Elections 2021: Party leaders on education

I asked them what are their plans to improve education in the city and offer new opportunities to younger generations.

Here is what they said.

Christopher  Hammond - Labour

Labour wants every child growing up in Southampton to have the best start in life. But this aspiration gets harder and harder to fulfil as more and more children are growing up in poverty.

In 2019, Labour launched an ambitious programme called ‘Feed the Future’. It’s working towards no child going hungry in the city by 2025. Since 2019 half of primary schools have been offered deliveries of free fruit, veg and yoghurts to all pupils – prioritising schools that serve our most deprived communities. This work was important then but vital now.

Our children can’t dream and realise their ambitions if they’re focused on where their next meal is coming from. Your Labour council stepped in when the Conservative Government turned its back on these children last year. We won’t look the other way as kids go hungry.

We’re investing over £105 million in making our schools the best they can be, including building Southampton’s first all-through school at St Marks.

We’ve kept all our SureStart centres open in Southampton whilst around 1000 have been closed by other councils across the country. These centres provide support, early intervention and are a lifeline to our poorest families.

We’re committed to providing facilities for our young people to flourish. Labour is planning a refurbishment of the Outdoor Leisure Centre so it remains the place to train the next generation of athletes and  building a brand-new leisure centre at Bitterne Precinct.

Our green spaces have been a lifeline for many families, which is why we’re investing £1.2million to refurbish and improve 17 play areas across the city. Giving our kids somewhere safe and fun to play.

We’re mobilising our new Economic and Green Growth Strategy to ensure that young people have access to the jobs and apprenticeships to equip them for resilient careers. We mustn’t see a generation of young people left on the scrapheap as a casualty of the pandemic’s economic damage.

Labour’s plans are about making this city greener, fairer and healthier for everyone, but ensuring that we hand over a city equipped for the future to the next generation.

Dan Fitzhenry - Conservatives 

Inspiring our residents of all ages, but especially our young people and creating a city where people flourish to their true potential, sits at the heart of all we are doing. We want everyone to be able to achieve their goals and we will do everything we can to support this. A conservative council in our first year will invest £500,00 to bring forward schemes across our city to support boxing clubs, youth activities, sailing clubs, or any time of community/sports operation who need a little bit of funding/ support from the council, to provide activities to their community. We will also work with companies to create more apprenticeships and help people into self employment or re-skill if they have been impacted by Covid, or simply want to follow a new path. Working with the government we will help those who need help to get back into work and learn new skills and make a better future for themselves.

Excellent schools and colleges are crucial for our young people’s development. A Conservative council will work with our early years providers, schools and colleges to help raise standards for city’s children and ensure they receive the best start in life they can. For some post 16 academic education or university is not their preferred route, and we want to make sure our children and young people are supported in their choice to follow an academic or practical learning programme that works for them. We have three great colleges in our city and we will work with them to help provide the courses our young people, but also adults, need to continue to learn new skills and develop their confidence. Learning and work is not just about “earning money”, it's about expression of our talents and increasing self confidence to achieve more for our selves and families ; a Conservative council will support people to do this.

We will also be bringing forward a plan to help people (especially the younger generation) onto the housing ladder by building more starter, shared equity and key worker homes for our city, regenerating our estates and providing more specialist properties for our older residents, freeing up council properties for new families.

Covid has been an incredibly difficult period for us all, but from this difficultly we can take some positives to build back better. A Conservative council, with a positive can do attitude to get Southampton moving again can help restore pride in our city again, and is what our city needs.

We have an incredibly exciting offer for you and we hope you can support us by voting Conservative on 6th May this year, and get Southampton moving again.

Richard Blackman - Liberal Democrats

Young people, at all stages of their education or if entering or establishing themselves in the labour market, have been affected particularly hard by the pandemic. Our plans would seek to address this by:

Re-prioritising council budgets to significantly increase investment in our schools and early years providers.

Providing childcare activity vouchers, redeemable with parent and toddler groups and activities, to support young children who have missed out on physical social activities during the pandemic.

Ensure extra funding for Local Authority Special Educational Needs, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAHMS) and learning support provisions to rebuild support for the most vulnerable children quickly post-pandemic.

