Laura Smith is sitting in the sunshine in the crowded courtyard in front of Euston station, London. With her wheeled suitcase and smart outfit, she looks like any other young businesswoman killing time before catching a train home at the end of the working week. Smith is, however, one of the crop of new MPs; she is also the embodiment of something extraordinary that happened during the general election.
A former teacher and mother-of-two, Smith inadvertently found herself a central figure in a campaign by parents to fight school funding cuts. The issue was to become a gamechanger over the election campaign, as support seeped from the Tories. Now Smith, who describes herself as “a northern kid” who likes pie and chips at the pub and has an opinion on everything, finds herself Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich.
This was never the plan. Until four years ago, she was a primary school teacher. After the birth of her second child she decided to work part-time, and left to set up a private tuition business – not the sort that specialises in getting children through the 11-plus and into top selective schools, but one offering support to students lacking confidence. Former pupils and parents pay tribute to her in a page of testimonials on the company’s website. “I liked learning with my tutor as she went at my pace and taught me not to worry if I get something wrong,” says Calum. Pam Hughes says both her daughters benefitted from Smith’s tutoring: “Shannon is no longer afraid of maths, her confidence has grown and her ability has improved considerably.”
All that changed in February when Smith attended a meeting at her old secondary school, Brine Leas in Nantwich, about funding cuts in Cheshire East. Parents were told that under the government’s new national funding formula for schools, Cheshire East, already one of the lowest funded areas in the country, would lose out further and their children’s education was at stake.
There were warnings of a possible four-day school week, cuts to staff and curriculum, and larger class sizes. Smith – a single mother with a son of five and an 11-month-old daughter – was horrified. “How they could be proposing this – in this day and age, in the fifth richest economy in the world – is astounding,” she says. Something snapped.
Smith had long been a member of the Labour party. Born and bred in the railway town of Crewe, the youngest of four, she comes from Scottish mining stock, and her father was good friends with Gwyneth Dunwoody, the former Crewe and Nantwich Labour MP. But funding cuts, and the threat they posed to her children’s education, propelled her into action. “It was time to stop being an armchair critic and get out there and raise awareness.” She went home and posted a message on her Facebook business page. “From that, people became very interested. There was a demand to know more and I organised a protest in Nantwich.”
She says the sedate Cheshire market town had not seen anything like it since the Peasants’ Revolt. “I turned up with my megaphone and my best friend,” says Smith. They were joined by her dad – and 400 others. The protest made the national news and the following month Smith organised a march in Sandbach, which attracted 1,000 people. The crisis in school funding had become a pressing national issue, and when Theresa May called a general election it dominated the campaign trail. “Everybody thought it would be about Brexit,” says Smith, “but it was school funding”.
Her local Labour party selected her to stand for Crewe and Nantwich, against Edward Timpson, a minister at the Department for Education. After four recounts, Smith was declared the winner by 48 votes. “It was a tough fight, but we won,” she says. And with that her life changed for ever: just weeks ago she was watching the Commons on TV, now she’s sitting there. Her sister-in-law is managing her business; when she’s in Westminster her children are being cared for by a tight circle of family and friends.
“It’s an absolute privilege; it’s a total honour,” she says. “I’m so grateful to the people of Crewe and Nantwich for putting me there. I’m going to deliver for them.” She acknowledges it was a close-run fight and many constituents didn’t vote for her, but she intends to represent them all – on all the issues that concern them. There’s a homelessness problem in her constituency, more investment is needed in the town centre and there’s a battle ahead to ensure Crewe keeps its two fire engines. But it was education that inspired her to get into politics, and the campaign for fair school funding is not going away.
Smith praises the bravery of headteachers who spoke out about the consequences of cuts on schools. During the election campaign, she says the issue came up time and again on the doorstep. Last week, Justine Greening, the education secretary, said the government was still committed to its funding changes, but insisted no school would have its budget cut as a result of the new formula. Smith will be watching closely.
Schools in her constituency, like everywhere else, are already having to make cuts because of pressure on existing budgets. The National Audit Office has warned that schools face real-terms cuts of £3bn by 2020. In Crewe, teaching assistants are being lost – contracts that end in the summer are not being renewed. “The people who are going to suffer are going to be the children,” says Smith. “TAs are such an amazing resource and completely undervalued.”
Smith brings first-hand experience of the classroom to her politics. She knows about teachers’ workload and the problems of recruitment and retention. She’s seen children come to school so hungry they pick through the bins for food. She’s found children sobbing because of Sats tests, and she’s worried that children – including her own – are going to be deprived of a well-rounded education and opportunities they deserve.
“If at the end of this journey I can turn round and say to my children: ‘I did absolutely everything I could’ – for them, their friends and their community. That’s all I can do.”
