What have we learned from the Labour Party Conference?

As party conference season comes to an end, our Public Affairs Officer, Ryan Frost, provides a breakdown of the debates on education and social mobility at this year’s Labour Party Conference.

This autumn, the Sutton Trust has attended all three major party conferences and has blogged throughout, discussing each parties’ announcements on education and social mobility.

In a break from the traditional timetable, Labour’s party conference marked the end of the season, as delegates returned to Liverpool to vote on policy and attend fringe events.

Unlike the other major party conferences, the Leader of the Opposition delivered his keynote speech on the penultimate day. In the party’s push for “mission-driven government”, Keir Starmer used the opportunity to build on the Party’s ‘Opportunity’ Mission, launched earlier this year, to declare skills a key part of Labour’s ‘growth’ plans.

Speeches and fringe events also drew on themes of opportunity, with a focus on issues of class and disadvantage, and the general mood music around putting children at the heart of a Labour government. The plenary session for the ‘opportunity’ mission took centre stage on the final day of conference, with Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson delivering her keynote speech.

Early Years Plan

In keeping with plans to tackle barriers to opportunity early, the Shadow Education Secretary used her keynote speech to announce a large-scale review into the early years sector ahead of next year’s general election.

The review will be led by former Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir David Bell, currently serving as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sunderland. It will be tasked with developing a plan for expansion of early education entitlement offers, as well as considering major reform of the workforce, to inform Labour’s plans for tackling a lack of affordable provision.

This early years review presents an opportunity to consider how the expansion set out by the government in the Budget earlier this year can be delivered while ensuring high quality.  The Trust, as well as sector representatives, expressed concerns that the planned expansion will be difficult to deliver and also risks entrenching pre-school inequalities.

The review should be used as an opportunity to develop policy to bridge the attainment gap between children from low-income families and their more affluent peers. Our recent research exploring international early education and childcare systems showed that the most influential factor affecting quality in early childcare is the education, qualifications, and training of the workforce. Higher education qualifications are associated with better child outcomes, and this is especially true for disadvantaged children. Furthermore, disadvantaged children are set to be locked out of the expansion of funded hours, directly replicating the inequality in access to early years education that currently exists at ages 3 and 4. The review of the funded hours model should seek to address this.

Technical Excellence Colleges

On Tuesday, Keir Starmer’s big education announcement was the introduction of ‘technical excellence colleges’, which would “power growth in every part of Britain.” In practice, this would mean existing further education (FE) colleges would be invited to bid for specialist status, while universities and local employers would get a say in the development of local skills improvement plans (LSIPs).

Bids for specialist status would be assessed by a newly created body, Skills England, who would also oversee previously announced reforms to the apprenticeship levy, which Labour want to turn into a wider ‘skills and growth levy’.

The focus on improving technical education and meeting local skills needs is welcome. The Trust’s ‘Recent Evolution of Apprenticeships’ report highlighted that since the last major reforms in 2017, there has been a dramatic decline in apprentice numbers , with Level 2 apprenticeships decreasing the most. Technical excellence colleges could help to bridge this gap in both the need for skills development and technical routes for young people into careers.

However, there is also a need to focus on boosting higher level and degree apprenticeships. Our  ‘Where Next?’ report, published with UCAS, shows that demand for apprenticeships is growing among young people, but supply does not keep pace. Although four in ten UCAS undergraduate applicants are now interested in an apprenticeship role, three in five former applicants did not pursue an apprenticeship because of a lack of supply in their preferred location.

And it remains to be seen how Labour would implement a reformed levy, where up to 50% of employer contributions could fund approved non-apprenticeship qualifications.  Beyond enabling employers to use levy funding for wider skills development, the Trust would welcome a more fundamental review of the apprenticeship levy, to include social mobility and widening participation as an explicit criterion. The gap in representation is most noticeable in the highest level apprenticeships, so any review should take these into account.

Industry and college sector representatives largely welcomed the announcement, but also highlighted the recruitment challenges that colleges face in securing technically expert teachers, which will require engagement with employers and trade associations to solve.

Outside of the main conference hall, vocational education, training, and apprenticeships were also a major focus of fringe events, with one such event calling for a “Skills Revolution Now!”

‘Maths matters for success’

Returning to Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s keynote speech, speaking after the Conservative Party Conference allowed her the opportunity to counter the Prime Minister’s plan for compulsory maths study until the age of eighteen, arguing that the subject cannot be left until the last years of school.

In her speech, Phillipson highlighted that one in four children leave primary school without the maths skills they need and argued that the focus should be on making sure the subject is better taught at age six, rather than sixteen.

As part of efforts to drive “high and rising standards in education”, Labour’s plan would focus on training primary school teachers who do not specialise in maths with the skills and knowledge to deliver ‘practical, real world’ maths teaching, including elements of financial literacy, as part of a reformed maths curriculum.

This teacher training would be delivered via the ‘Teacher Training Entitlement’. This is an important step, as evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) indicates that high-quality teaching is the most important driver of improving student outcomes, especially for the most disadvantaged among them.

However, the plan remains light on detail, especially with regards to funding, with the Shadow Education Secretary saying only that the party’s commitment to charging VAT on private schools would fund the policy. The reinvestment of this money in the state education system would allow for the recruitment of 6,500 specialist teachers.

This is a key aim, as the latest teacher recruitment data for 2022-2023 shows the widest recruitment gap in primary teachers for eight years, as well as recruitment for secondary teachers missing its target by 41%. It will be important to know how Labour would aim to reverse this trend.

Other announcements in Phillipson’s conference speech covered familiar ground, such as primary school breakfast clubs, as well as investment in careers guidance and mental health support in schools.

Higher education

With a focus on ‘skills, skills, skills’, as well as support in the earliest stages of children’s education, the Labour Party conference did not provide any great detail on plans for higher education. Keir Starmer did criticise the government’s recent approach to wanting to limit numbers of young people going to university, saying “the solution is not and never will be levelling-down the working class aspiration to go to university.” And the Shadow Education Secretary’s also promised to “change the way students pay for their time at university”. However she did not elaborate on a promise in the summer to lower student loan repayments for university graduates, something she says can be achieved without any extra borrowing or taxation.

There was also no announcement on the possible reintroduction of university maintenance grants to support the living costs of students from low-income families, despite recent media speculation, including in the Telegraph. The rising cost of living is having a disproportionate impact on students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, with polling by the Trust earlier this year reporting that a third are skipping meals to save on food costs. Just under a quarter of all students say they are less likely to finish their degree because of the cost-of-living crisis.

Overall, it was positive to see technical education and early education, two policy areas that are all too often overlooked, afforded so much prominence in the keynote speeches and debates at this year’s conference. If the Labour Party want to “shatter the class ceiling”, addressing educational outcomes early and providing several high-quality routes into the workplace will be key considerations.

We expect the Labour Party to flesh out these plans in more detail as we head into a general election year, with key decisions on higher education fees and funding still to come.

The Sutton Trust will be engaging with all the main parties as they set out their election pitches, and as we campaign for greater social mobility from birth to work.