Whilst Edapt is an apolitical and independent organisation, we know that teachers and school staff will be taking a key interest in the upcoming General Election, particularly about the manifesto promises for the education sector. Indeed the latest Teacher Tapp poll found education to be the most important issue facing the country at this time with health and the economy in 2nd and 3rd respectively.

This blog aims to pull every education promise in one easy place so that when you do go to the ballot box on 4th July, you can do so well-informed of the parties’ education policies. As an apolitical organisation, we make no judgements on the merits of any of these policies, that’s for you as a voter to do.

Funding

  • Protect pupil funding in real terms over the next parliament.
  • Expand the PE and sport premium to secondary schools.

Workforce, Recruitment and Retention

  • Expand the recruitment and retention premium for teachers, offering bonuses of up to £30,000 tax-free over five years for teachers in priority areas and key STEM subjects. This includes expanding this scheme to FE colleges.
  • Provide more support for teacher training placements.
  • Improve the retention of teachers by offering bonuses and better support.
  • Reduce teacher workload.

Curriculum & Assessment

  • Introduce the Advanced British Standard to reform 16-19 education, combining A Levels and T Levels, removing the divide between academic and technical education.
  • Mandate two hours of PE every week in primary and secondary schools, supported by extending the PE and Sport Premium to secondary schools and increasing funding for School Games Organisers.
  • Improve the quality of apprenticeships and create more opportunities for young people to gain technical skills.
  • Champion excellence in classrooms with a focus on phonics and mastery in maths.
  • Provide support for children transitioning to secondary school and ensure a broad and enriched education, including through Music Hubs.

Inclusion, Mental Health & SEND

  • Deliver 60,000 more school places and 15 new free schools for children with special educational needs.
  • Provide more mental health support in schools through increased funding.
  • Increase school attendance.
  • Increase funding for special educational needs (SEND) provision.

Accountability & Regulation

  • Legislate to create a register of children not in school.
  • Support the expansion of academies and free schools.
  • Deliver new legislation that requires schools to share all teaching materials with parents/carers, especially on sensitive matters like relationships and sex education.
  • Pass legislation that requires schools to follow the draft guidance on gender questioning children.
  • Make the non-statutory guidance banning mobile phones in schools compulsory i.e. on a statutory footing.

Other

  • Ban protests outside of schools
  • Require schools to follow guidance on banning the use of mobile phones during the school day.
  • Expand the School Rebuilding Programme to rebuild over 500 schools.
  • Support the expansion of free school meals to more eligible groups.
  • Ensure schools address bullying and provide a safe learning environment.
  • Champion excellence in classrooms and support for children transitioning to secondary school.
  • Support parents’ choice of schools and expand the availability of strong academy trusts.

Funding

  • Advocate for an increase in school funding, with an £8bn investment in schools that includes £2bn for a pay uplift for teachers.
  • Invest £2.5bn a year to ensure every school building is safe for children.
  • Push for £5bn to be invested in special needs (SEND) provision within mainstream schools.
  • £3bn increase in funding for sixth-form education over the next parliamentary term.
  • £12bn investment in skills and lifelong learning for further education.

Workforce, Recruitment, and Retention

  • Fully restore the role of the school nurse, ensuring all schools have access to an on-site medical professional.
  • Tackle the challenges posed by changes to employer contributions for the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS).

Curriculum & Assessment

  • Review assessment targets in schools so that arts and vocational subjects are treated equally within the curriculum.
  • Ensure effective delivery of the new Natural History GCSE.
  • Retain a full, evidence-based, and age-appropriate program of Relationships, Sex, and Health Education, including LGBTIQA+ content and resources.
  • Ensure children are supported to play and learn outdoors, and every child can learn about the climate and biodiversity crisis to equip them for future challenges.

Inclusion, Mental Health & SEND

  • Ensure that all schools will have fully accessible buildings and specially trained teachers.
  • Give children and students at all state-funded schools and colleges access to a qualified counsellor.
  • Provide funds to local councils s to properly support SEND students at school and in getting to school.

Accountability & Regulation

  • Move academies and free schools into local authority control, removing charitable status from private schools and charging full VAT on fees.
  • Remove charitable status from private schools and charge full VAT on fees, except for places for children with special education needs.
  • Abolish Ofsted to reduce stress in the education system.

Other

  • Protect provision of free school breakfast clubs for all primary school pupils.
  • Support for parents in educating children in settings other than school.
  • Invest £1.4bn per year in Sure Start Centres.
  • Extend the outgoing government’s offer of childcare to 35 hours per week from nine months, in negotiation with the sector.
  • Promote high-quality relationships and sex education.
  • Support for lifelong learning with a £5,000 grant to the Personal Learning Accounts of every individual over 25, with added loans for more expensive courses and maintenance costs.
  • Support every higher education student with the restoration of grants and the end of tuition fees.

