Responding to the UK Statistics Authority’s Chair raising “significant concerns” about the Department for Education’s presentation and the Education Secretary’s use of statistics, city MP Stephen Morgan has hit out at the Government over their lack of investment in Portsmouth schools.
The comments come after the independent watchdog has written to the department four times in the past year with complaints over misuse of data on issues including school funding and the reading ability of nine year olds.
The Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South said:
“This latest letter from the UK Statistics Authority is strongly worded, and rightly so.
Teachers and parents deserve honesty and facts from Government so there is little surprise people are losing trust over the Tories’ education policies. You just cannot slash school budgets and then pretend all is well. The constant misinformation is placing stress on those who work day in, day out to teach our nation’s young people.
In Portsmouth our city’s schools are set to lose a staggering £3.7m from their budgets affecting 50 schools under government plans. I will continue to work with others to fight these cuts and make sure Portsmouth schools get the resources they need.
Instead of relying on discredited statistics the Government must use the Budget later this month to invest in our city’s schools and genuinely improve standards.
It’s time the Education Secretary stops failing to face up to the truth and invests in our children’s futures”.
Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Education, added:
“This is a humiliating rebuke for Tory ministers. The Education Secretary has not even been in office for a year, yet this is the fourth time he has been caught by the government’s own watchdog making a claim that is wildly misleading or blatantly false.
They need to come clean and stop deceiving the public in a desperate attempt to cover up their shocking record.
They have used misleading figures on school funding to hide the fact that they have cut billions of pounds from school budgets, leaving head-teachers forced to beg for donations from parents to pay for books and stationery.
And their claims on school standards are now in tatters”.
The next Labour government will fairly fund all schools, as part of a National Education Service for the many, not the few.
