Tories 2017

THE CONSERVATIVE AND UNIONIST PARTY MANIFESTO 2017
There remains a long way to go. For too many children, a good school remains out of
reach. There are still 1 million children in primary and secondary schools rated by Ofsted
as ’requires improvement’ or ’inadequate’. If schools across the Midlands and north of
England had the same average standards as those in the south, nearly 200,000 more
children would be attending good schools. We need to give every child in our country the
best possible education if we are to provide them with the best opportunities in the world.
To achieve that ambition we will have to go further in reforming our education system. So
we will continue with our programme of free schools, building at least a hundred new free
schools a year. We will prohibit councils from creating any new places in schools that have
been rated either ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted.
We will make it a condition for universities hoping to charge maximum tuition fees to
become involved in academy sponsorship or the founding of free schools. We will introduce
new funding arrangements so we can open a specialist maths school in every major city
in England. We will replace the unfair and ineffective inclusivity rules that prevent the
establishment of new Roman Catholic schools, instead requiring new faith schools to
prove that parents of other faiths and none would be prepared to send their children to
that school. We will work with the Independent Schools Council to ensure that at least 100
leading independent schools become involved in academy sponsorship or the founding
of free schools in the state system, keeping open the option of changing the tax status of
independent schools if progress is not made.
We will lift the ban on the establishment of selective schools, subject to conditions, such
as allowing pupils to join at other ages as well as eleven. Contrary to what some people
allege, official research shows that slightly more children from ordinary, working class
families attend selective schools as a percentage of the school intake compared to nonselective
schools. While the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils stands at 25
per cent across the country, at selective schools it falls to almost zero.
These changes will have a great effect, but alone they cannot overcome the unfairness
of selection by house price, where ordinary, working class families find it difficult to
access the best schools because they cannot afford to live in the catchment area. We will
therefore conduct a review of school admissions policy. We will be clear at the outset that
we will never introduce a mandatory lottery-based school admissions policy.
A knowledge-rich curriculum
Our reforms to what is taught in schools have been profound. We have addressed
grade inflation and poor standards and developed a world-class curriculum. This has
meant considerable change for pupils, teachers and schools. So now we will help them
consolidate those gains, starting with the early building blocks of learning.
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