It’s no accident that an English woman left her 10-year-old son and some of his school friends on the steps of 10 Downing Street in London, which serves as the home of the United Kingdom’s prime minister.
Jess Phillips, who represents that Labour Party as a member of Parliament, explained that leaving her son at No. 10 was an act of protest against some English schools cutting half a day on Fridays in an effort to stay within tightening budget constraints.
“The government has a responsibility to be looking after our children for at least five days a week,” she told Sky News and further suggested that Prime Minister Theresa May was at least partially to blame. “It’s Theresa May’s and the government’s responsibility to educate my children and all the children in the country for five days a week, and she has failed.”
“The government has a responsibility to be looking after our children for at least five days a week” – Jess Phillips explains why she has left her son at 10 Downing Street to protest schools shutting early https://t.co/eziKsWhvtR pic.twitter.com/jqbOgJrFcO
— Sky News Politics (@SkyNewsPolitics) July 5, 2019
Phillips noted that her son Danny’s school is one of about 250 across the country that has or is considering cutting half the school day on Friday over budgetary problems.
Phillips, who also heads the Save Our Schools march, said that the degrading budgets of public education were also disproportionately effecting less affluent regions of the country. She said that the government needs to immediately invest $3.7 billion to fix the problem and further inject $1.5 million annually to keep schools open the full five days a week.
