**CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY**

Thank you Caroline, thank you Geoff.

Thank you also to all of you here today, for the amazing work you do across our schools and colleges, for the leadership you show and for the difference you make to so many lives.

Before I go further, I am acutely aware this is Geoff Barton’s last Annual Conference as your General Secretary.
And having benefited, as I think all of us have, from Geoff’s wisdom, insight, and kindness, I wanted to start by saying a few words of thanks.
There can be few more effective and more respected voices in education than Geoff.
A voice for school leaders, who knows that the best heads and principals are those who are the fiercest champions for our children.
A man never afraid to stand up for what he believes nor for what our young people need.
A voice for working leaders across our schools & colleges,
never shy about making clear where he felt politicians were getting it wrong,
nor indeed when he thought we were getting it right.
Above all, always alive to the needs schools and colleges have and the realities children face.
Conference, I’m grateful for the chance I’ve had to get to know Geoff. He has been a superb advocate for you all, and I know whatever he does next, he won’t stop organising for the better future our young people deserve.

No pressure, Pepe!

But just as ASCL prepares to turn the page to a new leadership, so too, I hope, does our country.
Because however long the Conservatives leave it, however much they delay it, the next election is less than a year away.
It may be just weeks away.
Whenever it comes, Labour will be ready.
The country expects no less. The country deserves no less.

And while ASCL will move from one general secretary to another,
both embodying the respect in which the profession is held,
the challenge for our country is very different.
This government has squandered trust, and abandoned respect.
You see it in the big picture, and you see it in the small things.

Just one example.
Last year the government was late giving evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body.
A shambles of a process saw industrial action paralysing our schools.
This year they had the chance to submit on time.
To show respect.
To engage.
To behave as you rightly expect ministers to behave.
Any chance?
No. They were later than last year.
A clearer signal they could not send.

Now you know, as I know, that the next government,
will face one of the hardest fiscal inheritances of modern times.
The public finances crashed.
Our economy not so much powering out of the pandemic,
as relapsing into recession.
I’d love to stand here and tell you that in year one of a Labour government, every problem you face today will be solved.
Every budget flush.
Every building fixed.
Every classroom staffed.

But I can’t, or at least, I can’t in good conscience.
It’s easy to make promises you don’t know if you can keep.
But as we teach our children, it’s wrong.
And the change in tone, the renewal of respect, for which John Camp as your president rightly called this week:
that change will come with Labour.

And that is why the election ahead of us is a chance for generational change:
– in what government says,
– in how government works,
– and more fundamentally, in what government does.

If Labour wins the trust of the British people, I am determined to drive the change our children need.
This time last year, I spoke to you about the change I want to bring to Ofsted: an end to the high-stakes, low information culture,
that helps neither schools, nor children, nor government.
Under Labour, the days of the one word judgement will be coming to a close.

Ofsted can do better. You deserve better. Parents deserve better. Government deserves better.
Above all, children deserve better.
And better inspection means a new focus,
on inspection as empowering improvement,
on informing and enabling changes,
on addressing issues that can’t wait, before it’s too late.
on an inspection approach that covers every corner of our system, not just schools and colleges, but trusts themselves.
And I set out then, a vision to which I return today.

That what Labour will bring to our schools is simple:
– a relentless focus on delivering high and rising standards for all our children;
– an unwavering belief in the value and worth of each and every child;
– a conviction that everyone who works in our schools and colleges, be they support staff, leaders or teachers, are partners in a shared mission;
– and a determination that education, that children, will once again be at the heart of our national life, central to our political conversation.

Because after fourteen years of falling investment and fading interest,
that change is urgent.
And it’s why we have set out already the first steps of the change we want to see.

It’s why two months ago, I set out our approach to one of the greatest challenges facing schools today – attendance.
Children don’t learn, if they’re not there.
And today the figures are shocking – you will know them yourselves.
Across England, a fifth of children persistently missing from school.
Schools where that figure rises to forty percent, fifty per cent, even higher.
A quarter of parents who don’t think it matters if their children miss a day at school.
But the problem isn’t simply about children or parents, about colleges or schools.
No.
It’s an index of government failure, for which our young people will pay the price long after they leave school.
A breakdown in the relationship,
between schools, families and government,
long in the making, grown vast while Ministers sit back.

