15th April 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The education secretary has promised to abolish illiteracy and innumeracy in the UK, likening the need to secure educational progress to the need of developing countries to secure clean water and eliminate malaria. Gove’s pledge came after the chancellor promised to create a full employment society. The government is currently building a campaign for the next election, which targets education campaigns as a means to facilitating greater employment. Working together, the Education Secretary and the Chancellor have been tasked with making election pledges which people will look on more favourably than the further proposed cuts.
The campaign comes after party strategists advised that the party was suffering in public opinion polls due to austerity policies and the lack of rewards seen so far. The Tories have therefore been advised to make efforts to change their image as the austerity party, focussing on education and employment. In a speech, the Education secretary claimed that the Tories were the real party of labour, arguing that illiteracy and innumeracy needed to be wiped out in the country in the same way as malaria in developing countries. This is the key to achieving full-employment, he said.
He noted that failure to achieve good GCSEs in English and Maths is a key barrier to employment, and said that testing children on literacy and numeracy when they start school is a good way to ensure that children don’t fall behind. He went on to say that teachers will be expected to assess pupils throughout key stage one to ensure they are making appropriate progress. This measure is to prevent them from falling into the 44% of students who currently fail to achieve a C grade in English and Maths at GCSE. Achieving this, he argued, is the way to ensure that pupils do not grow up unemployable due to poor results.