In her address on the final day of Labour Party Conference, the Shadow Education Secretary pledged a Labour government would “bring maths to life for the next generation” in an effort to address a “chronic cultural problem” and the worrying statistic that 1 in 4 children leave primary school without basic numeracy skills.
Our practice team at Edge has compiled a rigorous evidence base of some of the very best examples of applied learning practices here in the UK, and across the world, and developed toolkits for educators interested in introducing these pedagogies. And our research team’s work with National Numeracy evidences the potential impact on pupils’ attainment of a curriculum underpinned by the core mathematical skills needed for daily life and work.
The public support for real-world learning and development of all-important life skills cuts across all sections of society, be that parents, pupils, teachers or employers. So, at Edge, we really welcome Labour’s ambition to ensure our education system provides the numeracy “all young people need – for life and for work, to earn and to spend, to understand and to challenge”.
But this emphasis on making education relevant to young people must not stop at the end of KS2. We hope the pledged review of the curriculum and assessment system will explore how this could continue right the way through secondary school, post-16 education and lifelong learning.
It was also welcome to hear boosted recognition of the important role of FE colleges as beacons for learning in the local community and in meeting our nation’s skills needs, from the very top of the party, as the Shadow Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer announced the establishment of Technical Excellence Colleges.
As we understand, colleges that meet local skills needs will be able to bid for the status through Skills England - a new body set to be created should Labour win at the next General Election. Existing LSIP funding, including the Local Skills Improvement Fund, would be repurposed to invest in colleges to enable them to specialise. We look forward to further detail about the plans, and what the post-16 landscape would look like under a Labour government.