Now you all know, that schools alone cannot solve problems that face society as a whole.
That to focus on a symptom is no substitute for tackling a cause.
And again and again I hear from school leaders, from teachers, from parents.
Of how schools stand alone in children’s lives, as the services around them have been cut back for a decade and more.
How staff too often feel they are the last people left to help our young people, but the burden that places on them is intolerable.
About the consequences of the pandemic: social, academic, emotional, developmental.
The challenge it created, the stresses it made worse.
About children not ready for school, not ready to learn.
Today’s government isn’t interested.
“Maxed out”, said our now Prime Minister.
For the Conservatives, these are low priority problems.
This week’s Budget made that clearer than ever.
After no less than two hundred and twenty five years, the Conservatives are ending the non-dom tax rules.

The abject humiliation,
accepting Labour was right all along,
became a price worth paying as they cling to power.
But one tax break they didn’t end.
The exemption from VAT for private schools.
They could have agreed with Labour there, too.
Could have ploughed, at a stroke, over a billion pounds into schools and services for our young people.
But no.
And we all know why.
The problems that money could begin to address are,
for the Conservatives,
all too obviously,
problems for other people’s children.

They are problems for our children.
Your children.
My children.
More than 9 in 10 of the children in this country.
Let me be clear:
A Labour government will not accept any such excuses.
High and rising standards must be for all our children, in all our schools.
Excellence must be for everyone.

And our approach to driving up attendance will reflect that, will be simple:
to tackle the causes.
In every classroom, in every school, in every home, and in every life.

Where under this government children turn up at primary school not ready to learn;
we will bring a reform of early years education informed by the review Sir David Bell is leading,
so childcare is about life chances for children as well as work choices for parents.

Where the Conservatives have nothing to help children to get in to school and ready to learn;
we will support every primary school, to deliver a free breakfast club,
a better start to every day and every life.

Where in Tory England barriers to learning are left in place even as teachers start to see them;
I’m proud that Labour will roll out across our country the Nuffield Early Language Intervention, vital support around speech and language for children as they arrive at school,
one of the best evidenced interventions the Education Endowment Foundation has ever examined.

Where today no-one checks for year after year that schools keep children safe and included,
Labour would bring annual checks for attendance, safeguarding, and offrolling.

Where Ofsted now inspects schools, but not the MATs that run them;
we will bring inspection to every part of the system that can and must be a force for change.

People often say, when I talk about my determination to turn the tide on attendance, and what about SEND?
I know, as you all know, that the challenge facing children with special educational needs & disabilities, and their families, is today enormous.
As the current Education Secretary herself said,
at a conference less than six months back,
after over a decade of her party in power,
it is LOSE-LOSE-LOSE.

I know, and if I didn’t, you’d tell me,
that the next Labour government will have to do better.
I don’t pretend it will be easy, or quick.
But we’ll start early – early in government, and early in lives.
Early intervention on language, is the first step on the road to addressing the bigger challenges around SEND which fourteen years of failed reform have given us.
And it’s why I am also proud that alongside that commitment, we will bring mental health support for our young people into our schools and throughout our communities.

Because partnership isn’t just between schools and families,
or between schools and government.
It’s about the wider services that support children, and support families.
And those services, and that partnership, works best when information is known, and information is shared.
Knowing about children starts with knowing where they are.

That is why I can confirm today that a Labour government will bring in a register of children not in school.
Because if children aren’t in school, local authorities need to be clear where they are.
Shared visibility is the key to shared responsibility.
Children who are home-schooled deserve the same chances, the same opportunity, the same success, the same standards, as children in school.

And today that lack of visibility isn’t just about children who aren’t in school.
Too often, it’s about children in school too.
Because knowledge about children needs to follow them from year to year and from school to school, and it needs to be shared.
So what health visitors know about a child, is shared with their nursery.
Where what the nursery has spotted, is shared with the school.
Where what one school knows, is shared with the next.
Today, too often, for too many children, that simply isn’t happening.

