Thank you Ally, and thank you Adam and everyone.
Three years ago this month, I had the privilege of speaking to you
about the vision we all share, of a future where children come first.
I spoke then about the ambition we must have,
the optimism we must have:
the determination that a Labour government must match the hope and aspiration of our children and young people.
And ten months into the Labour government, I am proud, so proud,
to stand before you as Education Secretary today,
to be taking forward that ambition for our party, for our country, for our future.
A vision of a country where we break the link between background and success.
An ambition to deliver change for our communities and our country, above all for our children.
An unrelenting, unflinching focus, on modernising and transforming the state to sustain the difference we make.
And we bring that determination in a time and a context which is more challenging for our Party than ever before.
Public finances, left wrecked by the previous government,
An international context, which sometimes seems to darken by the day.
And an impatience for change which took us into power and by which we will be judged.
As the last fortnight has reminded us, the judges who matter are the people,
right across our country,
who turned the page on fourteen years of Tory failure and put Keir Starmer into Downing Street last July.
I started in Parliament at the beginning of those years, fifteen years ago this week.
I watched, powerless, as the proud achievements of the last Labour government were taken apart, month after month for every one of those 170 long months.
And like many Labour MPs, throughout our time in opposition, I took the train home each week from Westminster through Stevenage, Peterborough, Darlington.
Not just stops on the train, but seats we had lost, reminders, each of them, in every journey,
of the places where we had haemorrhaged support,
the lives where we had lost relevance:
the vast electoral challenge we faced, and to which in time we rose.
** Just six weeks ago, rather than sailing on home, I stopped off at Peterborough to see the change our government is beginning to make.
To see the vision made real, the ambition come alive.
I met Hannah, a young mother, and Nile, her son.
They use a school-based nursery, delivering childcare for working parents on site in a local primary school.
A nursery which our Labour government is now expanding as we begin the process of rolling out the thousands of school-based nurseries we promised less than a year ago.
Hannah spoke powerfully about the better start to school life, of a smoother transition into education, of the life chances we were giving her son and the work choices we were opening for her.
Just nine months into government, and we’re making real the promises we made to the people of Britain.
Delivering opportunity to Hannah and her son, to working people and their children.
Building the trust that this government is on their side.
These changes don’t just matter in themselves. They are crucial to the bigger challenge we now face. Because in the world in which we live today, our values, our belief in the common good,
in shaping our future together, not facing it alone:
that vision is under threat as never before,
and that case needs to be made afresh to each generation.
Our Plan for Change matters not just for itself, but for rebuilding the confidence that government can be a force for good in all our lives.
That hope isn’t a private consolation,
but a shared endeavour:
that government isn’t something done to us, but something we do together.
And that hope for us, as for every Labour government,
means our starting point is never to defend what we find,
but to deliver what working people deserve. It’s why we push for change on areas that are sometimes far from the concerns of the lobby in Westminster.
It’s why I am proud that right now we are pushing through Parliament the biggest package of reform to children’s social care in a generation.
Not reform for its own sake, not change as an end in itself.
Instead the change that rights wrongs, and the change that brings hope.
Because I will not stand by, and our government will not stand by, and watch children be failed.
‘What a wise parent would wish for their children, so the State must wish for all its children.’
That is our watchword, in our social care system, and in our education system as a whole, from nursery to tertiary.
We are determined to intervene earlier and better agencies working together to keep families together.
To support more young people to stay, safe and happy, in families filled with the love every child deserves.
To extend academic support for children in care so that their education is never an afterthought.
To push collaboration between councils, make agencies work together, to link data together, to require that information that could save lives is shared.
To secure better life chances for each and every care-leaver, rolling out nationally the Staying Close programme so all our young people get the start in adult life that we would want.
And like Labour governments past, we won’t flinch from taking on the vested interests that stand in our way.
We will not stand by while private providers make excessive and unreasonable profits from the urgent needs, sometimes the desperate misery, of our most vulnerable children,
taking money that could be changing lives for the better,
for those children, for every child, out of our system, sometimes even out of our country and our economy.
We will not tolerate market failure that lets our young people down, that steals their tomorrow today.
We will not accept, will never accept, that for any child in our country, background should be destiny.
That determination reaches right across our education system.
That’s why, in our schools, we reject completely the narrative, the lazy narrative, that the Tories left behind a system of which every family, every community should be proud.
Because you should be in no doubt, few things could be further from the truth.
We inherited a system too complacent about schools where standards weren’t rising,
In towns like Hastings, cities like Sunderland; places far from Westminster, children too far from opportunity.
A system too often proud of the children doing well, but unworried about those being let down; where a third of children were leaving primary schools without a strong foundation in reading, writing and maths, where too many children didn’t turn up to school at all, where of those turning up for school, too many were not ready to learn, too many weren’t meeting the expected standards at the end of primary school,
and too many weren’t getting the rich and diverse curriculum and broader opportunities they deserve as all children deserve.
Where too many working class children have been failed outright. Where for children with SEND, by their own admission, the last government’s approach was lose-lose-lose.
