Key Stage

What do I have in common with Gemma Collins? Well, we’ve both been spotted at Sugar Hut, a Brentwood nightclub famed for its ‘premium’ prices and unnerving number of Buddha statues. And now, we’ve both interviewed Bridget Phillipson.

This interview, will, I suspect, cause less of a furore. Phillipson’s video with ‘the GC’ – who made her name on ITV’s the Only Way is Essex – prompted a social media pile-on with a distinct note of classism. Collins talked about her love for Richard III and the importance of every kid leaving school with a skillset; this didn’t matter to the angry commenters. “I did think there was an awful lot of snobbery about [it],” says Phillipson. “They just said it was outrageous without offering any rationale. I thought she was incredibly focused, a lot of fun, and [she] reaches parents and young people that I just cannot reach. Her message about working hard at school, finding what you’re good at, sticking at it, overcoming the odds… that’s far more powerful coming from Gemma Collins than it ever would be from any politician. [Now] when I share content about breakfast clubs, or Best Start family hubs, or the National Year of Reading, we’re reaching a bigger audience because of the work we’ve done with people like Gemma.”

The connection between education and class runs deep. Phillipson tells me that she sees the “unique” role of Labour governments as breaking the link between someone’s background and their destiny. “The Labour party has always been about giving people the freedom to be who they want to be and to live the lives that they want to live, but all too often that is constrained by socioeconomic background. What I’ve been seeking to do, particularly through the schools white paper, is to address some of the big challenges we see around white working class kids in particular, and the big gap we see in their attainment at school.”

The plight of white working-class kids must resonate with Phillipson: she had a tough upbringing, raised by her single mother in the town of Washington in Tyne and Wear. “We didn’t have a huge amount, but I had a loving family who supported me, who wanted me to achieve; who, despite a lack of material goods, valued education and gave me all the love and support that I needed.

“I think we often, on the left, shy away from talking about the importance of family and giving children the best start. That’s not about making judgments about family shape or size – brilliant families come in many different shapes and sizes: single parent families, same sex couples, foster families. This is about the love that we give to the children that we care for.” In policy terms, she links this focus on family to the flagship Best Start programme, which will establish ‘family hubs’ across the country by 2028. She points out that, in terms of tackling inequality, waiting until children start school is too late: by that point, significant attainment gaps have already opened up.

You have to be both willing to take on board reasonable challenge, but not so thin-skinned that you let some of the nonsense affect you too much

Early intervention is also a hallmark of Phillipson’s proposed changes to the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system. Send reform was always going to be near the top of an incoming education secretary’s inbox; the status quo is patently broken, with devastating consequences for children, parents, schools and local authorities. Currently, the system revolves around education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which set out what support a particular child should receive, and which are legally binding on local authorities. Since their introduction in 2014, a vicious cycle has emerged: as the number of children with EHCPs has increased, funding available for lower-level Send support outside of EHCPs has been eroded, creating strong incentives for ever more parents to pursue an EHCP. The government’s proposals maintain EHCPs, but introduce parallel, tiered individual support plans (ISPs), with only children on the highest ISP tiers also receiving an EHCP. The basic idea is to shift responsibility from councils to schools, gradually reduce the number of children receiving new EHCPs, and increase Send support for children without them.

The shift towards school-led support is not without its risks – teachers are already severely overworked. Nevertheless, the response from the sector has been cautiously positive, especially among frontline healthcare professionals. If Phillipson really has threaded the needle on this fraught issue, it will rank as one of the more impressive achievements of any Labour minister. But she is not complacent. “It would be a mistake to believe that somehow it’s job done. People welcoming the approach is wonderful, but we now have to deliver for children. We have to make that change happen in our schools, in our health system, and we will also have to legislate for the change that we want to bring, and that’s far from easy.”

Many parents – even those sympathetic to the changes in principle – are worried. After the reforms as they stand, children who have only an ISP will not be able to seek legal recourse if they feel their child’s needs are not being met. Phillipson emphasises the importance of the consultation in this regard. “We’re carefully considering all of this. When I said to parents, this is a genuine consultation, and we’ll listen, I meant it. We are going to reflect seriously where parents have raised areas where they want reassurance that this will be a better system with stronger support, and that is absolutely the intention: a better system with stronger support, with stronger protection, with more children who can access what they need, not a stripping away of support or fewer rights for children.” She also reiterates the point that parents tend to be so focused on EHCPs precisely because the current system places so much emphasis on them. As she puts it: “No parent emerges into the world thinking ‘what I desperately want for my child is an EHCP’.”

Part of the problem is that families have been failed before. “The scepticism that parents have had, quite reasonably, is that they were promised a better system back in 2014. The promise of that system never materialized, despite the good intentions of those who delivered those changes.” She also acknowledges concerns that her plans amount to a cost-saving exercise, an idea she is keen to dispel. “I was clear right from the off: this is about better outcomes for children… even if money were no object, the system isn’t working.”

While she takes pains to underline her commitment to the consultation process, Phillipson is likely to stick to the key principles set out in the white paper: in a government infamous for flip-flops, she has been responsible for a notable lack of U-turns. Whether on Gemma Collins or VAT on private school fees, she is willing to stand her ground. Take this tweet from 2024: “Our state schools need teachers more than private schools need embossed stationery. Our children need mental health support more than private schools need new pools. Our students need careers advice more than private schools need AstroTurf pitches.” Cogent; political; values-based – could other ministers learn something from her approach? “I do stand my ground, but only where I know it’s in the interests of children… you have to be both willing to take on board reasonable challenge, but not so thin-skinned that you let some of the nonsense affect you too much.”

