This weekend Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan spoke at a conference for young teachers across the south east of England. The event, hosted by the National Education Union, was held in Brighton.
Stephen delivered a speech on Labour’s plans for a national education service, providing free universal education and learning from the cradle to the grave.
A key theme at the conference was teachers expressing their concerns over the adequacy of funding for schools.
Stephen said:
“I’m hearing again and again when I visit Portsmouth schools, or meet teachers and support staff, how stretched our schools are. Under the Tories they have cut budgets across the country by £2.7bn.
These cuts have created a teacher recruitment crisis, forced teachers to leave the profession in record numbers, sent class sizes soaring, and driven teachers to fundraise at the school gate – even in the Prime Minister’s own constituency.
We now hear the Education Secretary has admitted there isn’t enough funding. It’s time the Government adopt Labour’s pledge to give our schools the resources they need by reversing Tory cuts and scrapping the public sector pay cap to give our teachers the pay rise they deserve.”
The Tories have been promising to solve the workload of teachers crisis for years, but have missed their own recruitment targets five years in a row, and teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers.
Mike Kane MP, Labour’s Shadow Schools Minister, added:
“This Government can’t offer a solution to the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention because they created it.
If the Government were serious about ending the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention they would match Labour’s fully-funded commitment to scrap the public sector pay cap and give our teachers the pay rise they deserve.”
