Labour proposes ‘National Excellence Programme’ for education

At their recent party conference in Brighton, the Labour party set out some of their plans for schools and education. Leader Sir Keir Starmer said that the next Labour government will boost the number of outstanding schools in all areas of the country; drive up standards; and enable every child to achieve their full potential. He said that the ‘National Excellence Programme’ would include recruiting thousands of new teachers to address vacancies and skills gaps across the profession; ‘reforming Ofsted’ to focus on supporting struggling schools and providing teachers and headteachers with continuing professional development and leadership skills training.

On supporting struggling schools, Labour say that even before the pandemic 200,000 primary age children in England were growing up in areas with not a single primary school rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, while 210,000 pupils were studying in ‘stuck’ schools which have received ratings of ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’ for 13 years or more. However little detail was given on exactly how Ofsted would be reformed to support such schools.

Labour propose to fund the programme through the ending of tax exemptions for independent schools, and they estimate that removing the charitable status of England's private schools would raise £1.6 billion from VAT and £100 million from business rates, although representatives of independent schools disputed these figures.

Other plans set out during the conference included introducing two weeks’ worth of compulsory work experience, to ‘connect young people with local employers and build the skills needed for work’, as well as providing careers advice to all children by giving schools access to a professional careers advisor one day a week. Labour also want to ‘write a curriculum for tomorrow’, with digital skills made the ‘fourth pillar’ of education, alongside reading, writing and maths. To support this they would guarantee that every child has access to a device at home. This would be achieved via a ‘device renewal fund’, out of which Local Authorities could fund renewing the 1.3million devices delivered during the pandemic as a permanent scheme for children without adequate access to a device.

Speaking about the plans, Sir Keir said: ‘I want every parent in the country to be able to send their child to a great state school. On top of that, 40 per cent of young people leave compulsory education without essential qualifications. What does that say about their future? We will not put up with that. That is why Labour will launch the most ambitious school improvement plan ever.’

We will report on education plans from the Conservative party conference next week.