No Lunch Today

If your children are in infant school in England, they will no longer be given free school lunches.  Mrs May has decreed that, if elected, she will take away school lunches and replace them with breakfasts.  I don’t think what passes for breakfast under this pledge – a bit of cereal and juice – adds up to much more than increased tooth decay for our children, worth pennies and very little, in nutritional terms.  Lunch gives us all – workers and children – a much needed energy boost in the middle of the day.  Plenty of studies point to the link between good nutrition and better health, as well as improved performance, at school.

And this Big Idea comes on top of so many cuts to the Education budgets that the pips really are screaming in our schools.  A recent analysis by the Guardian reveals that Head Teachers across England

“resorting to desperate measures and making greater demands on parents to save money as budgets are squeezed”.

These Head Teachers are being very imaginative and inventive.  According to the Guardian’s analysis, they are shortening lunch breaks, dropping less mainstream subjects, and now, asking parents to foot the bill for “services” as varied as ingredients for cooking, the costs of materials for “creative studies” and even to fund subjects like PE and Latin for some year groups.  In Wandsworth, primary school children are being asked to help clean the classrooms because budget cuts mean the schools can’t afford more cleaning staff.  Parents of schoolchildren in Taplow (within Mrs May’s Maidenhead constituency) have been asked to contribute £30 per month to plug the gap in next year’s budget, projected to be a £40,000. shortfall – or face making teachers redundant.

The Head of the National Association of Head Teachers is used to speaking out on behalf of his members, but its time we heard him.  He reports that slashing school staff budgets was bad enough but is still not sufficient to pay the bills:

“Almost every Head I speak to is thinking about not replacing teachers who leave”

Some are having to lay off staff as well. And this is happening now, today, not something projected for 2020.  Larger class sizes makes it harder for teachers to teach and pupils to learn. The National Audit Office’s calculations project a £3 billion real terms reduction in school budgets by 2019, due to existing Conservative policies on education spending.

So what are we voting for today? The Conservatives are promising £1 billion per year additions to school budgets.  According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, this amounts to  a 3% further fall in school funding by 2020. Labour  is promising to increase education funding by £4.8 billion per year, funded by reversing cuts to corporation tax.  This is not funny money, or the ‘magic money tree’ of Tory jibes.  The magic money tree is a label better suited to the quantitative easing of the past 7 years! This is a costed proposal, based on common sense, and a very different set of values.

Well that’s how it looks to me.  But however it looks to you, do get out and vote today! Its pouring rain and pretty miserable outside,  but go for it anyway and make a difference: you’ll feel better for it, if nothing else!