Guest Post: "Education is about partnership – and we owe it to all our children to work together in their best interests" - Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson MP's back to school message for parents

[SophiaCMumsnet]

I love back to school week. Sending my children off to school on their first day back, I’m always sad (and maybe a little relieved!) to see them go, but I think forward with such excitement to what the new school year will bring for them. New friends, new experiences, new opportunities.

You all know that familiar mix of feelings as they walk through the school gates once again – nervous, excited, hopeful. If you’re anything like me though, overall, you just want them to do well and be happy.

As parents, we all want the best for our children, both in school and beyond. We want them to grow up happy and healthy, to get a good job, and to be able to buy a nice house.

I understand those aspirations – I share them for my own children and, as Education Secretary, for yours. That’s why this job is the greatest privilege of my life. I want to make sure each and every child gets the best start in life, to ensure that where you’re from doesn’t determine where you end up. By breaking the link between background and future success, we can break down barriers to opportunity and give all children the skills they need to thrive.

Education lies at the heart of this change we all want to see. And education means more than maths or English or science, as important as they are. An excellent, whole-childhood education journey builds a lifelong love of learning, nurtures a sense of belonging, and creates connections that last for years to come. A good education gives our children strong foundations and sets them up for work and for life.

High and rising standards in all of our schools is at the heart of our plan. My offer to you is this: I’ll support your children taking their first steps into learning. I’ll put 6,500 new expert teachers in classrooms across the country. I’ll introduce free breakfast clubs in all primary schools. I’ll improve professional careers advice and work experience. I’ll expand support for families by rolling out funded childcare. I’ll review the curriculum, making it richer and broader, setting all children up to thrive now and in the future. I’ll boost mental health support across our schools and reform provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

I’m ambitious for our children and for our country. But government can’t achieve all this in isolation. I want to work in partnership with you to deliver the very best life chances for our children. We all have responsibilities – you as parents, us as government, and schools do too. I want to reset these relationships, rebuild trust and work together for the benefit of all our children.

I need all parents to play their part too. Every child is different and you know your child best. I know that every child has different needs, but one thing that can have the biggest positive impact for children is making sure they go to school. When things are working well and children have the right support, ambition, opportunities, belonging, all come from being in school. However excellent our teachers, they can’t teach children who aren’t there. As I put in place measures to drive high and rising standards in schools, children who are absent won’t feel the benefit of them.

Attendance from day one really matters. Children who miss a day at the beginning of a new term are much more likely to be persistently absent for the rest of the school year. So my ask of you for this back to school week is simple, but crucial. If you make sure your children are where they belong - in school - schools are there by your side to support you in this, and so is government.

Education is about partnership – and we owe it to all our children to work together in their best interests. As a new September rolls round, let’s use this moment to fix our foundations, begin the work of rebuilding Britain. Happy back to school week!

“new expert teachers”. How does that work?
6,5000 teacher this year but how many left last year?
Will the breakfast clubs be probably funded or just another financial burden on school?
Forget mental health support for schools it’s CAHMS who desperatley need the funding.

'Working in partnership' with parents is a bit difficult if the school is keeping secrets. Recommend everyone read about Clare Page's case where her school was allowed to keep RSE lessons secret from parents because of 'commercial confidentiality'. Her daughter was told some things that you wouldn't expect in her RSE lessons by the School of Sexuality Education. However, regardless of content, it's not even possible to have a conversation with your child if you don't know what's being taught. If you google Clare Page and 'no secret lessons' you'll find her on X and on crowdjustice.

Bridget Phillipson is now in a position where she can make it mandatory that all RSE / PHSE providers have to go through the same safeguarding checks as staff in schools and that their lessons have to be available to parents. Let's see what she does.

I’ll put 6,500 new expert teachers in classrooms across the country.

Where will you find them? How will you persuade them to stay? Please spend an afternoon reading through some posts from the 160,000 members of the Exit
the classroom and Thrive Facebook page. How can YOU as education secretary persuade those people to stay in teaching? What changes will YOU make? Teachers are fleeing the job on a weekly basis so just ‘putting’ more of them into schools will be about as effective as pouring some more water into a bucket with no bottom. Look at unscrupulous MATs, workload expectations, micromanagement, Mocksteds, Deep Dive subject expectations in primary for teachers trying to lead 5 subjects on a 0.6 contract with no time or pay, excessive observations Learning walks, sudden ‘support plans’ for teachers (usually female and of a certain age) who suddenly and inexplicably are found to be inadequate round about the time they start are on UPS3 and the budget can’t afford them any more.

free breakfast clubs in all primary schools

How much will you pay per child? Will this cover food and staffing? Otherwise, schools can’t run them, it’s very simple.

