Schools and Childrens' Services

• We will invest in new primary school places across the city and in improvements to our school buildings. We will complete the two new Academy buildings for Mayfield and Lord’s Hill in 2012. We will rebuild both Banister and Wordsworth schools and remodel Moorlands in 2013.
• We will work with schools to ensure that the extra £5.7m that Southampton receives in Pupil Premium in 2012 is put to best use in supporting disadvantaged children in our local schools.
• We will ensure no service cuts to council services for children and young people in 2012/13 and fund all savings through more efficient ways of working.
• We will support ALL schools in the city, whether they are council maintained schools, academies or free schools.
• We will work with parents and charities who want to set up Free Schools, providing advice and support.
• We will work with parents, head teachers and governors to improve quality and choice in Southampton schools, building on record GCSE and KS2 results. Southampton’s schools have soared up the national league table in the past 4 years.
• We will encourage more children in the city to take a language at GCSE and promote and support Southampton’s excellent Community Languages Service.
• We will continue to roll out the new Junior Road Safety scheme in Junior and Primary schools in 2012.
• We will introduce a new Southampton Scholarship for disadvantaged Southampton young people to provide financial support to several hundred students to study at Southampton University and Southampton Solent University.
• We will maintain our Young Person’s Travel Card – which provides free transport on all Southampton buses to disadvantaged college students and which provides for discounted travel to other young people.
• We support the government proposals to give headteachers more say over their staff and the ability to dismiss consistently underperforming teachers.
• We will keep open ALL of Southampton’s 14 SureStart Centres.
• We will protect funding to childrens’ social services and continue to invest more in protecting vulnerable children in danger from harm or abuse. We will work to encourage more foster placements and to speed up adoptions.
• We will continue to campaign to keep open the General Hospital’s Childrens’ Heart Unit.

Labour opposes more choice in education and we cannot allow ideology and politics to get in the way of school progress. Their plans to axe hundreds of council jobs puts at risk effective local services like our Sure Start centres.

1. Foreword
2. A Fairer Deal for Southampton
3. Economic Growth & Jobs for Southampton
4. Travel, Transport & Highways
5. Leisure, Culture & Heritage
6. Environment
7. Planning & Enforcement
8. Schools & Childrens' Services
9. Older People
10. Housing
11. Community Safety
12. Southampton’s Big Society

 

You can also use the main menu above to quickly view each section of our 2012 Manifesto.