Schools

The essential starting point for every child's education is learning to read and write. Without literacy, it is impossible to learn about anything else. So a Conservative government would require all primary schools to demonstrate to the school inspector, Ofsted, that they are teaching children to read using the proven method of synthetic phonics. And we would introduce a national reading test for all children at the age of 7.

South-West Lincolnshire has some of the best schools in Britain: not just grammar schools like Bourne Grammar, the King's School and KGGS, but also comprehensive schools like the outstanding Robert Manning Technology College and Charles Read High School. Local Conservatives are committed to supporting all successful schools, whatever their status.

A Conservative government would give more freedoms to the heads and governors running good schools. It would reduce the micromanagement of teachers in the classroom and make the national curriculum less onerous and more flexible. It would empower head teachers to maintain discipline in their schools without second-guessing by bureaucrats and would free them to select the exams that they think will best equip their students for the world of work.

Local Conservatives will support the plan for the merger of the Central Sport and Technology College and Grantham Church High School into a new academy because the plan promises to increase the choice of good schools on offer to the next generation of children in Grantham.

 


Nick Boles

07 JAN 2010

Let the voters have their say

While most people in the country have been worrying about how to get to work through the snow and ice and who's going to look after their children while their school is closed, everyone in Westminster has spent the last two days talking about the latest Labour plot to get rid of Gordon Brown.  I don't know about you but I am heartily sick of these stories.  Gordon Brown has been Prime Minister for the last two years.  The British people had no say in his election to that office.   At the very least, they deserve an opportunity to pass their own verdict on his tenure of it.  And a general election is the way to let them do it.

05 JAN 2010

My NHS, your NHS, our NHS

David Cameron has kicked off the Conservatives' campaign for change with a billboard promising cuts in the budget deficit and not the NHS.  Our opponents doubt the depth and sincerity of the Conservatives' commitment to the NHS.  But I hope that no-one will doubt David Cameron's - or mine.  David has talked of the huge debt he and his family owe the NHS for the way doctors and nurses looked after Ivan and helped make his short life a more bearable one.  What some of you may not know is that I have my own personal reason to thank the NHS.  In the spring of 2007, before I moved to Lincolnshire, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease,  a cancer of the lymph system.  Although I had private health insurance at the time, I relied on the NHS for every aspect of my treatment.  And the care I received throughout several months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy was superb.  Can the NHS be reformed and improved?  Of course it can.  But can I countenance a Britain without it?  Over my dead body.