I’ll boost mental health support across our schools

We don’t need mental health support across schools, we need a bit of common sense and someone researching why kids are actually miserable.

Attendance punishments are not helping. Constant testing and being told you’re not good enough is stressful.
The curriculum is overpacked and not enjoyable.
The teachers are unhappy and leaving so kids are left with the remaining teachers (who are now doubly stressed as they are picking up all the pieces whilst trying to support new teachers who don’t want to stay), supply or cover teachers who won’t be there the next week and there are huge gaping holes in schools where there should be consistent attachment figures.

If you make some changes so that teachers are happy, relaxed, motivated and not continually fearing for their mental health or their job, that would be a start. If they are teaching a curriculum that is interesting , motivating and manageable, they will be able to keep on top of their workload and will be less stressed. If the children aren’t being continually tested, they will also be less stressed and probably attendance wouldn’t be such a battle. If you fund schools to support children with SEND properly, so that non-verbal pupils with ASD who are still in nappies at 6, have a 1:1 to support them all day (not just for 10/15 hours a week) as they can’t be in a classroom unsupported whilst 30 other children are writing sentences about fronted adverbials of time (please remove those from the curriculum as one of your first curriculum changes), they wouldn’t be in crisis and their parents will be happy to send them to school every day. If their parents want a special school place, build more special schools!

Then, if you do all of those things, and children STILL need support with their mental health-then use your money to fund CAMHS properly and let children see a trained professional. They don’t need an EMHP, which is the latest piece of lip service to mental health for kids. This is a new service, probably made up of 95% ex-teachers desperately grabbing a role that sounds a bit like teaching but isn’t!

You have the power and authority to make massive changes here, Bridget Philipson, what are YOU actually going to do? Please don’t waste this opportunity.

I am really concerned that the scale of the issues in education hasn't been understood by the new government.

6500 teachers is less than one per

The school estate is crumbling in many placed

The services that are supposed to support schools from youth justice, cahms, SaLTs, OTss, EPs are spread so thin they don't function.

SEND is in total crisis.

I really, really hope these changes help but I am not convinced.

I fear that all your policies are doing is costing more money. Changing Ofsted wording appears to be tinkering around the edges, while the spiteful VAT on independent schools, which you plan to start mid way through the year, will impact pain on the 7% of children and families you freely admit you care little for - not to mention the 90,000 SEN kids within this cohort as was described so eloquently in the Lords today. This includes my autistic selective mute son. Moving him would rip his world apart. Shame on you. Bringing down one sector will not bolster maintained schools - it will heap pressure on them, slowly over many years.

We all want the best for our children but you are ruining that for aspiring families. Why to add VAT for children already in the private school rather than do it for children starting primary school in the fall 2025. Better yet why do not drop this politics of envy policy. Just recognise all the problems it will bring as you are still on time to avert this disaster. The private school parents should not been fixing the state sector. They are already saving the state money and resources by not using the state school.

As parents we all want the best for our children you say….then why the hell
are the student numbers in my local school being artificially expanded by displaced independent school kids?

You really havent thought this policy through have you? Who wins? No one.

I am concerned about the impact of private school pupils joining our small village school. Already I know of 3 in our small area moving into the school. My son's class is going to be even larger. How many more will be joining, and at what cost to the government financially to pay for them, and to our own children?

I see only problems caused by this. Sadly it has made private school more elite, and other schools worse off.

Are you having a laugh? You actively discriminate against half a million children, inflicting stress, anxiety, uncertainty and chaos on them and their lives and you come here to talk about partnership? And because your envy education tax is not vile enough you decide to fine people for taking their kids off school in term time for whatever reason? Otherwise we know best but not in those categories? You’re a disgrace.

As someone who has put 5 children through day private school and has grandchildren in private schools all I can see is Labour engaging in the politics of envy with the VAT on school fees and I hope there is a successful legal challenge to it and it fails. The demographic which has the highest tax burden in 70 years is that which pays school fees. It is the group of women more likely to have 9% student loan/graduate tax to pay too and who are also paying huge sums for childcare, who get no child benefit and not even a personal tax allowance. This is the hand that feeds the other 90% who have had tax cuts since 2010. Labour is choosing not only to bite this hand that feeds but in imposing school fees is cutting the hand off and the result will be less money for the state but that won't matter because as long as Labour can hit the parents of 500,000 children it could not care less about those children.

