Section:GDN 1N PaGe:4 Edition Date:190831 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/8/2019 18:52 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019
News
Heather Stewart
Richard AdamsThe government has announced a
£14bn funding boost over three years
for England’s schools , setting out a key
aspect of the chancellor’s plans before
Wednesday’s spending review.
The funding boost is in line with
the education strategy leaked to the
Guardian this week, with £2.6bn for
schools until 2020 -21 against £2.8bn
in the draft document. The additional
funding will then grow to £4.8bn in
2021-22, and £7.1bn in 2022-23.
Sajid Javid will also start to reverse
the longtime underfunding of further
education colleges in the spending
review. The chancellor, who attended
an FE college, will announce a £400m
injection for 16-19 education next year,
which he said was the biggest increase
for a decade.
Writing on the Guardian website,
Javid said, “I want this investment to
start to end the snobbishness in some
quarters about the quality and impor-
tance of a vocational education. It was
a FE college that equipped me with
the qualifi cations needed to pursue
my ambitions.”
While Javid has insisted there willDenis Campbell
Health policy editorCases of measles and mumps are rising
sharply, fi gures have shown , amid
fears that growing numbers of people
are not getting immunised because of
“dangerous” myths about vaccines.
Public health experts reacted with
alarm to the increases and warned that
misinformation about vaccination was
leading to parents refusing to let their
children have the measles, mumps and
rubella jab.
In all, 301 people in England were
diagnosed with measles between April
and June. That was a 30% increase in
just three months, compared withthe 231 cases in January to April. Most
(266) of the 301 cases of measles were
in people aged 15 years or over who had
not been vaccinated, while nearly half
of those who contracted mumps were
unvaccinated.
“These stark rises in mumps and
measles cases show that compla-
cency about vaccines is misplaced and
dangerous, which is why the NHS is
taking action to boost take-up rates
and tackle the fake news peddled on
social media and elsewhere,” said
Simon Stevens, the chief executive of
NHS England.
“Parents have enough to worry
about without misleading anti-vaxxers
sowing seeds of doubt about vaccines,
which remain the best chance we have
of protecting our children from poten-
tially deadly illnesses.”
The latest fi gures continued the
recent upward trend in cases of
measles , which is highly infectious and
can prove fatal. The totals recorded in
both the fi rst two quarters of this year
were much higher than the 97 cases in
October to December last year.
There has been an even bigger rise in
people – especially university students- getting mumps. Between April and
June, 2,028 people contracted the
infection, more than double the 795
who did so in the previous quarter and
a massive increase on the 170 in the last
three months of 2018.
“ Although it is normal to see mumps
outbreaks in universities every few
years, we are seeing a significant
number of cases, the highest quarterly
fi gure since 2009,” said Mary Ram-
say , Public Health England’s head of
immunisation.
PHE insists its most recent annual
attitudinal research into parental
attitudes towards vaccines shows
confi dence towards them is high. The
proportions of fi ve-year-olds in Eng-
land who have had the recommended
fi rst and second doses of MMR have
remained steady, at about 95% and
87% respectively, in recent years.
The growing difficulty patients
face in getting an appointment at a GP
surgery is more likely to explain the
rises in measles and mumps diagno-
ses, PHE suggested. A report last year
by the Royal Society for Public Health
identifi ed GP access as a key barrier to
vaccine uptake.
be no “blank cheque” for any depart-
ment, schools funding is widely
regarded as a pressing priority and a
chance for Boris Johnson to assert that
his government will drop austerity.
Johnson said: “When I became
prime minster at the start of the
summer, I promised to make sure
every child receives a superb educa-
tion, regardless of which school they
attend, or where they grew up.
“Today I can announce the fi rst step
in delivering on that pledge – funding
per pupil in primary and secondary
schools will increase, and be levelled
up across the entire country.”
Jules White, a headteacher who
launched the Worth Less? campaign
of school leaders for higher funding,
said schools in England would need to
know how much they would receive
in real terms before passing judgment.
“It is clear that the major funding
crisis that has blighted schools and
post-16 provision is now being taken
seriously by the government,” Whitesaid. “But while the government’s
headline fi gure is for £14bn over four
years, the actual increase in total
spending on schools may be half of this
at £7.1bn. We also need to know how
our real-terms spending power will
be aff ected by rising student numbers
and other infl ationary costs.”
The government said per-pupil
funding would rise at least in line
with infl ation. But Labour warned
the increase would not be suffi cient
to reverse long-term spending cuts.
Angela Rayner, the shadow edu-
cation secretary, said : “This comes
nowhere close to meeting the prime
minister’s pledge to reverse the Tories’
education cuts, let alone matching
Labour’s plans to invest in a National
Education Service. Instead, it is yet
another con trick by a politician who
shown time and again that you just
can’t trust his promises.”
Johnson said schools’ funding was
a key part of his domestic priorities.
The backlash against school funding
cuts became a major diffi culty for Con-
servatives in the 2017 general election.
Mary Bousted, of the National Edu-
cation Union, warned that the uplift
would not be enough. “Obviously, any
extra money for schools will be wel-
come because schools are desperate
for funding,” she said. “The problem
is this just isn’t enough.”
The leaked DfE paper also included
a focus on poor behaviour in schools, a
measure apparently informed by poll-
ing that suggests strong public support
for tougher disciplinary measures.
The paper included explicit support
for heads who use “reasonable force”
in their eff orts to improve discipline.
Johnson said: “My government will
ensure all young people get the best
possible start in life. That means the
right funding but also giving schools
the powers they need to deal with bad
behaviour and bullying .”
The document also suggested the
Treasury “fi rmly” rejected a radical
attempt to improve recruitment by
making teacher-training courses free
for students – an idea understood to
have been popular with the previous
education secretary, Damian Hinds.School exclusions Page 7 Schools to get £14bn in
Javid’s spending review
Experts warn
of ‘fake news’
as measles and
mumps surge
▼ Increasing funding for schools
in England is a key target of the
domestic agenda of Boris Johnson
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The extra money to be put into
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