Should schools see our children solely according to their future function in the job market? The Greens believe in education being for the public good, and publicly-funded.

Real Progress is not students paying top-up fees; we believe in student grants and higher education being freely available to anyone who wants to learn the skills to make a greater contribution back to our society. In schools, we recognise that classrooms should be places of exploration and the exhilaration of discovery, not a forum for crowd-control.

Improving education means supporting small schools as well as large schools, doing away with the National Curriculum and supporting learning methods that really work, and supporting the freely-made choices of individual schools and their communities. We want more more locally-focussed and better-funded schools that listen more to the needs of parents and pupils alike.

Green Councillors Rob Murphy and Jillian Creasy are actively supporting community schools and fighting proposed closures.