Education

We value the role our teachers have in ensuring our children are properly educated. Our current education system is a one size fits all when in reality children mature socially, educationally and physically at different stages.

Early year’s education has simply become a child minding service so both parents can work to support their family. We believe that up to the age of 3 a child is best brought up at home with a parent to learn traditional family values which are being lost and after that to part-time nursery education to learn social skills ready for school. An increased child benefit during pre-school years would help parents stay at home in the child’s early years.

We believe that assessment is best done by the teacher in an ongoing programme and not single written exams. Assessment at age 11 will consider the whole child. Physical, emotional, developmental maturity, as well as academic ability should be assessed by teacher assessment and not simply written tests. We believe primary school teachers know their classes well and are best able to assess the children. Children will then be streamed and/or set at the start of secondary education based on all these factors. This style of informal assessment should then be repeated at the end of the next 2/3 academic years so that children can move across the streams with ease, according to their progress and development.

By the end of year 9 (around 14/15years of age) it is pretty clear which children are academic or perhaps would benefit from a more vocational education. Maths and English should be taught right up to the age of 16. Some children do not benefit from the current GCSE system and would be better off learning hands on skills and vocational courses from that age instead of being forced down the route of trying to learn too many irrelevant subjects to GCSE level.

We believe teachers are highly trained professionals who should be treated as such. They can maintain discipline in most classrooms, but they need to know there is a solid back up procedure for those children who cannot, or will not conform. Suspension and expulsion is not always the answer. We believe there is a need for a separate education system for unruly children of all ages, not one that children are sent to for the rest of their school life necessarily, only until they have received the help and support they need to overcome their problems. Within a school setting teachers need to know they will be supported by their superiors and are not made to continue struggling on with one or two disruptive pupils to the detriment of the rest of the class. They trained to teach, not crowd control! More responsibility should be placed on the parents. We would only support the reintroduction of corporal punishment on request of individual schools where it can be shown to have an inherent indiscipline problem and even then the reason for its reintroduction should be of a deterrent value against bad behaviour. It is important that a teacher has the ability to restrain and remove unruly students using minimum force without fear of prosecution.

Certain university degree courses should be free where it is of benefit to the country such as nursing or medicine. All education up to the age of 18 will free. After 18 it is unfair on the state to pay for an education where only the recipient will benefit. However we realise that not everyone wishes to borrow vast amounts of money to pay back for the remainder of their working life. With this in mind we will issue education and training credits to all young people who carry out community service in the voluntary sector. This can be started as early as age 14 and every year completed in the voluntary sector will entitle the person to one year of free higher education, including non university vocational training.

Where any student loan is taken out it must have an early redemption available to reduce the interest paid. (Not available on this government’s current student loans scheme).