Anne Rouse, Labour’s County Council candidate in Guildford North says: “The County Council have consistently let down parents and children in Surrey. We desperately need to provide better support for parents and treat our most deprived children more professionally.”

Anne  is a committed campaigner for quality education for Guildford’s children. She was a governor at Boxgrove School for 16 years and chair for 7 years. When the school increased in capacity she was honoured when they named one of the school buildings after her.

Anne was also an Advanced Skills governor  and became chair of the governing body at the Dene nursery as it transitioned to a children’s centre for one year and on the governing body at Stoke Hill for the year it merged with Weyfield in Stoke.  She was the Chair of Surrey Nurturing Links –  a charity which supported trainers who helped struggling parents through children’s centres.    As a County Councillor Anne would use her experience and knowledge to improve education and children’s services provision in Guildford and the villages and across Surrey as a whole.

Under Conservative leadership it has been another grim four years for Surrey’s children’s services:

• Judged inadequate by OFSTED.
• Closed two thirds of children’s centres.
• Seen a crisis in foster care.

Children’s Centres were a great success of the last Labour Government supporting all parents and providing early help to those who most need it most. The Tories have now closed most of them. Labour will reverse this decision and reinvest in providing help for all parents.  Parents simply want a good local school for their children.

Labour will

• Tackle the current desperate shortage of school places in Surrey by building local authority schools.
• Support children who have missed almost 12 months of education due to Covid 19.
• Re-invest in youth centres around the county.

The government’s Covid response has continuously let down teachers, parents and children.

We have seen chaotic last minute u-turns on school openings, a failure to provide sufficient home learning equipment and a free school meals scandal which left thousands of children hungry while lining the pockets of Conservative donors.

Labour demands

• Half term vaccination for teachers, allowing a safe and planned reopening of schools.
• Education Secretary Gavin Williamson set a date by when all pupils will have the laptops and internet access needed to learn remotely. The Government have previously missed their own deadlines for delivering access to remote learning, and there are still 600,000 promised laptops and tablets yet to be delivered to pupils. Until the Government delivers these resources thousands of students are unable to learn remotely during lockdown, causing them to fall behind their peers.
• The free school meal scheme be delivered during the February half term.