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For the many, not the Home Office
The Green Party (in England and Wales) has a serious interest in spending money on education and skills.
Depending on your predilections the manifesto will get you either as misty-eyed or as cross as you would expect. But the intense focus on skills and education is notable for being similar in scope and ambition to the 2017 Labour manifesto.
We are promised that “Green MPs will push for” a £12.4bn investment in skills and training (including the return of the education maintenance allowance), plus the restoration of grants and the end of tuition fees for “every higher education student” (uncosted, but I’d put even a carefully caveated system well north of £20bn per cohort). Longer term, the aspiration is nothing less than the cancellation of graduate debt.
The Greens would even sort out the issue of employer contributions to the Teacher Pension Scheme.
An increase in international student recruitment would be likely – given an end to the hostile environment, and an end to the “no recourse to public funds” rule. The Greens would push for all migrants (including international students) to be entitled to bring dependants, without minimum income requirements. Oh, and the Home Office would be abolished, with a new Department of Migration separated from the criminal justice system.
Government support for research would increase by £30bn over the lifetime of the next parliament, with additional spending primarily focused on tackling the climate and environmental crisis. There would be a lot of collaboration between universities and government, including a “vaccine taskforce” style push on green power. There’s also language on using NHS data to support publicly funded research (something which is, of course, already happening).
The UK would rejoin Erasmus+. And think-tanks would become a distinct legal entity, with a requirement to be transparent about sources of funding if engaged in policy research and political education.
There is one surprising omission – despite housing forming one of the longest sections of the manifesto, there is nothing on student accommodation or the impact of students on local areas. I’d love to read more thinking about sustainable and environmentally and economically rational approaches to that.