Family Matters

September 3, 2007

As we all return from summer holidays and settle back into the routine of family life I’m sure we will all spare a thought for all those people whose lives remain extremely difficult following the floods earlier this summer. Many still face months of disruption, heartache and uncertainty and our hearts go out to them.

Sure Start –  We have been lucky here in Crawley to have had the very excellent Sure Start facility in Broadfield which has given so many young children and their families the best start in life.

Now the government is committed to ‘rolling out’ the very successful Sure Start model so that more and more children can benefit from what is widely seen as an excellent programme. The aim is that by 2010 we will have established 3,500 centres reaching ALL communities ensuring all our children have the opportunity to benefit.

A Welcome Addition to the National Vaccination Programme - The new cervical cancer vaccine which the Government plans to make available for all young girls around 12-13 years of age will probably be part of the national programme as early as autumn 2008. This vaccine will reduce the incidence of cervical cancer by up to 70%. Many people do not realise that cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide. In the UK, 2,221 new cases were diagnosed in the UK alone in 2004 with another 200,000 women showing pre-cancerous signs. So it is a really fantastic advance to have an effective vaccine available and a Government willing to fund it. I hope that the up-take will be good both in Crawley and nationally because, if it is, within a generation, we could see deaths of relatively young women from cervical cancer become virtually a thing of the past.

Educational Maintenance Allowance – Money to Learn The Governments Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) was brought in in 2004 following several successful pilots, to encourage and support young people from families where money is tight to stay on in education beyond 16. It can be up to £30 a week and is paid directly into the students’ bank account. On top of that, from time to time students may also qualify for bonus payments for achieving their targets and working hard, these can be worth up to £500. So why is the government keen to support young people to stay on at school? And why are they proposing to raise the school leaving age to 18? Well, we know participation in Higher Education means that, over a working life, a person is likely to earn over £100,000 more than a non-graduate. Those who improve their education and or skills by staying on in education to 18 have a better chance of being able to access that higher training and education as well. It’s not good for the economy or for young people if they leave school at 16 without the skills they need to succeed in the world of work and with fewer low skilled jobs we need more high skilled young people which in turn means spending more time in training or education. The EMA is about ensuring that whatever a families financial circumstances, no student should be prevented from reaching his or her own potential.

I think Labour’s record on education is fantastic. We can all see what the extra investment has done here in Crawley with new schools built all over the town. But results, investment and staffing levels have also been up across the board whilst class sizes and failure rates have fallen. So now we need to build on this foundation by helping more and more of our young people to continue with their education (whether that be academic or practical and skills based) because that is what will give them as individuals choice in their future and give us as a country the skills base we need for all our futures.

by Laura Moffatt MP

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