Lazarowicz welcomes plan to close education gap

Mark Lazarowicz MP has welcomed the plan announced at the Scottish Labour conference to use funding from Labour’s cut in pension tax relief for highest earners to set aside £125m extra for the Scottish education budget to close the educational attainment gap between children from rich and poor backgrounds.  

The cut in pension tax relief will also provide funding for school leavers to ensure more students from the most deprived backgrounds have the chance to go to university and all young people start their working lives on a secure footing.

The extra £125m is only part of the plan which would also:

• require Ministers and local councils to report annually on progress in reducing inequality in education

• see all local authorities appoint a chief education officer to lead the work to close the gap in attainment

• create a National Centre of Excellence of Education to enable best practice to be shared

• double the number of teaching assistants in those primary schools that send children to the 20 secondary schools where there is most concern over attainment

Labour also plans to introduce

• better grants for poorer students, worth over £1000 to enable more students from deprived backgrounds to attend university

• a fund worth £1,600 each to support young people who don’t go on to college or university or an apprenticeship to pay the cost of training, setting up a small business or expenses like driving lessons

Mark Lazarowicz said: “This funding from taxing highest earners will enable us to really tackle the gap in attainment between children from the richest and poorest backgrounds which has been too often neglected.

“It will also ensure young people who don’t go on to study at a college or university or gain an apprenticeship are not forgotten by helping them with the cost of training or other expenses as they start their working lives.

“Educational opportunity at every level should be our aim and we must do much more to make that a reality to give all our young people the chance they deserve.”

The Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, has reaffirmed that there will be no tuition fees at Scottish universities if Labour wins the next Scottish Parliament elections but he also went on to highlight the need to widen access so that students from the most deprived backgrounds have the chance to study at university in much greater numbers.

Independent studies show that Scotland currently has the lowest proportion of university students from the most deprived backgrounds in the UK.

The funding would come from the funding that the Scottish Government would receive from Labour’s cut in pension tax relief for highest earners. That would cut

• the rate of pension tax relief for people earning over £150,000 a year to the basic rate;
• the annual limit on pension contributions free of tax from £40,000 to £30,000;
• the lifetime allowance from £1.5 million to £1 million.