Reading Liberal Democrats

The news that the University of Reading’s Senate has voted to close to the School of Health and Social Care comes as a shock and flies in the face of the Laming Report.

Commenting on the news that the University of Reading’s Senate has voted to close to the School of Health and Social Care, Cllr Gareth Epps, Parliamentary Campaigner for Reading East said:

“This bizarre decision shows the disarray in Labour over child protection and social care. Today they are reacting to the Laming Report by claiming to want more, better trained social workers. But with the same breath they are turning a blind eye while Reading University closes a vital training facility for these workers – with no clear explanation as to why.

The University has just received a savage funding cut, but is still scheduled to receive over £55m of public money over the coming year. It needs to explain why a school which we are told is profitable is facing the axe. If Labour seriously want to solve the crisis in child protection and recruit more social workers, they have got to fund the training needs. Anything else is no less than dishonest.”

Editor’s Notes:

Background to the vote, including reaction from students can be found here

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.”

The government is to lend up to £2bn of taxpayers’ money to firms building schools and other public projects under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

Cllr Gareth Epps, Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for Reading East commented: “For months Liberal Democrats in Reading have been warning that the Government’s PFI schools programme would need bailing out. Labour remain wedded to a PFI model that is completely wrong. This latest move looks like little more than window-dressing. We have to wonder if this scheme will ever find its way as far as Reading.”

Cllr Kirsten Bayes, Lib Dem spokesperson for Education on Reading Borough Council added: “Reading’s secondary schools have been waiting years for these investments, and once again there are question marks over the financing. This is a deeply flawed scheme, as we have said so from the beginning, yet we have been met with studied Labour complacency. We are very concerned at the impact these problems could have on children’s learning.”

Editor’s Notes –

• Despite recent claims (from a reply given to a written question at the 27 Febuary Council meeting) made by Labour’s Lead Member for Education, Cllr Jon Hartley, that the Building Schools For the Future programme(BSF): “will enable us to transform all state secondary schools within the Borough…and will also provide the opportunity to build in the extra school places that will arise from the current Admissions Review process.”

  Reading Borough Council is still no closer to benifiting from Building Schools For the Future Programme.

• Background to the story can be found here: at the BBC and in the Guardian

Liberal Democrats representing Whitley parents whose children have been overlooked for places at the Madjeski Academy have demanded to know what has happened to secondary school admissions in South Reading – and have made a Freedom of Information request to make public to which areas school places at the Academy have gone to.

Katesgrove Councillor and PPC for Reading East, Cllr Gareth Epps, has asked for information to be made public showing how far away from the new Academy its new admissions are coming from. Redlands Councillors Daisy Benson and Kirsten Bayes have joined Gareth in demanding an urgent meeting to address the problems, including transport issues, that stem from the admissions crisis.

Liberal Democrats are demanding to know why the Council failed to recognise the numbers of pupils from South Reading who were coming up to secondary age, and how they are to be transported to – in many cases – Prospect College in September.

Commenting, Cllr Gareth Epps, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary campaigner for Reading East and councillor for Katesgrove, says:

“Academies have the right to select a proportion of their intake, for better or worse. It’s clear that children living in Whitley have not all got the places they wanted. Local residents have a right to know exactly what has gone on, and where those school places have gone to.

The decision of Reading’s Labour Council not to oppose the disgraceful closure of Ryeish Green has come back to haunt local parents. Unlike Reading’s Labour Council, I opposed that closure. There is an urgent need to revisit that decision.

There appears also to have been a lack of planning in this year’s admissions. The self-congratulatory press release issued by Council spin doctors is an insult to Whitley residents.”

Patrick Murray, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary campaigner for Reading West, says: “Secondary school admissions in Reading are in a mess, largely as a result of centralised Whitehall diktats that ride roughshod over the rights of local parents. It is time for the Council to show some leadership for once, and to take steps to ensure that the rights of our parents are put first. Otherwise the Academy’s gloss will rub off very quickly.”