I’ve not spoken about Education yet, because I’ve been waiting to see if anyone fact-checks the Tories claims about what they can deliver.

Let’s leave aside the “Big Society” hogwash which they’re trying to sell us, let’s even ignore for now the well known failures in the Swedish version of the free school system which the Tories are pledging to adopt.

What I really wanted to know is whether, as has been promised on a number of occassions during the campaign, they will really be able to afford to guarantee no cuts to the education budget.

On Saturday I read an ad placed by the NASUWT – the largest teachers union, which says that the Tories cannot guarantee that education won’t be affected by public sector cuts.  So I’ve done some rummaging, and was surprised to find that not only does the NUSAWT condemn the Tory education policy, but Conservative leaders of Hampshire and Kent County Councils both said that the education policy would not work.

A full description of the NASUWT comments, from the website epolitix.com, is below:

“Commenting on the public exchanges between leading Conservative Councillors and the Tory shadow education spokesperson Michael Gove on the hidden costs of the Tories’ free schools policy, Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union, said:

“I agree entirely with the Conservative leaders of Hampshire and Kent County Councils. The only way that the Tories’ free school policy can be funded, at a time of recession and promised cuts to public services, is by top-slicing the budgets of other schools.

“It is disingenuous of Michael Gove to claim that free schools will be funded from the current DCSF budget.

“Even if there were the ’slack’ he claims, which there isn’t, it has already been spent by the Conservatives several times over during this Campaign.

“We are clearly now in the phase of electioneering where the dire consequences of Conservative education policy are becoming so obvious to the public and their own party members that the Tories are desperately seeking to mask the stark truth until after 6 May.”  ”

Reason #20: The Tories have a risible education policy which they can’t afford, and which has already been proved not to work in other countries.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 10:27 pm and is filed under 2010 General Election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.