Wren, Enfield and Lea Valley Socialist Party
Due to the massive cuts to education by past Tory and now-Labour governments, many schools cannot afford to support every student that needs it.
This includes at my secondary school, where the number of both support and teaching staff has been cut drastically. In Year 7, I had a Learning Support Assistant (LSA), who helped with making sure I understood the content of the lesson, dealing with panic attacks and much more. However, in Year 8, she was fired and since then more LSAs have also lost their jobs.
There are now only around two LSAs per year group. This has put a massive strain on the school and has led to certain students being left behind because they are ‘high functioning’ and therefore do not ‘need’ support. Teachers either ignore those students because they do not speak in lessons, or they are deemed insolent and given detentions for asking a classmate a question that they would have asked their LSA if they had been there.
Staff shortages
Another example of how Labour’s cuts have impacted schools can be seen in how many classes are not even taught by the class teacher. Many of my classes are taught by a supply teacher, not because my teacher is not in, but because there are simply not enough teachers to teach every class. The English department in my school, along with many others, is horribly underfunded and understaffed with over half my lessons being taught by a substitute because the GCSE and A-level students have to have a teacher. This leads to many students being unable to learn the content that they will be using in their GCSEs because they are not taught by a subject specialist, or the supply teacher is sent the incorrect lesson content.
On top of that, students are overwhelmed with homework. GCSE students in my school sometimes take three different practice papers home from almost every class that are due in the next day or two to “fill in gaps in learning”.
Students overworked, taught incorrect content, and left behind because of staff shortages, because of Labour’s cuts to education. Students pay the price of these cuts, finding it harder to get jobs and suffering stress and depression as a result.
The Socialist Party fights for:
- A fully funded education system from schools to colleges and universities. Take the wealth off the super-rich. Pay teachers and school staff wages they can live on
- End all academisation and kick private profit out of our education system
- Democratic control of education by representatives of staff unions, student organisations and the community
