To wonder what all these changes Labour has made to schools are?

[CatRescueNeeded]

From an article in the BBC today, Kier says “really done loads of improvements in schools and stuff that we can do for children - whether that's rolling out school uniform projects, whether it's school meals, breakfast clubs, you name it“

Despite having kids in schools and knowing lots of kids in different schools around the country, I’ve not heard of any changes at all. They definitely haven’t done free breakfast clubs like they said they would. Nor have I come across any changes to uniforms or school meals

so what exactly is he talking about?

Nope. I also have a child going into year 11 and this is the first it’s ever happened. I’ve been doing the school run for many years.

Grants have been available since 2021 though. For FSM families

This is still brand new for me though and they’re giving them to everyone.

To everyone? Even parents who could afford to buy the uniform? See, this is my issue with doing these things universally ie "free" breakfast clubs. Nothing is "free", the taxpayer pays. So wealthy parents are then getting handouts they don't need ie it's a waste of money and takes money away from other things.
I 100% support those on FSM and low incomes getting the support but making it universal is crazy when we have so little money as a country. If we are means testing WFA etc then we should means test breakfast clubs + uniforms.
Phillipson + Labour hide behind child poverty stuff cos she's taking a wrecking ball to actual education.

Agree. See also the seemingly universal use of the metric ‘relative poverty’. By definition there will always be a massive chunk of the population who live in ‘relative poverty’. It masks real deprivation and it makes me cross!

There were never going to be 6500 more teachers

The other problem with this is that even if there were 6500 new teachers, 'new' teachers don't come with wisdom and experience or knowledge of the community and families.

There are many, many issues in education.

It's gone from being a profession I loved and am good at to one I am making an exit plan to leave and am willing to take a pay cut to do so. I will not be a teacher this time next year. And I am not alone in that.

I want to see the net figure of actual VAT collected from private schools. I want to know exactly how much cash the government has actually physically collected by hurting this sector. Sibling teaches in one and the redundancies have been awful.

Well considering 5 x the number of children have left than government predicted and the number of school closures is +67% on a 'normal' year the answer is looking like £0.
The children, teachers + staff impacted are just accepted collateral damage.

@twistyizzyhas the numbers but I agree it’s so bad. Just a GE gimmick to damage a sector and jobs.