Zoomchat with Bridget Phillipson - Thursday 28th September 11-12

[NicolaDMumsnet]

Hi all,

We’re pleased to announce a Zoomchat with Shadow Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson this Thursday from 11am-12pm. You can book your place now by registering for free here.

Bridget has been the Labour MP for Houghton and Sunderland South since 2010. In April 2020 she joined the Shadow Cabinet under Keir Starmer as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, before being appointed Shadow Education Secretary in November 2021.

Please post your questions below ahead of the chat. Please note that we will be closing the thread on Thursday morning so please ensure you have posted your questions before then. If there is time, there may also be an opportunity to ask additional questions live.

If you join the Zoomchat, your camera will be turned off by default. Your screen name might be visible, so consider whether you’re happy to use your RL name or want to use your MN posting name or something else entirely. The Zoomchat will be recorded so you can catch up if you’re unable to attend on the day.

Please stick to the usual guidelines - one question per user, keep it civil, and if one topic is dominating, please don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point (we'll be deleting questions that are repeated multiple times). We'll be limited for time so do keep questions as short as possible so that we’re able to ask more of them - as always, we'll try to make sure we cover the topics that we know are important to Mumsnet users.

Thanks,
MNHQ.

What is your view on the politicisation of the curriculum? I find it extremely disturbing that children are being taught gender ideolgoy and critical race theory as factual things rather than viewpoints which should have to fight for their place alongside other ideas.

What is Labour going to do about the increasing aggressive politicisation of schools?

Hello,

Currently the government fines hard working parents who take their kids out of school for a week's holiday, often due to the unaffordable prices or the fact that not everyone is lucky enough to work a regular office type job where holiday can be taken at convenient times.

Surely in cases where the child has otherwise excellent attendance, creating an adversarial system of fines and punishment isn't either in the spirit of encouraging partnership with parents over schooling, or productive in sending the right message. I note the current laws also strip headteachers of the ability to use their judgement or discretion in all but the most extreme cases. There is a better middle ground available here which also supports hard working parents.

What is your position on this?

Why isn't British Sign Language taught in schools, as an option alongside French or German? The deaf community are still so isolated and disadvantaged in this country.

I have a family member who is a teacher in a SEN school for children with very challenging behaviour. They are in week 4 of the school year and already firefighting because of lack of staff and resources. Given that there has been an increase of ND diagnosis and children with severe behavioural problems (possibly exasperated due to lockdown), what would your party to improve this situation?

The only Labour plan I’ve seen so far for schools is to force them to have breakfast clubs. This is for the purpose of getting their parents back into work, not to benefit their education. What actual education policies do you have?

I see you do want to get more teachers in schools though, which is great-they are leaving in droves, mainly due to stress from Ofsted/SLT and workload. What do you actually propose to do to stop teachers leaving and to encourage them to stay? Please don’t decide to pay a team of academy CEOs to sit around and spend 6 months discussing what they think teachers should do differently. Actually DO something to reduce the workload.

What benefits will the imposition of VAT on school fees have on those pupils in the North East, estimated between 10 and 25% of the independent school pupil number depending on the source, whose parents will be priced out of the market? As the achievement gap at GCSE and A level between the North East and the South East has grown, it is hard to see any positives in adding more children into already over stretched state education.

Hi Bridget,

"Gender recognition/reassignment/affirmation" all refer to sex deception. The UK government, in enacting sex deception via the GRA 2004, the EA2010 (with the PC of "gender reassigment"), and its decades-long policy of issuing passports and driver's licenses with falsified sex markers, breached its own statutory safeguarding responsibilities. Will you support Repeal of the GRA and removal of all state-enabled sex deception in law and policy to remedy this breach?

Thanks,
Women's and Children's Coalition

A fundamental issue with the provision of education is the influence of political ideology by Governments.

Ministers with no background in education make sweeping changes based on personal agendas.

Could education be run by educators who prioritise learning over molding children into workers? Homework in primary education needs to stop.

• Around 4 million children live in poverty across the UK. The present cost of living crisis is estimated to increase this number by around 500,000.
• Under the current means-testing system, almost 1 million children growing up in poverty do not have access to free school meals.
• Hunger and food insecurity negatively impact a child's ability to learn, and good nutrition from an early age is crucial for a child's physical and mental development.
• Several Labour-led local authorities, such as the London boroughs of Islington and Newham, have introduced successful self-funded Universal Free School Meals policies.
•when you are in power following the next election will the Labour Party support the proposals outlined in The Free School Meals (Primary Schools) Bill and replace the means-testing system for free school meals with the universal provision of free school meals to all state primary school students. The National Education Union are also campaigning in support of this through their No Child Left Behind campaign.

Dear Bridget,

Can you advise what Labour will be doing to address the vast North/South divide when it comes to educational attainment please? The North East has the poorest exam results and can’t even scrape a top 20 list together for the Sunday Times top schools guides, never mind place in the top 100.

It is unclear how the plans to add VAT to private school fees will help? How exactly will that money be used and what specific help will be given to children in the North East where many parents scrimp and save and borrow huge amounts to pay for a secondary education because the schools are utterly dire and there is no other choice. A rich family in the south east who buy a million pound house to be in the catchment of a wonderful state school will do very well out of Labour’s proposal, but what do we do in the North?

Bridget you seem to be switched on about schools for England.

But a whole generation pupils in Scotland and Wales are let down by dismal education systems. The Labour opposition in Scotland is a joke. They don't speak up for children and have let SNP get away nonsense. When will Labour in the devolved regions step up? Devolved administrations created by Labour in the first place.

Hello Bridget
One of the biggest issues facing schools is trying to care for and educate students with complex send without the necessary resources. What would the Labour party do to increase specialist school places and to fund more support in our schools?

