Boosting teacher numbers by 20,000 over five years is among the education pledges in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. The party also say they will increase starting salaries to £30,000 as part of a funding increase which will see a £4.6 billion cash injection next year, with spending on schools being £10.6 billion a year higher than in 2019/20 by 2024/25. The Liberal Democrats also intends to use the additional funding to guarantee all teachers a pay rise of at least 3 per cent a year over the next parliament, and increase resources to support pupils with special education needs or a disability. The party intends to meet this additional spending from the ‘Remain Bonus’ – a boost to the public finances which they say would result from cancelling Brexit, which is also party policy. In addition, there is a pledge to invest an extra £7 billion of capital spending over the next five years in new school buildings and repairs.

Meanwhile the Green Party has also launched its manifesto with a pledge to increase the budget for schools by ‘at least’ £4 billion. The Greens also intend to update school food standards ‘to reflect the latest nutritional guidance’, and these would then apply to all schools. They also intend to ensure that training to support the delivery of PHSE lessons will be ‘properly funded’, and that these lessons will cover ‘all aspects of sex and relationships, with a focus on consent’. Other pledges in the manifesto include scrapping Ofsted, bringing all schools back under local authority control and changing the school starting age to 6.

Full Liberal Democrat manifesto: www.libdems.org.uk/plan

Full Green Party manifesto: https://campaigns.greenparty.org.uk/manifesto/