Funding

  • End VAT exemption for private schools and invest this money into state schools.
  • No specific funding commitments on per-pupil funding or the education budget.

Workforce, Recruitment and Retention

  • Recruit 6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects.
  • Review bursaries and the structure of retention payments .
  • Introduce the Teacher Training Entitlement for continuing professional development.
  • Update the Early Career Framework.
  • Reinstate the School Support Staff Negotiating Body.
  • Ensure all new teachers entering the classroom have or are working towards Qualified Teacher Status.
  • Create the ‘Excellence in Leadership Programme’ a new mentoring framework to improve leadership in schools.
  • Provide youth workers in every pupil referral unit.

Curriculum & Assessment

  • Launch an expert-led review of curriculum and assessment.
  • Support children to study a creative or vocational subject until they are 16, ensuring accountability measures reflect it.
  • Provide protected time for Physical Education.
  • Ensure schools address misogyny and teach young people about healthy relationships and consent.
  • Fund evidence-based early language interventions in primary schools.
  • National Music Education Network.
  • Guarantee two weeks work experience and improve careers advice in schools.
  • Consider the right balance of assessment methods whilst protecting the important role of examinations.
  • Guarantee 2 weeks of work experience for every young person and improve careers advice in schools and colleges.
  • Improve quality of maths teaching across nurseries and primary schools.
  • Introduce a supervised tooth-brushing programme for 3-5 year olds, targeting areas with the highest need.

Inclusion, Mental Health & SEND

  • Take a community-wide approach to SEND to improve inclusivity in mainstream schools and ensure special schools cater for those with the most complex needs.
  • Require all schools to cooperate with local authorities on schools admissions, SEND inclusion and place planning.
  • Provide specialist mental health professionals in every school.

Accountability & Regulation

  • Replace single grade Ofsted judgements with a report card system.
  • Bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system.
  • Introduce an annual review of safeguarding, attendance and off-rolling.
  • Create Regional Improvement Teams to enhance school-to-school support and spread best practice.

Other

  • Launch a new national music education network, with information on courses and classes for parents, teachers and children.
  • Create 3,000 new primary school-based nurseries by upgrading space in primary schools.
  • Provide free breakfast clubs in every primary school.
  • Limit the number of branded items of uniform and PE kit that schools can require.
  • Provide a single unique identifier for children and families to improve data sharing across services.
  • Bring forward a comprehensive strategy for post-16 education.
  • Introduce a strategy to reduce child poverty, working with the voluntary sector, faith organisations, trade unions, business, local government and communities.
  • Create a network of Young Futures Hubs, with youth workers, mental health support workers, and careers advisers to support mental health and avoid young people engaging in knife crime.

Funding

  • Increase school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year.
  • Fully fund teacher pay rises as recommended by the STRB.
  • Introduce a ‘Tutoring Guarantee’ for every disadvantaged pupil who needs extra support.
  • Introduce a Young People’s Premium, extending Pupil Premium funding to disadvantaged young people aged 16-18.

Workforce, Recruitment, and Retention

  • Create a teacher workforce strategy to ensure that every secondary school child is taught by a specialist teacher in their subject.
  • Reform the School Teachers’ Review Body to make it properly independent of government and able to recommend fair pay rises for teachers, and fully fund those rises every year.
  • Fund teacher training properly so that all trainee posts in school are paid.
  • Introduce a clear and properly funded programme of high-quality professional development for all teachers, including training on effective parental engagement.
  • Tackle bullying in schools by promoting pastoral leadership in schools and delivering high-quality relationships and sex education.

Curriculum and Assessment

  • Establish a commission to build a long-term consensus across parties and teachers to broaden the curriculum and make qualifications at 16 and 18 fit for the 21st century.
  • Improve the quality of vocational education, including skills for entrepreneurship and self-employment.
  • Strengthen careers advice and links with employers in schools and colleges.
  • Include arts subjects in the English Baccalaureate and give power to Ofsted to monitor the curriculum so that schools continue to provide a rich curriculum including subjects like art, music, or drama.
  • Expand provision of extracurricular activities, such as sport, music, drama, debating, and coding, starting with a new free entitlement for disadvantaged children.

Inclusion, Mental Health, and SEND

  • Put a dedicated, qualified mental health professional in every primary and secondary school, making sure all children and parents have someone they can turn to for help, funded by increasing the Digital Services Tax on social media firms and other tech giants.
  • Give local authorities extra funding to reduce the amount that schools pay towards the cost of a child’s Education, Health, and Care Plan.
  • Establish a new National Body for SEND to fund support for children with very high needs.

Accountability and Regulation

  • Reform Ofsted inspections and end single-word judgements so that parents get a clear picture of the true strengths and weaknesses of each school, and schools get the guidance and support they need to improve.
  • Implement a new parental engagement strategy, including a regular, published parent survey and guidance for schools on providing accessible information to parents on what their children are learning.
  • Tackle persistent absence by setting up a register of children who are not in school and working to understand and remove underlying barriers to attendance.

