By Press Release
Mr Holmes is away on a souffle-fluffing course, he’s determined to stop his eggy treat collapsing on removal from the oven.
Someone else causing things to collapse at an alarming rate is the current prime minister, his party chairman (Greg Hands) was on the radio, telling us all how excellent public services are at the moment. It must be catching, as our MP, Bob Seely, has been telling us all how we’ve never had it so good. Dear reader, can you hand on heart say public services are in a good state? Because I can’t!
This week the PM re-announced his plan of compulsory maths until 18, stating the country is losing billions due to poor mathematics (I know, me neither). Also this week, research carried out by House magazine shows that 250,000 children with mental health problems have been denied help by the NHS as it struggles to cope with a surging caseload. You don’t need to be a maths expert to work out that is a crisis in child mental health. The time taken to see children, when they get a referral, ranges from 10 days to three years. On the Island, it can be six weeks to three months or more. That’s after the threshold for help was raised, meaning that children have to be in really serious trouble before they get help. Spending per child can be four times higher in some parts of the country. Making this another problem that needs levelling up.
Not only is the solution of more maths confusing, it’s aimed at the wrong end. There is no point trying to save the billions mentioned through squeezing more numbers into pupils’ heads, when the billions lost to mental health issues will be far greater. It’s a time-bomb that needs resolving properly, not tinkering about with populist nonsense. We need to build the confidence and resilience in our children that we know they are capable of. Closing Sure Start centres didn’t help matters, and neither did closing 720 youth clubs and getting rid of 4,500 youth workers – all putting more pressure on teachers and the police.
The plan for extra maths is undeliverable; there is already a shortage of maths teachers and the government cut the number of training places by more than 30 per cent. Even if they were offering enough money to cover the salaries of all the additional maths teachers, the government is still trying to make 2 + 2 equal 7.
We need to start to tackle this now; a full-time mental health practitioner in every high school and part-time ones in every primary school would be a start, but we also need to be honest and serious about what needs levelling up. The only sector of the economy that has excess demand to supply is health and social care; if we really want to get our economy moving, then we could do a lot worse than invest here – increase the number of professionals in the areas we are lacking sufficient capacity, and pay employees properly. Make mental health as important as all other ailments, because the children of today are the adults that pay our pensions in the future. The current plan, if you can call it that, really isn’t working.
There is a very simple way of improving any situation, that is to get up every day and do one small thing that gets you closer to your goal. Our goal as a country should be a healthy, happy population, with opportunity and prospects regardless of your start in life, a society based on equality, not division. Extra maths just doesn’t add up.
