The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, has attacked the government’s record on schools, telling a conference the Tories “wouldn’t survive their own Ofsted inspection”.
Rayner, who left school pregnant at 16 with poor grades, told the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) annual conference that the government’s record on education has meant targets for teacher recruitment had not been met for five years.
She said more teachers were now leaving than joining the profession and 500,000 children were in “supersize” classes, while teachers have had their pay capped.
“I went to a so-called failing school and it was that school, those teachers, that headteacher, those support staff, all of the people there that made me the resilient person that can stand in front of you today, that has become the education secretary elect and has done so well,” she said.
“Because you taught me about making sure that you respect yourself and you are valued and loved regardless of what other people say. That’s what good schools do.”
To applause from delegates at the conference in Liverpool, she said the Tories “wouldn’t survive their own Ofsted inspection”.
Rayner said Labour was committed to creating a “cradle to grave” national education service, “a meaningful and radical transformation of our education system”, and asked the NAHT for its help to shape the policy.
Rayner said funding spent on education was money well spent and an investment for the future. “People say, well that’s ridiculous, how can you afford it, Labour’s ‘spend, spend, spend’. But you know what? We are spending so much money on making children and young people feel bad and then catch up at a later date in adolescence, where we are having to spend money in the wrong place,” she said.
The general secretary of NAHT, Paul Whiteman, said: “We’ll be engaging with Labour’s consultation on their national education service and their other policies which affect young people.
“As I said in my conference speech, education is the best route to a happy and fulfilling future for our young people, and the only silver bullet to solving the problems in our society.”
