Education

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For many parents the cost of nursery and pre school services makes it difficult to balance the cost of child care verses the potential income work would generate. when you have two children that cost is often so significant that having both parents working full time is difficult.

We also need to ensure in addition to the affordability issue the capacity is there for the number of children needing to attend. An added challenge these days is that so many parents work shifts and/or have compressed hours so potentially one can work early shift with their partner dropping the kids off before work and switching roles after work. The problem with this it also disadvantages single parents who may work compressed hours but lack the support to help before or after school.

The locations of places is also a key area for consideration and it is worth asking whether sites where there are a lot of parents if there Is any space to accommodate a nursery and preschool facility for all children of staff working there.

We have seen so many new housing developments in recent years and the announcement for the need to start a massive home building programme will only increase the demand for more school places across primary, middle and secondary schools.

We need to look at the provision of school places across the local area, county and wider region to ensure that we are maintaining the access to quality education but trying to keep children local. Some student are travelling across county lines or considerable distances to schools in their local authority areas due to the home building associated infrastructure not keeping pace.

When looking at school building it is important to also listen to the voices of parents and locals plus their support or objections to the project.

An example of a poor decision is a proposed replacement school for a town centre located one needing major works to be built to the south of the town over a steep hill and with no direct bus route whose students have traditionally come from the northern end of the town.  In this particular case concerns over access and traffic management plans resulting in a considerable stretch of A road gaining speed bumps despite being a primary route for emergency vehicles was ignored by the County Council who proposed and approved their own work.

On the other hand it would have been a great proposal if the developer of a new estate proposed land for a new secondary school for the town adjacent to its site. Ironically if the developer had made this decision at the time of planning it could have helped encourage more families to that estate.

As students are now able to study for longer instead of adding classes to secondary schools for the historically referred to as “six form” it is also important to recognise the variety of subjects that colleges can teach including additional skills which are not part of the GCSE syllabus.

The availability of colleges does vary dramatically depending on area and some historic colleges have now evolved into Universities.

Moving forward we need to ensure access to these colleges is easy and that students are also made aware of the opportunities that colleges can bring with learning new skills as experienced my many over the last 30 years with aviation related matters, information technology, hair and beaut, vehicle mechanics, welding and other construction / building maintenance skills. We need to look at empowering the future workforce and will discuss this further in academic or practical section.

University is a great experience for many but also a place where not everyone benefits from the qualification they gain when in the wider workforce.

The costs to attend higher education can discourage people from attending especially when you add tuition, accommodation, meals, books etc together. We need to ensure that education is of a high quality but that students can learn to develop their skills to maximise their potential to positively change the community they live and work in.

The cost is something that can be off putting for some especially those from less affluent communities so it is worth questioning if we should look to offer courses such as healthcare and other skills shortage subjects in more areas where costs these students incur can be reduced to being able to commute from home saving over £5,000 per annum.

For too long the access to SEND places has been a challenge for many students and their parents. Not parent should be forced into having to launch legal action to get their child the access they need to access specialist schools. Likewise, children should not have to endure a school bus for an hour getting half way across the country or a major city like London.

We should be providing excellent quality education in the local community including a smaller sites that can have a significant benefit to the education of children with special educational needs. For example the distractions and large crowds that students with neurodiversity needs would experience in the large schools in so many large towns  impact their ability to learn.

we All learn in different way, for some this will be favourable to academic pathways but there are a significant number who prefer to learn through more practical training.

As a country we need to harness both learning pathways to ensure that not only do we have the future workforce for academic pathway careers but also for the practical skills and trades that we also rely on.

We need to develop more colleges and universities to focus on practical skills (such as but not limited to the building trade, gas, electrical services, plumbing, landscaping, hair & beauty trades) plus those courses of a more academic nature, engineering, health and social care subjects where we have a shortage of skills workforce. 

It is also worth pointing out that there is a connection between the towns and cities that university students attend and where they settle down. With a clear need for the investment in additional places for healthcare subjects it is also a shame that we are not investing in developing more sites to learn at especia in areas of social deprivation where you also find a considerable number of people that really care about helping others but who may also have first hand experience of delivering care  or support to vulnerable individuals. 

We need to also look at opportunities to help people retrain as unlike previous generations the days of staying in one occupation has changed the and likelihood of needing to retrain at some point of our working lives has increased.

The methods and flexibility needed in the delivery of training has also changed with an increase in shift working the ability to commit to regular evening classes on the same day and / or time has become increasingly challenging for shift workers. Do we need to look at the development of a weekly series of repeated sessions and the ability to attend any session during that week where the same content will be taught? Do we need to expand the range of courses available? Do we also need a better platform to find courses regardless of the provider?