The Liberal Democrats focused on the early years and renewed their promise to invest more in education, saying this was the key to recruiting more teachers, cutting class sizes and employing more early years specialists. They want to fund 1,000 early years specialists to work with nursery schools, increase funding for books and equipment by an average 1,250 per primary school and 4,250 per secondary school, and see average class sizes for all five-to 11-year-olds cut to 25 pupils.
Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader, said that many children had lost out under Labour because it had stuck to Conservative spending plans for the first two years of this Parliament. He added, 'One of our top priorities is to invest more in early years education.'
The Conservatives said they would ensure playgroups and day nurseries operated on a level playing field with reception classes, and would scrap 'whole classes of burdensome regulations' on the private and voluntary sectors.
Education secretary David Blunkett last week repeated Labour's vow to recruit 20,000 more classroom assistants. He said, 'Our education manifesto starts with a commitment to increase the share of national income devoted to education. This will allow us to recruit at least 10,000 more teachers and 20,000 more classroom assistants and support staff.'
However, teachers' union the NASUWT was sceptical. General secretary Nigel de Gruchy said, 'It is all very well to promise to employ 10,000 extra teachers in schools, but the DfEE is not in a position to guarantee delivery.'
Prime minister Tony Blair drew education and health together last Thursday when he said, 'As I have gone around the country I have been left in no doubt whatever that people's main concerns are their schools and hospitals. It is why we say schools and hospitals first.' The topic of childcare provision for NHS staff came up earlier last week at a conference in London on balancing work and family life. At the conference, jointly organised by the Daycare Trust, the Maternity Alliance and New Ways to Work, David Amos, head of employment branch at the NHS, outlined the current NHS childcare strategy.
He said the NHS in England employs more than 250,000 working parents, and 70m was being invested in childcare provision in the NHS over the next three years, including the building of 150 on-site nurseries. Mr Amos said this would meet the needs of health workers by offering extended opening hours, emergency childcare cover and a subsidy of 30 per person a week.
At a separate press conference, Labour health minister Yvette Cooper pledged that if re-elected Labour would invest an additional 100m in subsidised childcare for nurses, doctors and other frontline staff. She said the money would come from bureaucracy savings following the abolition of two-thirds of health authorities.
But a Labour spokesman was unable to say how the 100m would be spent, apart from stating that all healthcare students would be entitled to childcare grants.
1m people, of whom 78.5 per cent are women, 37 per cent work part-time and , so we will provide resources for 1,000 extra early years specialists so that children have a better start to their education.'
