Tag: Angela Rayner

Labour has questioned why ministers are spending more than £2.5m with a single advertising agency to promote apprenticeships, when the number of people entering such schemes is dropping and the government seems to have abandoned its targets in the area. A written parliamentary question to the Department for Education (DfE) from the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, found the department was paying £2.55m in the 2018-19 financial year to promote apprenticeships. The money going to M&C Saatchi, which is a favourite advertising agency of the Conservative party, was being spent on “a new integrated communications campaign to change perceptions of apprenticeships and to encourage more people to see the positive value that apprenticeships can have on their business or their career”, the junior education minister Anne Milton said in the reply. The contract was awarded after a competitive tender, she added, and also covered areas such as research and digital services. You're hired! Whitehall wants school leavers as apprentice economists Read more But Labour queried the spend when the latest official figures for apprenticeship take-ups show that at, 290,500 in the first three quarters of the 2017-18 academic year, they were 34% lower than in the same period in 2016-17 and 24.5% lower than the year before that. The pledge was initially made by David Cameron in 2015, and continued under Theresa May. But after the manufacturers’ representative group EEF, which is heavily involved in apprenticeships, said it seemed unlikely the target would be reached, Downing Street declined to confirm it was still in place. Rayner said: “Austerity is not over for our colleges, but this government is more than happy to hand out millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to the Tories’ favourite advertising agency after abjectly failing to meet their own apprenticeships targets. “Our reforms have driven up investment in the quality of apprenticeships to build skills and give people more opportunities to succeed … In the last 12 months more than 100,000 more people have started these new apprenticeships, putting them on the path to success in a range of cutting-edge and exciting industries such as aerospace engineering, nuclear science and architecture.”

Labour would scrap free schools and bring academies under greater local democratic control as part of a plan to unwind Conservative education reforms that it says have created a legacy of “fragmentation and privatisation”. The new policy will be unveiled by Angela Rayner at the Labour party conference on Monday, the first time that the shadow education secretary has presented her own structural reform plan in her two years in the job. “Labour will end the forced conversion of local schools to academies, scrap the inefficient free school programme and instead focus on delivering what works to get the best results for pupils.” Labour said that it would allow local authorities to build schools again and halt the free school programme, a flagship initiative of Michael Gove when he was education secretary under the coalition government. Conference at a glance: Labour nears consensus on Brexit Read more Local authorities will be allowed to take control of failing academies or what it calls “zombie academies” without a sponsor if they wanted to. The party says that there are 124 academies which have been earmarked for transfer to another trust, usually because of performance concerns. “The Tories’ fragmentation and school system has created zombie schools – caught between academy chains who are under no obligation to take them on and a government that simply washes its hands of the problem, refusing to step in and take responsibility,” Rayner will say. The education spokesperson also called for social media companies to ban anonymous accounts, complaining at a fringe event organised by the Guardian in Liverpool that most of the people that abused her online did so without using their real names. Rayner said that social media firms should take greater responsibility for their users and complained in particular that Facebook seemed to have indicated that politicians should accept a higher level of abuse. When asked what she thought about social media, Rayner said: “One of the first things they should do is stop anonymous accounts. It’s almost as if politicians should accept a certain amount of bullying and abuse online,” Rayner said.

The government’s free schools policy has come under renewed fire after it emerged that another of its studio schools, set up using millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, is to close this summer after a brief, troubled existence. The NEU says the latest closures bring the total to 66 new schools launched under the government’s flagship free schools policy that have either closed, partially closed or failed to open at all, at an estimated cost of almost £150m in startup costs and capital funding. Free schools, which include studio schools and university technical colleges (UTCs), are funded by the government; they are free of local authority control and have greater control over how they operate. “Although it trumpets the market as a model for education, no business would continue to throw good money after bad at what is clearly a failed school experiment.” The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said: “The Tories’ education vanity projects simply aren’t working, and every time one of these schools collapse there are hundreds of pupils and staff left facing enormous uncertainty. “Instead of continuing to waste what little extra money they are prepared to invest in schools, the government should end their obsession with free schools and rethink their approach to new school places entirely.” The closure of Plymouth studio school – just three years after opening – will create huge uncertainty for the pupils immediately affected, many of whom are in the middle of GCSE courses, and will add to mounting doubts about the viability of the studio school model. “Since 2010 the government has spent at least £149.6m on the setup costs and capital funding for 66 free schools, university technical colleges and studio schools in England that have either closed, partially closed or failed to open at all. Had this money been invested across the school system, we might not be seeing so many schools sending home begging letters to parents.” Plymouth studio school was set up with a specific sports focus to train sports stars of the future. As well as the usual classrooms and laboratories, the £4.2m building, opened by the school standards minister, Nick Gibb, contains a gym containing the latest fitness equipment including a virtual reality “brain training” NeuroTracker device intended to boost concentration. “A number of studio schools have closed and this is a serious concern. “Studio schools are a part of that and there are many across the country that are providing their pupils with a good mix of academic and vocational education, alongside valuable employability skills.