Labour wants to create opportunities for all. Can its education pledges narrow the divide?

Labour appears poised to win a historic election victory on 4 July. In the series Life under Labour, we look at Keir Starmer’s five key political missions, and ask what is at stake and whether he can implement the change the country is crying out for.

“It’s tough. It’s very, very tough,” says Glyn Potts, the headteacher at Newman Roman Catholic college in Oldham as he reflected on the challenges facing education in England.

There is not enough money, his school is running a deficit and he is having to consider cuts to school trips and mental health support because of funding pressures. In May 2023 his school was downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement” after an inspection by Ofsted.

Potts, clearly devastated, says the accountability system is “not fit for purpose”, piling pressure on teachers who are “downtrodden and stressed” and leaving in droves. Then there is the family hardship that teachers are dealing with on a daily basis in the classroom.

A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation earlier this month said schools are “staggering” under the pressure of demand amid an epidemic of extreme poverty, as desperate families unable to afford food, clothing or heating increasingly turn to them for help.

“We’re seeing more parents making demands on schools, where previously it wasn’t a school issue,” says Potts. “I had one last week who was saying, ‘I’ve not got housing so it’s all well and good you saying to me he’s got to come to school, but until you can sort my housing out he won’t be coming to school.’ That was a conversation I didn’t have when I started my career.”

Labour’s manifesto promises to break down barriers to opportunity, but how effective will its policies be in tackling the education issues arising out of soaring levels of child poverty, increasing special educational needs, the widening attainment gap, high levels of pupil absence and a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention that means pupils are frequently taught by a non-specialist or a supply teacher?

Potts approves of some of the changes Labour has promised – the 3,000 new school-based nurseries to improve access to quality childcare, the funded breakfast clubs for all primaries and the additional 6,500 teachers Labour has promised, funded by adding VAT to private school fees – though he says it will not address the reasons why people are not going into teaching and why they are not staying in teaching.

Overall, however, he is not convinced that Labour is offering enough to make a difference. “I was hoping they’d be a bit bolder,” says Potts.

Analysts and thinktanks are also concerned about what is not included in Labour’s manifesto, in particular details on funding. As the Education Policy Institute says: “The glaring omission in the Labour party manifesto is a commitment to protect school funding.”

Pupil numbers are expected to fall by 400,000 between now and 2028, which is already creating problems in schools with declining rolls. To protect the current total schools budget – rather than per-pupil spending – could cost £3.5bn a year by 2028, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “This would not be an easy sum to find in a tight funding environment,” says Luke Sibieta, an IFS research fellow. And without any additional information from Labour, schools are “in the dark” about how their budgets might evolve over the next parliament.

After last year’s strike action in schools over pay, Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, is optimistic about a reset in relations between the teaching profession and the government, but he, too, believes Labour will have to go further to bring about meaningful change.

“If things don’t move beyond the manifesto commitments, problems could very much remain. We still have a school estate that needs repairing, a big £4.4bn black hole in the high-needs budget [for children with special educational needs and disabilities] and we need £3.2bn to get back to 2010 levels of spending power for schools. And there is nothing in the manifesto that indicates that sort of shift.”

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Kebede is not without hope, pointing out that the last Labour government’s flagship Sure Start policy was not in the 1997 manifesto, though it went on to become one of Labour’s most popular and successful policies. “While the manifesto leaves more to be desired, previous Labour governments have exceeded manifesto commitments in the past, and I’m hoping for that really,” says Kebede.

Lee Elliot Major is professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter and co-author of Equity in Education: Levelling the Playfield of Learning, which sets out an equity-based approach in schools to help teachers improve the prospects of under-resourced and working-class pupils – a book the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is said to have read and enjoyed.

“My hope – and I think there is a lot of reason to think there is hope on this – is that they will have a strong commitment to social justice, which I don’t think has been there as much as it should have been in recent years. That hopefully will come through in some of the more detailed policies when they are in government.

“They are being very careful to not be too radical – there are some things in the system that are working – but I think there will be a more sympathetic tone towards the education sector as a whole.” The Labour cabinet, should Starmer win on 4 July, will be one of the most state-educated ever. “The lives that some of these politicians have led I hope will mean that there is this real commitment to social justice,” says Elliot Major.

He also thinks the manifesto has the potential to bring about significant change, in particular Labour’s commitment to review the school curriculum – which many feel has become too narrow and academic – giving better access to the arts, music and sport. “That will have an impact on every pupil potentially.”

Labour’s promises on Ofsted to “enhance the inspection regime by replacing a single headline grade with a new report card system telling parents clearly how schools are performing”, are also enthusiastically received by Elliott Major, who is hoping for a system of inspections that challenges but also supports the profession. “If we can do that, then that makes the job itself more attractive and that’s one of the other big challenges for a new Labour government.”

Phillipson has made some heavyweight appointments to help her realise her ambitions for the country’s children, most recently the highly respected Sir Kevan Collins, who will become Labour’s school standards adviser if the party forms a government next month. Collins, who led education recovery efforts in England after Covid, quit the role after the then prime minister Boris Johnson radically scaled back his £15bn catchup plans.

Related: ‘Culture embarrasses them’: how 14 years of Tory fiascos strangled arts in the UK

The veteran education policymaker Sir David Bell, meanwhile, has chaired Labour’s review of early childhood education. Like Collins, he has impressive credentials. A former chief inspector of Ofsted, a former permanent secretary at the Department for Education and as current vice-chancellor at the University of Sunderland, he also has first-hand knowledge of the challenges facing higher education.

On post-16 education, Labour’s manifesto promises high-quality apprenticeships and specialist technical colleges, but has little to say about the financial crisis facing many universities. It acknowledges that the current higher education funding settlement is not working for the taxpayer, universities, staff, or students, adding only: “Labour will act to create a secure future for higher education and the opportunities it creates across the UK. We will work with universities to deliver for students and our economy.” There is no detail, however.

“We have an unsustainable funding system for universities at the moment,” says Elliott Major. “There are some very unpalatable decisions to be made. Do you start increasing [tuition] fees?” He thinks there will be a more positive relationship between government and the higher education sector under Labour but, he adds: “I do think we need another review of the future sustainability of universities.”

With just over a week to polling day, Potts sounds tired and disillusioned. Is Labour offering anything that’s going to make a significant difference to him and his pupils? “They’re not selling hope, and that’s the problem. With Tony Blair in 97 they sold hope. They had dreams.

“I think they’re trying not to overpromise and I can completely understand why. But people need hope and education needs hope, and at the moment it doesn’t feel from my position, and the way it would be for my school, that this is going to make the change, and that’s what’s disappointing.”