I definitely don't agree with the Labour stance on women.
However, I also care massively about education. At the moment, all I hear is Boris saying how 'they' kept schools running through lockdowns, and the release of the white paper yesterday saying that 90% instead of 50% of children will be expected to reach 'expected level of achievement.'
It sounds good, but we are yet to have a single week with all staff members in. The funding for the IT promised never arrived. The air filter thing arrived on the same day that restrictions were lifted (this to a classroom in the centre of the school with no exterior windows - we have two classrooms like this and only one filter.) I worked in the school in lockdown but was also part of the weekly rota driving around the area checking on children we had concerns about (delivering work in paper form if they couldn't access the internet, delivering other bits the family might need, just checking in with any vulnervable pupils). I am a TA buying things out of my own pocket for the children when we don't have enough left in the budget to buy it.
The aim 40% increase in achievement rate comes after COVID - a third of my class were ill with it last week so not only are we not catching them up, we are still having issues with missing chunks of learning. It is not matched by any significant increase in funding. Do twice as well, with a few pennies of extra money.
Even with any increase in budget they plan to give to schools, this will not put us back at the funding level of 2010, and it's been Tories all the way since then.
Meanwhile, although they want the rise in standards in English and Maths, OFSTED are looking to ensure that we don't focus too much on English and Maths as they want us to cover so much more, as there were concerns raised about the curriculum narrowing to get kids through the required tests.
OFSTED are also looking to ensure that every word in every reading book is decodeable so we've had to shelve (not bin!) loads of our reading books which contained the odd word deemed unsuitable. But the test I had to do with the Year 1 children today, reading comprehension, contained some words that are not phonetically decodable. So when are we teaching them these words, as we had to take out the reading books which contained them following advice from our last 'pre-OFSTED health check.'
While the Tories prance around, announcing all the wonderful things that they are doing in schools while ignoring the reality of buildings falling apart, not enough funding for classroom equipment never mind staff, and massively ignoring what children actually need, I will never, ever vote Tory.
Unless what they mean is that they are coming into school in person to help us ensure that the child who attacks others and has already been excluded multiple times because of it, actually has the 1-2-1 he needs by providing the extra bodies on the ground, and also hearing children read to ensure that they get the practice they need to catch up. If that is what Boris means by what he is doing to support schools, then I will apologise to him and await the MP who will turn up and actually give us the help we need to keep the kids safe and ensure they get the best education we can offer.