Cracking down on truancy, addressing children’s mental health and repairing fractured ties with parents and teachers will form key aspects of Labour’s drive to return education to the heart of the national conversation, according to Bridget Phillipson.
Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow education secretary said she was “looking carefully” at Sadiq Khan’s extension of free school meals in London primary schools, when asked whether the policy could be rolled out nationwide.
But Ms Phillipson, who herself received free school meals during a poverty-stricken upbringing in Washington in northeast England before studying at Oxford University, is clear about the fiscal boundaries imposed by Labour’s shadow “iron chancellor” Rachel Reeves.
“I've got to be clear that everything I set out has to be fully funded and fully costed. And I'm not going to make commitments that I can't be confident I'll deliver on,” she said in an interview at the Fox Primary School in Holland Park.
Ms Phillipson does not quite repeat Tony Blair’s famous three-pronged list of priorities for government ahead of the 1997 election: “Education, education and education.” But she said the Conservatives had reduced state schooling to a “peripheral” issue over the past 14 years.
“That's why, in the months ahead, Kier and I will be setting out further plans around Labour's vision for education because we want to ensure that once more education is front and centre of national life,” she said.
The further plans include a crackdown on post-pandemic absenteeism especially in inner London, where the problem is getting worse while other school regions of England improve their performance. Free breakfast clubs are a centrepiece of the plan to boost attendance.
Parents must also show greater responsibility, the shadow minister said, while vowing to rebuild the “tense relationship between school staff and parents” after what Labour sees as needless confrontation under the Tories.
A Labour government would fund greater support for schools-based mental health in recognition of the pressure placed on the NHS during and since the Covid pandemic. And it would devote more funding for specialist teachers in art and drama to restore some of the “joy” to schooling.
Labour points to NHS data showing rising levels of unhappiness among schoolchildren, with the percentage saying they enjoy school falling by five points to 60.5 last year.
Lack of enjoyment and a rise in mental health problems is fuelling truancy, Ms Phillipson said.
In inner London, according to the Department for Education, 22 per cent of pupils were labelled as “persistent” absentees and 1.5 per cent were judged “severe” absentees in the last academic year (missing more than 50 per cent of lessons). Both figures have more than doubled since 2017/18.
For core subjects such as maths, the shadow education secretary said Labour would prioritise recruitment and training to end the use of teachers who are not qualified in the subject.
She stressed there were also ways to boost subject enjoyment at primary age, arguing: “It's no good, as the Prime Minister has said, forcing people to do maths beyond 16 if they've already given up by the time that they're six.”
Labour’s policies would be paid for in part by ending tax breaks for private schools - but Ms Phillipson insisted that they should emulate state schools in making “tough choices” about their priorities and avoid passing on higher fees to parents.
Ending the tax exemption would raise £1.3-1.5 billion, Labour says citing the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The breakfast clubs plan is costed at £365 million.
Overall, there are hints of the Blair era from Ms Phillipson.
She said: “If I could choose one job in government - not that you get to choose these things - it would be education secretary, because it's how you change children's lives.
“I think the observation I would offer is that it was after ‘97 that Labour really shifted the dial in terms of making education central once more because through our actions, we demonstrated just how important it was,” she added, vowing to repeat the trick - but the money must first be found.
