Laura Trott: Labour’s education policy teaches one main lesson – how to break promises and pretend you haven’t

Laura Trott is Shadow Education Secretary and MP for Sevenoaks.

Labour’s attack on schools goes beyond their ideological crusade to abolish academies and strangle the independent sector, they’re also punishing state schools with Rachel Reeves’s Jobs Tax. But to top it all off they are abandoning their manifesto pledge to recruit 6,500 new teachers.

As is becoming a pattern with Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, she thinks she can take the public for fools.

Labour believe that if you repeat something enough it makes it true. It doesn’t. She insisted that her disastrous Schools Bill wasn’t capping pay. It was. She continues to insist the Bill will allow schools to innovate. It does the opposite; it will curtail school freedoms.

And now on teacher pay she tries to tell us all that there are actually more teachers than a year ago. I am afraid the Department for Education’s own website contradicts her on this basic fact. It says in black and white that there are in fact 400 fewer teachers. And yet, the Education Secretary continues to insist they are well on their way to meet one of their central pledges to the public at the last election.

When it comes to schools, the government have behaved disgracefully.

Time and time again, ministers assured schools that they would be compensated for Rachel Reeves’ Jobs Tax. But a promise by this Government made is a promise inevitably broken. Nurseries received nothing and are sadly on the brink. Schools are facing a massive shortfall in compensation, alongside unfunded pay rises. Sadly this means many have already made the difficult decision to cut teachers jobs. So, far from hitting that 6,500 target teacher numbers are falling and will continue to fall.

Worse still, the Prime Minister gloated on social media that the money raised by taxing education isn’t even being used to hire these new teachers. It’s being diverted to cover housing of illegal immigrants.

Let’s be clear: Labour are taxing education and giving the proceeds to fix their failure to secure our borders. Parents were told this would improve schools. It hasn’t. The only thing this tax has done is make it harder for parents to choose the right school and has put more pressure on the state sector, all while failing to deliver the teachers we were promised.

It is no surprise that last week, MPs on the cross-party Education Select Committee described the government’s pledge as not only “unclear” but said the Government “lacks a coherent plan.” Words that could sum up the entire agenda of this Labour government.

And how is the Education Secretary attempting to shape shift and explain her broken promises? By saying that Primary School teachers now don’t count. Pretty insulting for the many brilliant primary school teachers up and down the country.

In December, on one of the Governments resets. First Steps? Milestones? I lose track. The Government said all children should be starting primary school ready to learn, with a shiny new school readiness target. And what was their first milestone to achieve this? Hire 6,500 more teachers. I am not sure how secondary school teachers will help 4-year-olds be school ready.

And should we really be piling more and more responsibilities onto our teachers when we need to be having an honest conversation about responsibility. What belongs to parents, and what belongs to the state?

Too often, schools are being expected to fill parenting gaps, not just educational ones. Teachers are stepping in where parents aren’t. They do it because they care. But that is not their role to potty-train, brush teeth, or teach children to dress themselves. That starts at home. Of course, children with SEND need tailored support, but for the majority the shift in responsibility has gone too far.

This is adding the workload of hardworking teachers and one of the many real problems in our schools that is going unaddressed. Labour’s disastrous Schools Bill mentions nothing of teacher retention, pupil discipline, attendance and smartphones. Bridget Phillipson is more fixated on an ideological union driven crusade and pulling apart a system that works.

Labour’s education vandalism is dismantling the structures that helped raise school standards in this country. This means Labour will be defined by fewer teachers, lower standards and less choice for parents.

Labour said they’d raise standards.

Instead, they’ve taxed education and spent the money elsewhere. They said they’d hire more teachers. We’ve ended up with fewer. They said education was their priority, but it’s the children, teachers and parents who are paying the price for their broken promises and U-turns.

Labour must be held to account for their failure to keep their promises – and I will relentlessly highlight where they are letting pupils and parents down.

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