Rollo Miles Education Pledges‏

As for education, every British child and adult should be entitled to a great education and future. Children often start school as eager learners, but by the end of their school lives, too many have no or few positive outcomes from school, and no desire to continue any formal education. That tells me that there is something really wrong with our current system.

These issues are easy to identify:

1) classes are usually much too large

2) there is the wrong kind of pressure on pupils - we have a system where schools are ranked by SATs and league tables and not much else

3) There is an "easy option" culture with too little effort to get children interested in the "hard" subjects which we need to enable us to compete globally. Then when it comes to jobs, young people see at once that these subjects have not prepared them properly for the workplace, and the result is general discouragement

4) Pupils are still not being taught to be creative, when that it is the number one thing we all need.

In answer to these I believe:

1) Much smaller class sizes are the key to behaviour and learning. Classrooms should be places for the children to explore and discover new things, which is easier to achieve with smaller numbers of children in classrooms. We need to bite the bullet and resource this properly at once.

2) I would abolish the system of SATs and league tables. They put unnecessary pressure on schools without leading to a better all-round education for the children.

3) If we want Britain to compete in the global economy it has to start with education, our heavy industry is dead and we need to become thinkers, engineers… There should be a much stronger focus on subjects like physics, maths, biology, geography if we are to solve the problems of tomorrow but these are seen as "dry" subjects. We need to find ways to show our children how interesting these subjects really are.

4) Above all we need to draw out creativity from our young people. Yes we need to teach pupils how to access information to solve problems, but we also need to train them in basic creative thinking.

Only by showing creativity in every aspect of our lives can we hope to succeed, individually and as a nation.There are several other important precepts that we Greens believe in:

- All children, even those with disabilities and special educational needs, should be given the opportunity to attend their local school. We need to create a more tolerant and inclusive society.

- We would recruit and retain more teachers by allowing them greater freedom and remove one of the main reasons teachers leave teaching, paperwork.

- My position on tuition fees and student loans is not to have them. I support grants not loans, providing a basic income supplemented with part time work/jobs so that students can learn the value of work and money whilst studying.

Our children will be competing with young people from all over the world, most of them from less developed countries and therefore more hungry for success. We need to give our children the right tools so that they are, and we are as a nation in the best position to stay competitive and creative.

Rollo Miles
Parliamentary Candidate for Hammersmith