We would also seek to:

Ensure consistency of health visitor support across the city for new parents.

Introduce a ‘curriculum for life’ programme, including financial literacy, environmental awareness, first aid and emergency lifesaving skills, mental health education, citizenship, social media awareness, critical thinking and age-appropriate Relationships and Sex Education (RSE).

Collate and share a broader set of indicators with parents to support them in choosing and improving schools for their children, including information about pupils’ and teachers’ wellbeing, as well as academic attainment.

Improve the quality of vocational education, including skills for entrepreneurship and self-employment, and improve careers advice and links with employers in schools and colleges.

Support apprenticeships in the city.

Protect local libraries, arts and cultural venues and promote links with schools and other educational and social projects for young people.

Ensure that all teaching staff have the training to identify mental health issues and ensure there is a specific individual responsible for mental health in each school, who would provide a link to expertise and support for children experiencing problems. They would also take a lead on developing whole-school approaches to mental well-being.

We also recognise that our city’s two universities are a fantastic asset for Southampton. Students and the Higher Education sector have been hugely affected by Covid-19 and we would work closely and in partnership with both universities to mutually reinforce our recoveries from the pandemic.

John Spottiswoode - Green Party 

Educationally we need  to support people to become emotionally well grounded. We need to help people to develop communication skills. We need to encourage young people to take academic subjects and vocational careers.  Students need to gain the skills they need to live a happy and fulfilled life.

The mental health of students has too often been adversely affected by lockdown and support is needed to help these young people to recover.  The social side of school, college and university has been badly affected, as has learning as remote teaching is far from ideal.

We will meet with the Director of Education to explore the issues of educational attainment, exclusion policies, future strategy and other issues relating to the city. We will also work to reduce the carbon footprint of education and set targets for annual reductions, including pupils travelling to school on foot or bicycle.

The Green Party is committed to free higher education for all through the provision of funding for all students and the scrapping of undergraduate tuition fees. While the universities operate independently from the city council, student life in Southampton has a considerable impact on the culture of the city and its local residents. We aim to help bridge the gap between students and other residents in order to work towards a more cohesive community for everyone.  This will include introducing an improved waste removal and recycling scheme in order to reduce the impact on local residents from rubbish left behind during periods of high turnover.

We will aim to guarantee access to apprenticeships for qualified 16 to 25 year-olds.  We will invest in youth services and youth councils, seeking to provide activities and interests for young people.

Nationally, we will campaign to return academies to the control of local authorities, address the chronic underfunding of state schools, remove some statutory testing and the rigid national curriculum and overhaul education to create an approach that enables people to learn and prepare better for life.

Education needs to prepare students for the real world in an emotionally intelligent way.

Sue Atkins - Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition

It is a tragedy and a scandal that the number of people in Southampton claiming out-of-work benefits has more than doubled over the last year, and this includes many young people and families with children.  A third of youngsters are growing up in poverty in our city.

Urgent action is needed to ensure all our children are fed.  It is in the power of the council to build on the campaign of footballer Marcus Rashford and provide free schools for all primary school children, including during the holidays. To provide the support that families need cuts to Sure Start should be reversed and Family Centres re-opened.

Urgent action is needed to build council homes for the 10,000 households on the waiting list, many with children and young people who cannot afford to leave home.

The Council youth service, closed down a decade ago, must be reinstated to provide young people with the care and support they need.
The education of our children is too important to be turned over to the private and voluntary sector. All Academies and Free Schools should be brought back under democratic local authority control and expensive PFI contracts cancelled. Free pre-school education should be extended to meet the needs of families.

Councils used to run their own supply teacher service until it was dismantled and handed over to private providers who now make large profits out of the service.  This should be brought back in-house using fully qualified and properly paid staff.

The Education Maintenance Allowance for 16-18 year olds should be reinstated . Some councils have already introduced their own schemes.

80% of redundancies in the past year have been borne by those who are under 35.  The council could be instrumental in co-ordinating and providing apprenticeships and training with grants and wages that young people can live on.

To pay for it the council should use their reserves and borrowing powers.  However, this is not a long term solution and must be combined with building a mass campaign throughout the city to push the government back and restore the millions they have stolen.