The two headteacher unions have outlined what they want to hear from politicians during the general election campaign - with a funding boost for schools featuring front and centre.

The Association of School and College Leaders and the NAHT heads’ union also called on the Conservatives to drop plans to expand academic selection.

ASCL has set out a “manifesto” with five key commitments that it wants the political parties to endorse. These are:

• “Sufficient and fair funding” for schools, ensuring per-pupil funding bridges the £3 billion funding gap which is forecast by 2020
• Improved teacher recruitment and retention
• Commitment to “curriculum stability”, with no further curriculum or qualification reforms over the next Parliament
• Commitment to developing a “long-term, shared vision of education” with the teaching profession, to ensure future policy is “coherent”
• Evidence-based policymaking
   

NAHT launched its own five key priorities at its annual conference last weekend.

Like ASCL, it called for education to be funded “fully and fairly” and for the £3 billion of expected real term cuts to be reversed.

It also urged politicians to put forward a “national strategy for teacher recruitment and retention”.

However, the union took a different tack to ASCL with its remaining priorities. These are:

• “To adopt fair methods to hold schools to account”
• “To value a broad range of subjects in the school day”
• “To make sure that schools are supported by health and social care services...to promote pupil wellbeing”
   

Both unions took aim at the Conservatives’ proposals to roll out more grammar schools.

Evidence suggests ‘damaging impact’

Russell Hobby, NAHT’s general secretary, said academic selection at age 11 “makes outcomes worse for the majority of children in that area”.

“We cannot afford such an elitist policy in the twenty-first century,” he added.

Geoff Barton, ASCL’s general secretary, said grammar school expansion would fail the test that policies should be evidence-based.

“We have seen no evidence to support the premise that this policy will improve the education of the majority of young people,” he said.

“Indeed, the evidence indicates that it will have a damaging impact on the life chances of the majority who do not attend a selective school.”

Mr Barton called on politicians to put a stop to “scattergun” reforms.

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