The Tories don’t like telling the story, but in the last few years we went backwards on international attainment standards a truth over which the last government was careful to gloss by talking instead about rankings.
Every Tory spokesperson standing up and defending their legacy on education is defending that failure,defending the crumbling schools, slipped standards, the missed days, the lost futures.
Our belief is simple: it is not good enough, all our children deserve better all of them, not just some of them, and through delivering change we tell the wider story of our values, of our vision for what this country could, and should be.
Every child deserves a qualified teacher at the front of the classroom, teaching a cutting-edge curriculum, giving them the knowledge & skills to shape our future together.
They deserve a school inspection system that shines a searchlight on where they could be getting a stronger start, where their school could be going further, where the teaching can and must be better.
They deserve an approach to school improvement that is impatient for them and for high and rising standards, that knows they get just one childhood, that the years tick past fast.
They deserve above all a Labour government that doesn’t rest on its laurels or revel in the glories of past reforms, but builds on the successes of yesterday, to rise to the challenges they face today.
Now I know. That our Plan for Change doesn’t suit every school leader. They make that very clear. It doesn’t make the unions happy. They make it even clearer.
But that doesn’t matter. It’s right. It works. That’s what matters. Right for our children, right for our country. Right to tolerate no excuses for failing our children.
Right that we deliver those changes and right, as the Prime Minister said last weekend,
that the message we take from the local elections, is that we go further and faster to do so.
Because day in and day out, we are making the choices only Labour governments make.
After fourteen years, a Chancellor of the Exchequer who puts children first, not last.
Investing as never before in skills and apprenticeships to spread opportunity to every corner of our country.
Transforming the early years and childcare. Pushing funding earlier in children’s lives. A stronger start for every child, in every school. To every life and every day, with free breakfast clubs in every primary school. The biggest boost in history to the Early Years Pupil Premium. Better mental health support in our schools.
The simple common sense that our children all our children deserve the very best.
That barriers to learning are there to be dismantled, not buttressed. That’s why we’re bringing world-leading AI into lesson preparation. Why we’re modernising how children get their exam results. Better outcomes for young people, faster change for our country. A government that believes that technology brings not just efficiency but opportunity.
The advantages that under the Tories were there for a lucky few, under Labour, we will bring for every child. That’s why we have ended the tax breaks that private schools enjoyed. And why the greatest weakness of the opponents we face, both the Tories and Reform, is that their top priority isn’t our children, isn’t state schools, our nurseries, or our colleges.
It’s not the reforms we’re bringing to school inspection, for the change we’re beginning for children with SEND. No.
It’s to bring back those tax breaks for private schools.
When people show you who they are, believe them. When Nigel Farage tells you that he believes support for children with special educational needs is ‘creating a class of victims’, that is what he thinks.
When a Reform spokesperson doubles down by saying that children who need help to succeed are simply ‘naughty kids’, the outcome of ‘bad parenting’, that is what they believe. And that is why this week I will be writing to every new Reform council leader asking them to come clean:
Are these their views too?
Will they distance themselves from the comments made by their leader, Nigel Farage?
Will you back the Labour government’s work to ensure that schools are set up to meet children’s needs, ensuring high standards of learning and behaviour in every classroom, so all young people can achieve and thrive?
Will they put investment in children, ahead of tax breaks for private schools?
Or will they hold fast to their pledge and priority, true to their votes in the House of Commons — and tell parents across our country, that the investment in SEND, their children’s new free breakfast clubs, their new nurseries, the rebuilding programme for their schools – that all of that, all of that is off the table, all of that will have to go?
Week in and week out from now to the next general election we need to be making the case for the changes children need, making clear the choice that means, who stands in the way and why, telling the story of the path we choose, that Labour always chooses: a future where children come first.
It’s personal for me, as I know it is for so many of you. It’s one of the pleasures, as well as challenges, of being Education Secretary, that everyone has lived our education system. Everyone remembers their school, remembers the teachers who made a difference, the classrooms and the lessons.
And I know more than most about the change that Labour governments bring, because I lived that change. I was thirteen when the last Labour government came to power. Year 8. I saw the ceilings of ambition for children like me raised, at the same time the ceilings of our schools were rebuilt.
I saw the path to a better life, not just for each of us, but for all of us, laid out ahead of me by visionary Education Secretaries, and a Labour Prime Minister, whose understanding of the aspirations of working people was second to none. And I see that path to a better life for children today, too, under this Labour government, led by a Labour Prime Minister with that same yearning to make real the dreams of working people, and a Chancellor who has stretched every sinew for our children.
We will not rest until that path has been laid for a new generation. So I ask you, briefly, to think of someone you might remember from your own school days, perhaps from the start of secondary school.
A shy girl, quiet outside lessons. Sometimes on free school meals, single parent family. Uniform smart, her family firm on that, but nothing extra. Hardworking, determined: perhaps you wonder what became of her.
Well, she’s here today. I’m not as quiet now. I’m determined not just for children like me, but for all the children in my class. In every school, in every corner of the country. Week after week, month after month, we are working to build the Britain our children deserve a future where children come first – once again.
Let’s seize that future together.
Thank you.