It is against EU law to impose VAT on education. In the UK since the middle ages education of anyone even the rich has been charitable. Let us hope the measures are litigated into the ground where they deserve to be buried.

Several Academy chains are pursuing outlandish and punitive behaviour regimes, which lack an evidence base, and are making children's school lives intolerable and inhumane. If you want to improve attendance, are you going to stop these regimes which damage children's mental health and create major barriers to attendance?

This is particularly the case for SEND children who are disproportionately sanctioned due to not having the developmental capacity to meet normative expectations. They are having increasingly negative school experiences due to these punitive behaviour policies and the crisis of SEND funding. Their basic needs are not being met and they are being shamed and punished on a daily basis. Is it any wonder this is leading to a mental health crisis and emotionally based school avoidance for neurodiverse children. Why are you silent on this scandal, Secretary of State? Why are you pointing the finger at parents, when SEND families would love their children to be able to participate in school, but the support needed for their children to be included, is unlawfully being denied?

Why impact children mid year?

This is making the elicit schools more elicit.

Did you listen to the House of Lords today?

This is an utterly flawed and vindictive policy. It will harm those who struggle the most to afford it. Not the wealthy. Some smaller schools are already failing as a result. Children are having to move school. Children with SEN may have to move schools and they will really suffer as change is so hard for them.
If this is about raising money, there are better industries to tax that will raise far more (gambling, anyone?)
This is vindictive politics and cheap vote winning ideology.
Who will pay the price? Children.
This is indefensible

Of course she didn’t listen - the entire government is allergic to facts as they oppose their Marxist ideology.

You certainly don’t share my aspirations for my children - your party has made it OK to openly hate my children because they went to a private school.

I broke myself supporting my (undiagnosed) autistic child through his education at a private school. There are thousands just like me and all you want to do is stick taxes on their education.

Your promises sound nice. But they are completely idealistic. There’s no substitute for proper parenting and hard work. That’s the bottom line.

And I would ask you this: what is the point in working hard and becoming successful if you are despised for it and have to pay a massively disproportionate amount in taxes? It’s a far better life to have a basic job and get help from the state. I genuinely want to know how you think the Labour Party incentivises people to be successful.

This is a joke right? You openly said that you’re not interested in 7% of children who attend private schools. As a minister you have a duty of care to ALL children.

I have a child with ALN who receives extra support at school which I pay for, on top of fees. I will therefore pay more tax than others purely because my child is disabled and receives ALN support help. The legislation is so wide it even encompasses ALN lessons provided by the school. You are taxing SEN children.

I will never forgive the government for what they have done to my child and my family.

6500 teachers - sounds like it’s good right? How many teachers will each state school receive? Less than 1. And the funding for this comes from uprooting other children from their schools by making them unaffordable. But those 7% don’t matter? You are right, we should be ambitious for all children, by raising standards. We need to look at what works, share best practice, resources.
However your proposal changes raising standards to a race to the bottom. Nowhere does the proposals actually go anywhere near fixing the issues in our struggling schools. It does the opposite. It adds pupils who will require their government funded places. It will create bulge classes in already overstretched schools. It creates more work for overstretched staff in poorly maintained buildings. With all due respect how on earth is less than one teacher per school going to alter anything? Who is going to run these breakfast clubs? Our schools are loosing teachers at an alarming rate. Surely it would be better to work with all sectors of education - all of which should be valued- to create the best possible in this country. Ideology and ideological divisive policies will not create what is needed which is a system where pupils, teachers and parents can all benefit no matter what school they go to. All of our children matter. All of them. The 93 and the 7. They are all the future of our country. They all deserve respect, support and care. The more I read of your ideas, the more saddened I become as it’s crystal clear you have missed the crux of the issues facing our state schools, the needs of pupils in all education sectors and the needs staff who work so hard in every type of school.

