Blair promises education for the many
Labour will deliver education for the many, not the few, Labour leader Tony Blair said today.
Mr Blair said that the Conservatives’ policies were about an ‘elite’ whereas Labour wanted to spread education opportunities to all.
He said the Conservatives’ ‘pupil passport’ policy would take £2 billion out of public education for the benefit of an elite few.
“It is a choice between a policy designed to help all Britain’s children get the best chance in life, and a policy that will continue the age old British disease of educating well only the elite at the top.”
He accused the Conservatives of “starving” schools of funding and cutting their budgets by £120 per pupil between 1992 and 1997.
Symbolic of their approach was the Assisted Places Scheme, which he said they were renewing in the form of the pupil passport, and which enshrined the idea of an educational elite in the best schools with others struggling in a second-rate system.
“What have the Tories learned since 1997? To take their most derided policy from before 1997, and make it 15 times more damaging,” he said.
On the Conservatives’ policy of quotas for exam results, he said it would deny pupils the exam results and qualifications they deserved, “purely to meet arbitrary quotas set to appeal to the reactionary ‘more means worse’ tendency in the Tory party”.
Their policy of giving all schools the ability to determine admissions was “an extraordinary policy lurch to the right” that would allow a “completely random and arbitrary” introduction of selection school by school and a host of different admissions tests and systems.
Mr Blair added: ‘This isn’t just a bad policy. It is profoundly unfair. It is an incoherent and unworkable policy which would collapse in chaos if there was any attempt to introduce it.”
Labour, he said had presided over a 50 per cent increase in the education, budget, brought more teachers into the profession and acted to improve literacy and numeracy.
From here Labour would embed improved to turn Britain into a “genuine opportunity society” where the majority stayed in training or education until 18.
Under that plan, there would be 3,500 under-fives centres, 1,000 secondary schools rebuilt, specialist school status for all secondary schools, and after-hours care and programmes for all secondary school pupils.
Three-year budgets, 300,000 apprenticeships for school leavers, and more university places were also on Labour’s agenda.
“While the Tories value excellence for a minority, we value excellence for a majority – and believe Britain will not flourish without it,” Mr Blair said.
Conservative education spokesman Tim Collins accused Labour of telling lies about the Tory education plans.
Mr Collins said: “Mr Blair has turned his back on any responsible debate over education. His allegation that our plans will mean a £2 billion subsidy for private schools is a complete lie.
“No school receiving state funding under the Right to Choose will be allowed to charge fees to parents. We are also funding a large capital investment programme to expand the number of school places by 600,000.”