Other

  • Invest in new school and college buildings and clear the backlog of repair by redirecting capital funding from unnecessary new Free Schools.
  • Invest in high-quality early years education and close the attainment gap by giving disadvantaged children aged three and four an extra five free hours a week and tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 a year.
  • Reinstate maintenance grants for disadvantaged students immediately to make sure that living costs are not a barrier to studying at university.
  • Provide five additional hours of early years provision per week for children aged three and four and aged two when public finances allow.
  • Review further education funding, including the option of exempting colleges from VAT.
  • Support the education of children in care, extend Pupil Premium Plus funding to children in kinship care, and guarantee any child taken into care a school place within three weeks.
  • Appoint a Children and Young People cabinet minister.

Plaid Cymru

Funding

  • Scrapping private school charitable status and charging VAT on fees and removing the exemption from business rates

Workforce, Recruitment and Retention

  • Reviewing all bursary schemes available to incentivise teachers, to ensure they attract applicants and help to fill recruitment gaps
  • Working with the teaching unions to reduce bureaucracy and workload
  • Recruiting and retaining 5000 teachers and support staff
  • Conducting a review of Initial Teacher Education and Continuing Professional Development to ascertain their relevance to the demands of the new curriculum
  • Appointing more non-teaching staff to deal with pupil needs beyond education
  • Develop a more attractive and formalised role for teaching assistants who currently do not have a clear career pathway

Curriculum & Assessment

  • Reviewing the implementation of the new Curriculum for Wales and the Additional Learning Needs Act to ensure consistency in terms of the education and support learners receive wherever they are in Wales
  • Providing training and resources to the workforce, to ensure that teachers and teaching assistants are equipped to deliver the changes needed
  • Ensuring all learners leave school able to speak both Welsh and English fluently, as well as at least one other language
  • Promoting an increase in Welsh medium arts provision and activity, and the development of career pathways in the arts in the Welsh language
  • Promoting the development of career pathways in the arts in the Welsh language

Inclusion, Mental Health & SEND

  • Investing in additional learning needs provision
  • Investing in mental health support
  • Making support available as soon as an individual presents themselves as neurodiverse, whether through referral or self-referral, and monitoring and tailoring this support as the diagnosis process progresses

Accountability & Regulation

  • No specific pledges made

Other

  • Continuing to support capital spending on upgrading and building new schools.
  • Creating an education system where both learners and the workforce can thrive.
  • Continuing to campaign for universal free school meals to be extended to secondary school learners in years 7 to 11, ensuring all children attending school receive a nutritious meal every day.
  • Reducing the cost of the school day, including transport, uniforms, and extra-curricular activities, to ensure no learner misses a day of school or misses out on opportunities because of their family’s financial position.

Funding

  • Provide tax relief of 20% on all independent education: no VAT on fees to incentivise parents to choose independent schools, significantly easing pressure on state schools and improving education for all.

Workforce, Recruitment and Retention

  • No specific pledges made.

Curriculum & Assessment

  • Introduce a patriotic curriculum in primary and secondary schools: any teaching about British or European imperialism or slavery must be paired with teaching about a non-European occurrence of the same to ensure balance. History and social science curricula to be reviewed and audited regularly to ensure balance.
  • Ban transgender ideology in primary and secondary schools: no gender questioning, social transitioning, or pronoun swapping. Inform parents of under 16s about their children’s life decisions. Schools must have single sex facilities.

Inclusion, Mental Health & SEND

  • No specific pledges made.

Accountability & Regulation

  • Cut funding to universities that undermine free speech: allow political bias or cancel culture to face heavy financial penalties.

Other

  • Permanent exclusions for violent and disruptive students: double the number of Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) so schools can function safely. Ensure best practices are spread across PRUs.
  • Universities must provide 2-year undergraduate courses: this option would reduce student debt and allow earlier entry into employment to help pay it off.
  • Scrap interest on student loans: extend loan capital repayment periods to 45 years.
  • Restrict undergraduate numbers well below current levels, too many courses are not good enough and students are being ripped off. Enforce minimum entry standards.

Things to Consider

Given the purpose and nature of political promises and pledges, it is important to view these manifestos through a critical lens. Some questions you may want to consider as you analyse the policies are:

  • How specific is the pledge? Can it be interpreted in different ways?
  • How are these pledges being funded?
  • Is there one policy I feel very strongly about or do I want to vote for a best fit?
  • Do the policies align with my personal values and beliefs?
  • What challenges might arise in implementing these policies? Are they feasible and realistic?

Further Analysis

Whilst this article provides a broad overview of the policies, if you wish to get into the deep detail of the pledges made, you may find the following resources useful:

The Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of the funding implications of policy pledges

The National Foundation for Educational Research analysis of the manifesto pledges on recruitment and retention

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