Sign up to FREE email alerts from crewechronicle - weekly Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Parliament is in recess and I’ve been at the Labour Party Conference.

Only a few months ago, the Labour Party was 24 points behind in the polls and even the exit polls predicted that the Conservatives would hold on to Crewe and Nantwich.

With effective campaigning, we defied the odds and turned it around. Now the task is to prove that we will be an effective governing party.

It was a Labour Government that built a new society in the aftermath of the Second World War. Men and women who had endured so much throughout the depression of the 1930s and who had sacrificed so much during the war, placed their trust in the Labour Party.

And the Labour Party fulfilled its promise to them by creating the welfare state, providing free education for their children, building decent homes, investing in an economy based upon full employment. And, of course, creating our NHS.

I’ve been able to meet with the NEU, to discuss the government’s data regarding school funding.

Despite the recent announcement, every single school in Crewe and Nantwich is still facing cuts.

Some of our schools in our constituency will lose as much 10% in per-pupil funding by 2019/20 and Cheshire East will rank 120th out of 150 local authorities in terms of per-pupil funding.

But I haven’t just relied on statistics – I’ve recently met with the headteachers in our communities who confirm that their problems have far from gone away. The recruitment and retention of teachers remains an issue and there are risks that the curriculum available to our children is scaled back even further.

One of our schools, where almost one fifth of the pupils are entitled to free school meals, faces a loss of more than £300,000. And this pattern plays out nationally.

The NEU revealed that the schools with the most deprived children face the worst cuts. No child should have their education funding cut but it is even more of an injustice that the most disadvantaged and vulnerable are getting the worst deal.

A recent report by the Social Market Foundation shows that, of the £9.1bn new spending on childcare and early education during this Parliament, 75% will go to higher earners, with just 22% going to low income, just about managing families.

In 2010, the UK spent 6% of its national wealth on education (meeting the UNESCO target). Under successive Conservative Prime Ministers, that has been reduced to 4.4% and will soon be as low as 4%. The last time we spent so little of our country’s wealth on education was during the 1960s, when our education provision started with five-year-olds and many left school at 14.

I am incredibly proud of the Fair Funding campaign. It has succeeded in making schools funding a priority issue in this country and the recent announcement does soften the blow for schools. But I will not celebrate ‘lighter cuts’ as a fair deal for our children.

The fight goes on.