Education

University

From September 2010 university tuition fees were raised to £9000 a year. Our plan is to half the cost for selected fields, these include:

Science

Education/Teaching

Medical

Engineering

This incentive is expected to encourage more students to choose areas of study that are in great demand and that hugely benefit society.

Primary & Secondary Schools

All primary and secondary schools will be ‘maintained schools’, following the national curriculum. ‘Free Schools’ and so called ‘academies’ will no longer be allowed to operate.

This will not effect international schools.

Crèche & Nursery Schools

Nursery schools currently charge around £7200 per year to take a child part-time. This would be capped at £6000 and partly subsidised, meaning parents would only have to pay £3000 (in this part-time example). This would help take the burden off parents.
If the household income falls below £20,000 pa then the crèche fees will be wholly subsidised.

System

Aside from the costs of education, there are other areas for improvement.

Of the democratic nations, the ones with the best education year after year tend to be: Finland, Norway, Japan and the Republic of Korea. On average over the last twenty years Finland’s education has been ranked as the best.

Finland is famed for its low number of school days per year, ‘no homework’ and ‘no exams’, although the latter two aren’t strictly true. We would reduce the amount of homework kids have per week, bringing the average down to three hours per week (it is currently five hours per week, although this statistic may be slightly skewed due to the differences between primary and secondary education as well as the number of kids who don’t do any homework). This would give kids more free time as well as reduce the burden on the teachers who have to mark it.

We would also give kids a half day on Wednesday, in line with the new working week, as mentioned in the employment policy.

History

Of all the school subjects, it seems that history is the one that keeps coming up as problematic.

Too many kids from England, Scotland and Wales seem ignorant as to the realities of their nation’s history, either as nations in their own right or under the British flag.

Greater effort must be made to teach the realities of British history and not just simply glossed over with a positive spin. As well as this England, Scotland and Wales should teach more about their own individual history.