Education - A Key Issue for Rossendale & Darwen

EDUCATION POLICIES FROM THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

Liberal Democrats believe that access to a high quality education is a fundamental right of every child. We are ambitious for every child and will not settle for a system which benefits some children, but leaves others behind.

To give children the best start possible the Liberal Democrats will increase the number of children's centres to 3,500 by 2010, providing integrated childcare to the under 5's. We will fund a further 21,000 new primary school teachers so that we can reduce class sizes for infants to an average of 20 pupils per teacher - in Lancashire this figure is currently 25.2. In Key Stage 2 we would reduce average class sizes to 25 - down from 28.1.

Our children are tested too much. Teachers should be given time to teach and testing should have a clear purpose - to improve learning for individual pupils, not to provide unnecessary and misleading statistics on schools. Liberal Democrats would, therefore, replace the current compulsory testing at 7 and 11 with a system of sampling against national standards.

We would replace the bureaucratic National Curriculum with a Minimum Curriculum Entitlement. This ensures that all children get the same basic education, but allows teachers to design courses which meet the needs, interests and backgrounds of their pupils. All students in the 14 to 19 age range, whether they are studying academic, vocational or workplace training courses will be in the same assessment structure, gaining qualifications in a new diploma system to replace the current GCSE, A-Level and vocational qualification system.

To enable students to enter higher education without the fear of debt we will get rid of both the present fees and the top-up fees, as we did in Scotland. We would introduce maintenance grants of up to £2,000 towards living costs for students from low-income homes.