We need, and Labour will bring, a simple single number –
like the NHS number, that holds records together,
and stops children’s needs falling through gaps,
within schools and between them, between all the services that wrap around them
Because that linkage allows us not just to support children with the issues they face today.
But to hold the data together, to help identify and tackle the challenges of tomorrow.
We could be empowering the best teaching in the world.
With less time spent on marking, and more on tailored interventions.
We could be driving workload down, and standards up.
Every school in the country could be learning from what has worked elsewhere, that term and that year.

Not technology for its own sake,
not some dystopia of malfunctioning online classrooms,
but technology that enables and empowers,
that makes every hour of teacher time more productive,
every lesson better.
That analyses and informs, assesses and enriches.
That links up the information we hold,
that makes real the partnership, that delivers the change we need,
that supports every child to achieve and thrive.

But we don’t and won’t stop there.
Getting children into school,
making sure they are well at school,
breaking the barriers to learning,
joining up what we know,
can only ever be part of the story.
They need to be taught.
They need to be taught to the highest standards,
by professionals who never stop pushing for better.

Today we face a recruitment and retention crisis on an unprecedented scale.
You will know, better than anyone, how hard it is to fill jobs today for both teachers and support staff.
Stories of five supply teachers, but no maths teachers,
of physics teachers rarer than hens’ teeth.
Labour will deliver 6500 more teachers in our schools.
Qualified, expert teachers,
confident and supported by a government that believes in them.
And what those teachers teach, is vital too.

It’s why last summer I set out our determination to move at pace on an expert-led Curriculum and Assessment Review.
Making our curriculum richer, and delivering a stronger foundation in reading, writing, and maths.
Broader, so children don’t miss out on music, art, sport and drama.
Up to date, building the digital, speaking, and listening skills young people need to thrive today and tomorrow.
Inclusive, reflecting the issues and diversity of our society.
National, once again,
because the curriculum is about what we value in one generation and provide for the next,
for all our children in all our schools
And with rigorous assessments that capture that strength and breadth.
And it’s why I set out last autumn, that I am determined that we tackle, once and for all, our cultural problem with maths.
Mathematics is the language of the universe, the underpinning of our collective understanding of the world.
It’s no good children being forced to study it at sixteen if they’ve already switched off by six.

But more than ensuring that children are there,
that teachers are there,
that the curriculum reflects the future we’ll shape, as well as the past we remember,
education in our society has a deeper purpose.

Let me take a step back.
Governments achieve change, secure their legacy, in many ways.
Through the choices they make, on spending and taxation
Through public spending.
Through the laws they pass and the enforcement we undertake.
The greatest governments are remembered not for the challenges they inherited but the future they bequeath.
And the deepest, lasting changes come from the way each generation shapes the education of the next.
That’s why I want to set out today my ambition for a wider change.

To build a country where how we learn,
just as much as what we learn,
sets us up to succeed.
A country where our young people learn,
through how we teach,
not just what we teach.
about how we live together.
How we build a Britain not just skilled and knowledgeable,
but democratic, compassionate,
egalitarian, at once plural and resilient.
Because today those values matter more than ever,
and yet are challenged as never before.

Young people who’ll vote for the first time in less than eight weeks, have never seen my party win a general election.
And in that time, they’ve grown up in a world changing faster than ever.
A world of smartphones and tablets, unheard of 19 years back.
A world of social media and uncounted TV channels,
of films and images shared from who knows where.
A world also of fake news, of international relations slowly chilling,
of our security threatened by bots and lies,
as well as tanks and planes.
A world where the galloping advance of technology,
in particular of artificial intelligence,
means that authenticity and originality are harder than ever to recognise and value.
A world where the progress we made, as women, as a country,
in tackling sexism, advancing equality, in building a free and fair society,
is under threat from a tide of misogyny parents and teachers don’t even see.
I know how seriously you take those concerns.
I hear about them in school after school, from parent after parent.
But I don’t see that concern matched in Whitehall.
And it is easy, as Ministers today do,
to ignore all that.
To take refuge in culture wars,
To govern through stunts and gimmicks,
to revel in the past, when they should be shaping the future.
But it’s not enough.
We cannot, as a country, throw up our hands in despair.
Our education system has to meet all those challenges.