Yet Phillipson, who holds the women and equalities brief alongside education, won’t be drawn on the process by which just about every politician in the Western world has simultaneously changed their mind on trans rights – in the late 2010s, the consensus on trans inclusion stretched from Theresa May to Donald Trump – although she does bemoan that “we’ve ended up with a very polarised debate”. She recently presented the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s new code of practice to parliament, which, according to the government, “provides guidance to make the law clearer for service providers and others” while “ensuring everyone can access services safely, free from harassment, and with dignity.” Many LGBTQ+ campaigners disagree. Nadia Whittome, the MP for Nottingham East, argues that the guidance “will exclude trans people from services and facilities that they have long used without issue, putting them at increased risk of harassment and violence, and effectively pushing them out of public life.”

Phillipson believes that this is an area which involves a ‘balance of rights,’ and underlines her commitment to protecting trans people from abuse and harassment. “The majority of the public recognize that you can treat trans people with respect and that there’s no need to be needlessly antagonistic or abusive, whilst at the same time recognizing that there are times when women-only spaces are necessary and right. The responsibility that I’ve had leading this work as the minister and in bringing forward the code of practice is to… [make] sure that the code is workable, practical, and robust, and will stand the test of time.”

A strange feature of today’s debate around trans rights is that it centres on the interpretation of legislation written over a decade ago – or, in the case of the regulations which govern the facilities employers must provide, more than 30 years ago. Isn’t the obvious solution new legislation? Phillipson doesn’t think so. “I don’t believe that would be the answer. I think the Equality Act gives us the basis for the protections that trans people continue to enjoy, as well as the rights that women continue to hold in our society. There are practical considerations arising out of the supreme court ruling, and the EHRC sets out what service providers and others need to do in order to make sure that everyone gets the support they need. It is right that we ensure that trans people’s human rights are upheld and respected, but we also need to uphold the human rights of women. This can’t be seen as a zero-sum game.” The crucial background for Phillipson – who used to run a women’s refuge – is the “genuine fear that women face owing to the nature and the severity of male violence across society,” although she emphasises that trans people are not responsible for this misogynistic violence.

“That is the context in which women live their lives every day: worrying about walking back when it’s late from the station, worrying about whether they’ll experience violence in a relationship, worrying about being vulnerable or unconscious in a hospital ward [that] there might be men present. I think it is about more understanding across the board as to the experiences of others, and making sure that we are a society where everyone is valued, welcomed, and accepted for who they are, that they can live their lives free from intimidation, and with the dignity and respect that we all deserve.”

Phillipson is clear that she has “always believed that trans people should be free to live their lives without prejudice, discrimination, [or] hatred.” But it is notable that, in her defence of the rights of trans people on the one hand, and women on the other, she tacitly implies that these are two separate groups, and that ‘women-only spaces’ definitionally exclude trans women. This position is now unlikely to see much pushback from within Labour. Many Labour politicians, including the soft-left lodestar Andy Burnham, seem to have internalised last year’s supreme court judgement – which was theoretically limited in scope to the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equalities Act, but is often treated by policymakers as some sort of divine proclamation on sex and gender.

University funding is another part of the education brief that has reached crisis point. When I was a 17-year-old applying to go to university, I was told that there was no need to worry about my student loan repayments because the repayment threshold would go up in line with average earnings. Instead, it has been repeatedly frozen, with a particularly consequential freeze instituted by Boris Johnson in 2021. Rachel Reeves will increase the threshold next year but then freeze it until 2030. As a result of the freezes, the highest earners are likely to pay less, but most graduates will pay a much greater sum over the course of their lifetime than they would have expected when they took out the loan. According to the IFS, for a middle-earner the cost is probably around £20,000. Martin Lewis, the consumer rights activist, has accused governments of acting in a way that no commercial lender would be allowed to. More broadly, the policy seems to be yet another breach of the intergenerational social contract.

Phillipson seems to appreciate that this situation is, in isolation, unfair, but stands by the decision to refreeze the threshold. “I’d be the first to admit that there are big problems with the system that we’ve inherited, but there are big problems that we’ve inherited right across the board, not least around child poverty. We’re investing £3bn in lifting the two-child limit [which] we could have invested in a boost to the student finance system, but that wouldn’t have been the Labour approach that I would want to see.” As for the social contract, she points out that the government’s retail policies elsewhere. “Many of those graduates who have plan 2 loans are also the people that will benefit from the big expansion in social affordable housing; from the housebuilding that we want to achieve in the private sector, too. [And] many of those graduates are now in their 30s and thinking about starting a family and putting down roots… they get the big expansion in childcare and early years education.”

Some analysts think that, as a Starmer loyalist, a change of Labour leader could put Phillipson’s position at risk. I’m not sure it’s so simple. Most obviously, she was the first cabinet minister to break ranks to support Andy Burnham’s return to parliament; more substantially, she is clearly not the unreconstructed Blairite many painted her as early in her career. A future leader, looking to build a cabinet willing to put the ‘deliver’ in ‘deliverism,’ may find they don’t need to look too far.

Image credit (main): Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street, OGL 3 via Wikimedia Commons

Image credit (body): House of Commons via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Note: the final paragraph of this piece is an abridged version of that which appeared in print.