What will you do to end the postcode lottery and create a system where all schools are good?

Would you consider random allocation of school places as per New York? If not, what else could work?

Hi Bridget

As a professional working mum, like many others that I know, I send my children to independent school because of the excellent wrap around care and extra curricular activities which I am unable to take them to outside of school due to long working hours. Are you going to fund similar provision in state schools so we can move our children to the state sector and continue working, or are you content to let professional working mums like myself drop out of employment when we can no longer afford the fees due your VAT policy? If it’s the latter, have you taken into account the related drop in income tax revenue when calculating how much the VAT policy would potentially raise?

A referral for an ADHD assessment for a child on the NHS can only be made by a school. Not a GP and not a parent - even a parent already diagnosed with ADHD (it is hereditary). Given 20pc of the population are estimated to be neurodiverse, that undiagnosed and unmanaged ADHD has an impact on mental health and poses an increased risk of suicide and risky behaviour, and that diagnosis can only be made by educational psychologists or equivalently qualified and experienced people, why are teachers the gatekeepers to ADHD assessment?

I’m very supportive of proposals to charge VAT on private school fees, but would like to understand more about how the additional tax revenue raised will be used. In particular, can this be targeted at addressing inequalities in educational outcomes?

Will you be looking to reduce university fees? The current set up benefits the wealthy as well as effectively making their education cheaper, as they won’t owe interest on loans. The introduction of the horrific tuition has made a degree more out of reach for ordinary families.

How do you plan to address the problem that is educating white working class boys? They fail disproportionately. Could you envisage an early escape to apprenticeships, at 15 perhaps provided a threshold competence is examined, outwith GCSE, with solid schemes and training programmes that build in literacy and numeracy of immediate relevance? So a lad who's planning to work with his dad as a fencing contractor really has a grip on the mathematics of purchasing and pricing his services?

I would like to know what Labour plan is towards provision of secondary education particularly in some areas of NW London. Children are being disadvantaged by the amount of new houses being built but no thought towards education. The good schools are desperately oversubscribed and children are having to travel really far to access a decent school.

Hello,

Can you please state your position on VAT on independent schools?

How will this be implemented across different education jurisdictions such as Scotland and Wales who determine their own education policy and process?

How would you accommodate the students who financially will have to move from the independent sector to state sector? Financially how will you fund the additional £5k approx per child?

how does this smash any class ceiling?

in my local area one Labour MP attended my school ( I am Head of an independent school) and another Labour MP attended a private boys’ school. Your boss also attended Reigate Grammar. In fact, representation of private school alumni is twice the national average amongst Labour MPs. Will they be able to share their true feelings and have a free vote on this or will there be a party line they cannot deviate from.

What do you project as the impact of this in the 25,000 overseas students who study in the UK?

Which consultancy company has devised this plan for you? All the major advisory education groups I worked for previously promote a private or PPS model for education to lessen the economic burden on the government.

in Figure v.7.2 of OECD’s report on private education and school choice, what position on the continuum are you aiming for and for what aim?
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/14bbef20-en.pdf?expires=1695845526&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=B1814DC491A6DA5BEFAB816E9A9E2181#:~:text=On%20average%20across%20OECD%20countries%2C%205%25%20of%20students%20were%20enrolled,of%20their%20funding%20from%20the

as everything we do as educators should have the question “how will this improve this for children/ students?” How does adding VAT on fees improve learning which is your job?

Finally, how do you feel about education ministers having the shortest tenure of any ministerial position? Not the best bet for a long term cabinet position.

While state schools continue to have no funded G&T provision, this fosters a brain drain whereby very bright students will tend to opt out of state schools, either to home school or to the independent sector. One reason the previous Labour government created a G&T programme in state schools was to stop this brain drain. In contrast, the closing of grammar schools in the 1970's caused the largest jump in pupil numbers in independent schools in the sector's history. Putting taxes on independent schools may lift them out of more people's reach, but it doesn't mean exceptionally able students will fare any better in state schools.
In Scotland, exceptionally high ability is recognized legally as a special educational need. In England and Wales the same statutory recognition does not exist. Schools are free to disregard recommendations in formal reports from qualified specialists, and they frequently do. When acceleration has been recommended by an educational psychologist it can be refused by a headteacher with no comparable training. Flexi-schooling can also be (and usually is) refused by the headteacher. Parents can be forced to home-school when psychologist's recommendations have been rejected, acceleration and flexi-schooling have been refused, and the school then tries to off-roll the child.
What would you do to ensure the needs of exceptionally able students receive the same statutory recognition in law in England and Wales that they currently do in Scotland, and how would you ensure they are met in state schools?

How will you address the North/South gap in funding for education?

Would a Labour government consider extending the free childcare to include wraparound for parents of school aged children so the lowest paid, single parents, and those with no family support can afford to work? Or even subsidising it?

Would a Labour government consider bringing some sanity back to the classroom instead of the ridiculous exam system we now have, which is a legacy of Gove's desperate drive to return to the 1970s (when working class children didn't do that well, and both my parents left school with nothing at all). The current system is not fit for purpose and only benefits the top end of achievement.

Would a Labour government fund schools adequately so head teachers can do their jobs instead of being forced to only hire early career teachers on low salaries, so they can also pay the heating bill, TA salaries, for furniture, building repairs etc? High level teachers are leaving the profession because if you don't want to go into leadership, it's a dead end job with appalling working conditions and an abysmal salary ceiling for a profession requiring 4 years of study/training and 2 years of post-qualification work based training. And getting a job when you're at the top end of the salary scale is almost impossible for aforementioned budget reasons, forcing those teachers out of the profession.