than in 2019/20. This is more than the Conservatives have offered in every year of the Parliament.
Liberal Democrats will use this money to boost teaching numbers by 20,000 over five years. A Liberal Democrat government will attract and retain teachers by increasing starting salaries to £30,000 and guaranteeing all teachers a pay rise of at least 3% a year over the next Parliament.
The funding also includes an increase in support for children with special educational needs or a disability, and money to provide high-quality professional development for teachers.
In addition, Liberal Democrats will invest in the fabric of our schools, setting aside £7 billion over five years to build classrooms fit for the future.
The party will allocate £10 billion of the £50 billion Remain Bonus – the boost to the public finances that would result from stopping Brexit – to increase schools funding.
Ahead of the announcement, Jo Swinson, Leader of the Liberal Democrats said:
This is an investment in our children’s future. Our schools should be world class, helping every child make the most of the challenges ahead.
But instead, they are trailing behind. The Conservatives have cut school funding to the bone and children have paid the price, especially those with the most complex needs.
It is disgraceful that some schools feel they have no choice but to ask parents to chip in for supplies, and are closing early on Friday to balance the books.
Liberal Democrats will build a brighter future for every child. By stopping Brexit, we can spend £10 billion of our Remain Bonus on reversing school cuts and hiring 20,000 more teachers – so that pupils can leave school happy, healthy and with the skills they need to succeed in life.
This just one of the fantastic policies from our manifesto that will help build a brighter future for our country.
In addition, Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary said:
Headteachers are crying out for more staff. But too many are leaving the profession because they are overworked and underpaid.
The Conservatives only care about teaching children to be tested. High-stakes Ofsted inspections and SATs tests are placing an unacceptable burden on pupils and teachers alike.
Highly valued, well trained teachers are the most important resource we have in our education system. So Liberal Democrats will recruit 20,000 more teachers and give them the pay and support they deserve.
We will increase salaries by 3% a year, guarantee high-quality training, stop political meddling in the curriculum and end teaching to the test. Let’s trust teachers to give children the best possible start in life.
The details of the proposals are as follows;
Liberal Democrats will increase schools spending by £4.6 billion in 2020/21. Schools will have £10.6 billion more to spend in 2024/25 compared to 2019/20.
This money will be spent on:
Reversing real-terms per-pupil cuts to frontline school budgets (the ‘schools block’) so that schools will have the same spending power next year as they had in 2015/16;
Keeping the schools block rising in line with the actual cost pressures that schools face (as calculated by teaching unions) and increases in pupil numbers;
Additional funding for pupils with special educational needs or a disability.
A plan to increase the net number of full-time equivalent teachers in England’s state schools by 20,000 by 2024/25, including by:
- Increasing a teacher’s starting salary to £30,000 by 2022/23, matching the Conservatives’ commitment;
- Giving all state school teachers a pay rise of at least 3% a year for five years;
- A fully-funded entitlement to 50 hours a year of continuing professional development for teachers by 2025;
Total day-to-day schools spending (schools RDEL excluding depreciation and pensions funding), £bn
2019-20 2020-21 2021-22 2022-23 2023-24 2024-25
Conservative plans
(Spending Round 2019) 43.5 46.1 48.3 50.7
Increase on 2019-20 2.6 4.8 7.1
Barnett 0.5 0.9 1.3
Liberal Democrat plans 43.5 48.1 49.6 51.1 52.6 54.1
Increase on 2019-20 4.6 6.1 7.6 9.1 10.6
Barnett 0.9 1.1 1.4 1.7 2.0
In addition, the Liberal Democrats will invest an extra £7 billion of capital spending over the next five years in new school buildings and repairs.
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10 Comments
Layla was on the Today programme, today 20/11/19, just after 8 am.
Lack of discipline in schools is a much greater problem than lack of funds and will be increased by other LibDem policies.
Assume this is all dependent on staying in the EU, otherwise there will have to be Austerity 2 due to lack of govn revenue and ruined state of Sterling
@Frank West
Lack of discipline in schools is a much greater problem than lack of funds
They aren’t unrelated.
The real challenge is going to be to ensure the additional funding brings about a culture change, in both teachers and schools – remember schools are in the business(*) of educating children – so what do schools and their staff need to do this and how can we measure success.
I suspect one of the aids will be some form of bonus scheme (make the entire £10Bn a conditional bonus) that gives bonuses to both staff and school against suitable measures. The laugh is, much of what needs doing in our schools isn’t rocket science, just the consistent and clear application of the findings of decades of learning and education research.
(*) business – The meaning I’m using here is primary purpose, not in the money making sense.
Layla was good, confident and well prepared. What she said came over well.
Layla was interrupted so many times in that interview that it was tantamount to persistent heckling or a heated pub argument – she did well to manage to get her points across and retain her composure despite having to struggle to get more than short phrases out. I had hoped that things might improve with the welcome departure of John Humphreys, but only Nick Robinson seems to demonstrate a modicum of interviewing skill and professionalism. Shame on the BBC.
Layla comes across well and in time would make a good leader. She is also very receptive to what works well and what doesn’t based on her experience as a teacher.
Smaller class sizes will benefit the behaviour issues and lack of discipline. There does seem to be a problem with behaviour and discipline in this country less so than other EU ones I believe. Partly it stems from parenting and possibly lack of youth provision.
I very fervently believe that we need to re-instate some form of Connexions service, it doesn’t have to be the same as before but it did help with addressing the needs of ‘disaffected’ young people as they were getting 1:1 support from personal advisers. It is now a real lottery of a system under the tories but if you look at the figures knife crime was lower when we had the national Connexions service in place so there some connection. This is the sort of area the party could expand on and come up with ideas, now that would really benefit the campaign and who knows poll ratings.
Layla should press for a resurrection of ‘Sure Start’, which was hammered during the Coalition years and after.
The charity Action for Children estimates that 1.8 million children used Sure Start centres in England in 2017-18 – down from 2.2 million four years earlier – a direct consequence, it says, of a 62% cut in council early years service spending since 2010.
The charity said it was especially concerned that deprived authorities had reported the biggest reductions in use, at a time when rising poverty was likely to have fuelled demand for parent and child support services in those areas.
Numbers of children using Start Start in the 30 most deprived authorities were down by 22%, compared with 12% in the 30 least deprived councils, the study found. Overall, 10 councils reported a decline of more than 50% in children’s centre visits over the four-year period, while a further 47 reported reductions of 20% or more.
You can ‘hire’ 20,000 new teachers; but will they stay? Not if we don’t do something about workload and discipline in particular. Then it’s what we actually teach particularly at secondary level.
Abolishing OFSTED is welcomed. However, you do need to make sure that, broadly speaking, all schools are moving in the same direction. What we don’t want is the mixed ability free for all that heralded the introduction of comprehensive schools in the 1970s. We need to return to a democratically accountable system, based on reformed light touch LEAs. Calling a school an ‘Academy’ is no panacea, nor is succumbing to vested interests and ideologues by setting up Free Schools in areas where there is already oversupply.
I could go on. Above all, you’ve got to back teachers against pushy parents and a politically establishment that clearly doesn’t understand how state schools work, which is clearly not surprising given that many politicians are products and users of the independent sector.
What if the kids are hungry in the mornings, in class, before school dinners? Should breakfasts be provided?
Back in May 2017 I asked this (https://www.libdemvoice.org/tim-publishes-lib-dem-manifesto-in-email-to-members-54362.html#comment-440519):
Two-and-a-half years later and nothing seems to have changed!
So what exactly is Lib Dem policy on faith schools and grammar schools? Is it what conferences voted for or was that superseded by two General Election manifestos that ignored them?