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Blunkett cash plan for pupils
CHILDREN from disadvantaged backgrounds should attract additional funding at school to pay for extra support, Sheffield Brightside MP David Blunkett suggested today.
The estimated 80-100 million cost of ex-Cabinet minister Mr Blunkett's proposed Personalised Supplementary Educational Allowance could be raised by taxing the child benefit paid to top-rate taxpayers for offspring aged over 16, he said.
The idea forms part of a package of measures designed to boost social mobility floated by the former education secretary in a pamphlet published today by New Labour thinktank Progress.
In the pamphlet, entitled The Inclusive Society? Social Mobility In 21st Century Britain, Mr Blunkett also suggests:
A "dramatic" expansion of the Child Trust Fund to promote asset-building among the disadvantaged
A secondary school graduation ceremony to mark the "transition to adulthood" at 16 or 18
A scheme for people in rented properties to use housing benefit payments to purchase shared ownership of their homes, in return for signing up to a contract committing them to being good tenants and supporting children at school
Access to micro-credit at affordable interest rates for the less well-off
An annual five-day national entitlement to education or training for those in permanent work.
Mr Blunkett said: "It is clear that the decline in social mobility that took place during the 1980s and 90s has been halted, yet a further step change is required to ensure that mobility begins to increase to create equality and overcome poverty of aspiration.
"Six months into Gordon Brown's Government, this pamphlet contains ideas that have come from conversations I've had across the country.
"It builds on major policy publications over recent months and years, and is a continuation of radical and progressive proposals in support of the future success of the Brown premiership."
Mr Blunkett's Personalised Supplementary Educational Allowance proposal would see schools receive extra money to provide mentoring and support for the poorest schoolchildren.
Cash would be linked to the individual children, and move with them if they changed schools, but would be available to the educational establishment, not parents.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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