Cllr Martin Tiedemann highlighting Labour’s campaign #NoNewGrammars

Giving local children the best start is one of our top priorities – and we need your help to ensure disastrous plans to slash funding to local schools do not put education at risk.

As your councillors, we have backed Labour’s drive to improve local schools, including:

• Ensuring every child in a primary school has access to a free breakfast – an election promise in 2014 that we have delivered.
• Enabling the expansion of the popular Sudbourne Primary School over the next few years and the opening of the new City Heights Academy in 2013.
• Helping put Lambeth in the top 10% performing areas in the country, with 90% of all primary schools getting a good or outstanding rating.

But the Tory government is threatening to put these achievements at risk by:

• Cutting funding to Lambeth schools by a staggering 20%.
• Forcing schools to become academies without the consent of local parents.
• Introducing a new generation of grammar schools, creating a second class of education for 80% of pupils at age 11.
• Cutting Lambeth Council’s budget by 56%, threatening services and support for schools.

Thanks to pressure from parents, teachers and councillors, the schools funding cut has been put on hold – but this is only temporary and they still plan to push ahead with this disastrous plan next year. And despite some backtracking, they have not ruled out forcing schools to become academies, whatever parents might want. Their latest plan to roll out a new generation of grammar schools risks entrenching division and increasing inequality by selection at 11-years-old. We believe no child should be left out or left behind.

We’ve seen huge improvements to education in your local area in the last ten years – but we can’t let this Tory plan put that at risk. As your local councillors, we believe funding for education should be protected and parents must have a say over how their school is run.

If you back this pledge, then you can show your support by signing Lambeth Labour’s petition here as well as the national Labour Party’s petition against grammar schools. We must ensure that our children continue to get the best from their education.