The Liberal Democrats have outlined their plans to provide families with ‘flexible, affordable and fair’ childcare, boost SEND support and give every child the best possible start in life.
At the Liberal Democrats party conference on the weekend in Bournemouth, its spokesperson for education, Munira Wilson, revealed their priorities for childcare and education should they win the next general election. They include:
- Providing free, full-time childcare for all children from age two, and for working parents, from the age of nine months.
- Reviewing funding rates for early years providers to ensure they ‘genuinely’ reflect the cost of delivering high-quality places.
- Closing the attainment gap by giving disadvantaged children aged two to four an additional five free hours of early years education a week, along with tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 per year.
- Developing a career strategy for childcare staff, including a comprehensive training programme so staff working with children aged two to four have a relevant early years qualification.
The NDNA said that even plans to triple the Early Years Pupil Premium will still leave its value ‘well short’ of the rate paid to schools.
Parental support
On parental leave and support, the political party plans to:
- Give all workers, including those who are self-employed, a day-one right to parental leave and pay.
- Give all families up to a year of paid parental leave. Each parent would get six weeks of ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ leave, with 46 weeks of parental leave to share between themselves.
- Doubling parental pay (after the initial six weeks) to £350 per week.
- Increasing paternity pay to 90 per cent of earnings, with a cap for high-earners.
- Introduce a new ‘toddler top-up’ – an enhanced rate of Child Benefit for one-year-olds to give all parents extra support.
SEND
Measures to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) the Liberal Democrats would introduce include:
- Extra funding for local councils to halve the amount schools pay towards supporting the costs of a child with additional needs, from £6,00 to £3,000.
- Introducing a new National Body for SEND to fund support for children with very high needs, helping to end SEND provision postcode lottery.
- Emphasising identifying and supporting children with SEND in the new training programme for early years staff.
The political party also wants to:
- Increase funding for schools.
- Extend free school meals to every child in primary school and to secondary school pupils whose families receive Universal Credit.
- Tackling the ‘crisis in teacher recruitment’.
- Reforming Ofsted inspection
- Carry out a full review and reform of the Child Maintenance Service to ensure it works for all children and parents. This includes removing the 4 per cent charge for receiving parents using the Collect and Pay service as well as the initial £20 enrolment charge, and reviewing the formula used to determine payments.