And if I am your Secretary of State, it will.
Our young people need,
more than ever before,
to be questioning, critical, discerning.
They need the confidence to speak up and speak out,
the wise scepticism about things they see and read,
the belief in the social bonds that hold us together, the humanity of each and all of us.
I tell you, and you know: that can’t simply be captured in a curriculum, nor assessed by examination.
It’s why I’ve spoken about the importance of speaking and listening, of weaving those skills through school.
But it doesn’t end there: it isn’t just about language and oracy.
It’s about being confident enough with mathematics,
to know to challenge the numbers in the newspapers,
to measure the claims politicians make.
About learning from history, and its limits,
Understanding what we don’t know as well as what we do,
so we are wary of narratives, as well as drawn to them.
It’s about knowing enough about how images are created, to be wary of taking at face value the pictures we’re shown.
Above all, it’s about never ceasing to wonder at the world around us,
about instilling a curiosity we carry through our lives.

Right across education,
in every discipline, at every age,
it’s about instilling the critical thinking,
the questioning spirit,
which must be at the heart of how learning lives on, long after we have left school.
That is what we want to see not just in our classrooms and schools, but across our society.
I want young people to grow up at home in the world we live in today,
not fearful of facing tomorrow alone,
but confident in shaping it together.

The next Labour government will be a partner in driving that change;
not just changes of policy and priority, changes in thinking or funding,
but a deeper change in attitude, in confidence, in optimism.
And above all, in hope.
I’ve spoken to you before, about the privilege it is, to speak for Labour on education.
About how, looking back, my own life has taught me the value of education, of opportunity.
And while today I am focused firmly on the brighter future our children deserve, I know that we get there only by working with you.
A shared vision, a shared understanding: a shared mission.

So I want to end, with two requests to you all.
I know that the firmest foundation,
for hope and confidence that change can come,
is that what has been done before, can be done again.
When Labour won in 1997, our promises weren’t huge.
An end to assisted places, smaller classes, replacing the nursery voucher scheme with proper early years education.
We delivered all that.

In 1997 as now, we believed in making promises we could keep,
and keeping promises we had made.

But crucially, we did far more.
For thirteen years Labour brought an energy, a drive, and a focus to schools and children’s services that was new then,
was unmatched before, has been unmatched since.

Many of you will remember teaching in those times.
Others, like me, will have been taught in those times.
Literacy hour.
Numeracy hour.
Funding per pupil doubled.
Better results than ever before.
More than doubling the number of apprenticeships.
Free nursery places for every three and four-year-olds.
Every Child Matters.
Education Maintenance Allowance.
More than two thousand Sure Start centres.
More young people going into higher education than ever before.
Thirty six thousand more teachers.
More than a quarter of a million more teaching assistants.
Hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty.

A legacy that set a generation up to succeed.
I am proud of that record, incredibly proud.
When Keir Starmer talks about our Mission to break down the barriers to opportunity, when I talk about it,
we focus on the change we know we can deliver.
But I ask you to remember,
what Labour governments can do,
have done, will do,
to make our country and our education system once again a source of pride.

And lastly, I want each of you to think of someone in each of your schools.
I want you to think of a shy, quiet girl, starting school.
Free school meals.
Single parent family.
A bit too obviously unsure, if she fits in.
Still settling in, still trying to make friends.
No winter coat, or perhaps one a size too big or too small,
noticeable, it’s been cold the last fortnight.
Nervous and anxious about her future.
And when you are back in schools and colleges across this country, delivering for our young people,
as you do, week in and week out.

I want you to remember,
if Labour are lucky enough to win the general election,
that in Keir Starmer’s government,
that girl,
she will be the Secretary of State for Education,
and she will never forget the difference,
that each of you as heads, principals, and teachers can make to all our lives,
and that she will want that difference,
for all our children, in all our schools.
Thank you, Conference.

ENDS