It’s funny you use the term ‘all children’ when you have made it abundantly clear you are out to destroy the education of 7% of British children.
You are trying to implement a policy that is illegal in the EU, to target what you consider very wealthy families. I’m sure if you are in fact able to read you have had it made clear to you the majority of private schools are not made up of very wealthy families. But in fact made up of normal people who want the best for their children and in many MANY cases the state system has failed them.
here’s an idea that would be much fairer if you seem intent on taxing education - means test parents who use the state system. The state system is made up of many wealthy families who opt for free education on the state in exchange for a better lifestyle - holidays, a bigger house, working less, bigger pension pot etc. For example Keir Starmer earns £400,000 per year yet sends his children to state school costing the tax payer £15k per year. I earn less than 25% of that and am saving the tax payer £15k per year. Which is the fairer one to increase there tax? You going to give me a rebate on the state places I haven’t used? Yet you are targeting my children and their education to make up the short fall.
If all the high earners using the state system had to partially fund it you would plug your big black hole (well maybe). Perhaps then you could put up and shut up?! Because we certainly won’t!

You should start worrying about the VAT on schools fees. You think people won’t leave? They won’t start!!!! They won’t start private school and that’ll be more pressure on the state sector.

I am considering moving my children as if this policy comes in I won’t be able to afford it. But then if I do I’ll cut my hours and you’ll lose my NI and Income Tax. I’m from a working class family, I suffered prejudice and racism in my school -
from the the teachers!!!! I didn’t want my kids to go through this. 40% of kids at Pvte schools are not white, you are discriminating against us.

You are biting the hand that feeds you. I am disgusted by this policy, disgusted by the politics of envy. When I move my kids why should work as hard as I do now, what‘s the incentive? You as a Government will be the laughing stock of the world.

Read Articles 2 and 14 of the European Human Rights Act too, a convention we still sign up to.

Disgraceful and unfair policy.

How does putting VAT on private school fees help any children? By significantly increasing the cost of private education, you are pushing more people back into an already overcrowded and underfunded state education system. State school class sizes and funding will need to increase to cope with the influx of children now having to leave the private system to renter the state system. People that send their children to private school are already funding the state schools through their income tax but by then choosing educate independently they are freeing up space for other children in the state system. Each child space freed up saves the government £ 7500 per annum so why tax these parents even more? The state schools in my area have had unprecedented applications over the summer holidays for places from people now being priced out of their private schools. Watch as class sizes explode. How can this make sense ?

And I have some advice for you:

Your post asks parents to ensure children attend school. The kind of person who doesn’t prioritise their child’s education will not be reading your post.

We're just bracing ourselves for the next covid infection brought home from school.
Parents would really appreciate mitigations in schools to reduce the amount of preventable illnesses circulating..
HEPA filters in classrooms
Masks supported/encouraged for older children and adults (especially those with symptoms or during outbreaks)
Stopping the attendance pressure to send infectious children to school
Telling parents about covid outbreaks in school so they can be alert for symptoms/avoid vulnerable relatives/wear a mask for a couple of weeks etc.

This is ridiculous. Adding vat to private school fees will simply widen the gap even further, putting further strain on state schools. Both parents in private and state schools are very worried about this. Surely parents sending their children to private schools are saving the government money, in fact they are paying twice for their children’s education. The state education system needs a serious overhaul but the vat issue is a drop in the ocean and will not solve the deep rooted issues in the system.

”We owe it to ALL our children to work together in their best interests” but this is simply not true, is it? How can Labour argue that their policy to add VAT to independent school fees is working in the best interest of ALL children? Reports suggest that many children will have to move school because of this policy, causing distress on many levels, so how is that in the best interest of ALL? Even if just one child has to move, no child should be collateral damage - ANY policy that unsettles ANY child is unacceptable. I fear this policy is misguided, divisive and will just widen the economic divide that you so desperately seek to close.

I am aa parent of a child with a constellation of issues that fall short of an EHCP (despite wearing hearing aids and having ASD) because our local council reject 90% of applications. At the suggestion of the nhs SALT and psychiatrist we paid for private school for the smaller class sizes and quiet site. I would love for him to have been able to go to the local state school but we were told - by the council SEN team ! - he wouldn’t cope.

i now have to pay 20% punitive tax on his education, on top of the fees, to provide the education that the council couldn’t offer.

Bridget Philllipson - . I wish you could meet my son and see how badly he’s been let down by the local council and how brilliantly he’s done in his small private school. A lovely school with many ASD children that will probably be shut down in 2 years.

the council is going to have a nightmare providing for all these children when they return to state.

and it’s going to have a massive impact on the 93% you care so passionately about - bigger sizes, fewer grammar school places, and stretched SEN provision.