Reading Liberal Democrats

Reading’s growing Liberal Democrat team travelled to the party’s Spring Conference in Harrogate this weekend (6-8 March) with education top of the agenda.

Liberal Democrats have released figures giving the average primary school class size in Reading as 25.7. Lib Dems will be debating a move to cut class sizes to 15 for all five to seven year olds.

The proposal forms part of a raft of measures to be debated this weekend. Other measures in the Equity and Excellence policy paper include:

• Boosting the funding of the poorest pupils to private school levels through a Pupil Premium, enabling schools to provide more one-to-one tuition and extra catch-up classes where needed;
• Replacing the rigid national curriculim with a slimmed-down minimum curriculum entitlement;
• Radically cutting back national testing and re-investing the savings in improving literacy and numeracy.

Further figures released by the Lib Dems show their proposal for a Pupil Premium would give a boost of over £6 million to Reading children alone.

Reading East Liberal Democrat Parliamentary campaigner Cllr Gareth Epps has also tabled a question calling for a further Parliamentary debate to seek national action on the crisis in safeguarding children – highlighted in the annnual council “league table” results published today.

And Reading Liberal Democrats are tipped to receive a national membership award at the conference as one of the fastest-growing groups of Liberal Democrats in the country. The Reading University group – the most successful recruiter at Fresher’s Fair and the only active political society on campus – is taking a minibus full of members for the Conference, which is expected to see the Liberal Democrats retain their popular commitment to scrap student tuition fees.

Commenting, Patrick Murray, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary campaigner for Reading West, says:

“Across Reading there are too many pupils who lose out under Labour both locally and nationally. We would – unlike Labour – put the poorest children first and make a massive investment in their future.”

Cllr Gareth Epps, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary campaigner for Reading East, says: “Labour has had a dozen years to close the gap between rich and poor children. It has failed. In Reading it has had even longer.

Smaller class sizes and our Pupil Premium will make a real difference to those Reading children let down by Labour. Free university tuition will remove the barrier to poorer children going to university, and free many thousands from obscene levels of debt.

These policies are reasons why Liberal Democrats in Reading are growing at a rate that is starting to win us awards.”