Our fourth manifesto review of the week covers the Labour Party’s offering to the electorate, released at an event in Manchester. Here are the key things for you to be aware of:

Education

The Labour Party’s manifesto commits to an expert-led review of curriculum and assessment, working with school staff, parents and employers to deliver a curriculum which is rich and broad, inclusive and innovative. Labour aims to get more children active by protecting time for physical education and supporting the role grassroots clubs play in expanding access to sport. Children would be supported to study a creative or vocational subject until they are 16, with accountability measures reflecting that ambition.

Under a Labour government, schools would be tasked with addressing misogyny and teaching young people about healthy relationships and consent, and evidence-based early-language interventions in primary schools would be funded to develop communication skills. The cost of school would be brought down by limiting the number of branded items of uniform and PE kit that schools can require.

Labour plans to fund free breakfast clubs in every primary school accessible to all children, and plans to open an additional 3,000 nurseries through upgrading space in primary schools to deliver the extension of government funded hours. The party proposes replacing a single headline Ofsted grade with a new report card system telling parents how schools are performing, and wants to bring Multi-Academy Trusts into the inspection process.

Labour wants to recruit an additional 6,500 new expert teachers and get more teachers into shortage subjects, supporting areas that face recruitment challenges and tackle retention issues. A new Excellence in Leadership Programme would provide a mentoring framework that expands the capacity of headteachers and leaders to improve their schools, and Labour would introduce new Regional Improvement Teams to enhance school-to-school support and spread best practice. The Early Career Framework for teachers would be updated to ensure every new teacher entering the classroom has, or is working towards, Qualified Teacher Status, and a new Teacher Training Entitlement would aim to support teachers to stay up to day on best practice with continuing professional development.

To support children and young people with special educational needs, the Labour party proposes a community-wide approach to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, as well as ensuring special schools cater to those with the most complex needs. All schools would be required to cooperate with their local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion and place planning.

Children, Young People and Wellbeing

Labour plans to provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, complementing plans for Young Futures Hubs which would make sure every community has an open-access hub for children and young people with drop-in mental health support.  These Hubs, under Labour’s plans, would bring together youth workers, mental health support workers and careers advisers to support young people’s mental health and prevent them for being drawn into crime. Prevention partnerships would identify young people who could be drawn into violence and intervene, with youth workers and mentors placed in A&E and Pupil Referral Units to offer young people a pathway out of violence.

As part of a mission to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history, Labour wants to build on the Online Safety Act to bring forward provisions to keep children safe online. A supervised toothbrushing scheme for 3-5-year-olds would be introduced and targeted at areas with the greatest need, and Labour want to ensure the next generation can never legally buy cigarettes, as well as banning vapes from being branded and advertised to appeal to children. To tackle the childhood obesity crisis, a Labour government would ban junk food advertising to children along with the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to under-16s.

Sport and Society

To improve access to music, drama and sport, Labour wants to introduce new consumer protections on ticket resales. A Labour government aspires to deliver international sporting events with pride and seeking new opportunities to create legacies to inspire the next generation of talent, whilst promoting exercise and healthy living. Finally, Labour would develop a long-term strategy for transport including the promotion of active travel networks, and create nine new National River Walks alongside three new National Forests to improve access to nature.