‘Keir Starmer’s horrific plans will kill our schools – I’m on a crusade to to stop him’.uk
Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott warns children’s childhoods and England’s winning school system is at risk of being ‘destroyed’
Sir Keir Starmer is in danger of going down in history as the prime minister who wrecked school standards, according to Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott. Changes which are on the verge of becoming law threaten to “destroy” the future of schooling in England, she warns.
Ms Trott – a former state school pupil who was at the heart of David Cameron’s team – is also urging the Government to ban smartphones from schools and bar under-16s from social media to protect young people and “reclaim childhood”. The 40-year-old mother of three says she is on a “crusade” to thwart “incredibly damaging” plans to overhaul England’s academy system.
She has a blunt message for the Prime Minister: “Don’t let your legacy be that you were destroying standards in English schools. That cannot be right. That cannot be what you want.”
Ms Trott takes pride in England’s academy schools, which were introduced by Labour and rolled out further by the Conservatives. But she claims the freedom and success the schools have enjoyed is threatened by legislation now in the House of Lords.
Labour’s law would scrap today’s legal presumption new schools should be academies. Failing state schools would no longer be turned into academies automatically, and an academy school would have to follow the national curriculum.
She says she is “horrified” by the plans and argues the legislation shows the Prime Minister has taken his “eye off the ball” when it comes to education.
Warning it will make “everything worse,” she says: “They literally cannot justify it. I do not understand how this got through.”
Conservatives point to Labour-run Wales as an example of what happens when a nation rejects the academy revolution. The international Pisa tests for maths, reading and science showed Wales lagged far behind England – and was below the OECD average in science.
She says: “[It] has been a disaster for educational outcomes. It has been a disaster for social mobility.”
This is a deeply personal issue for Ms Trott, who was the first in her family to go to university and whose two sisters are teachers. As a teenager growing up in Oxted, a friend who worked with her in a coffee shop told her about a scheme run by the Sutton Trust to help state school pupils apply to Oxbridge – “I just think they really opened my eyes to what was possible” – and she won a place at Pembroke College, Oxford.
Unlike some of her Tory colleagues, she does not burn with a desire to restore grammar schools.
“I actually think the structures we have at the moment work really well,” she says. “And that is what I am fighting to retain because so much work went into creating a school system and structure which at the moment is delivering for our young people.
“That is exactly the system that so many people have worked so hard to build that is being destroyed by this Labour Government and I just cannot sit here and allow that to happen.”
Laura Trott wants the threat to young people of smartphones and social media tackled (Image: Humphrey Nemar)
She is equally passionate about wanting to ban smartphones in schools and she backs former education minister Lord Nash’s attempt to stop under-16s using social media.
She has compared smartphones to cigarettes and hopes Labour MPs will convince ministers to get the devices out of schools.
“If you look at what is driving bad behaviour, bullying, decreases in attainment, it is all linked to smartphones and I don’t know how much more evidence needs that this needs to change,” she says. “We need to do something about this.”
Giving a child a smartphone, she states, is giving them “access to pornography, bullying, strangers and sextortion”.
“I can’t believe that this is the system we have at the moment and that people aren’t more exercised in Government.”
Nothing less than the future of childhood is at stake, she argues: “They are so damaging to young people and we seem to have abandoned the precautionary principle that we normally have around childhood, that we prove something is safe before we give it to young people. We had a controlled experiment that nobody wanted in this country when during Covid children were on their screens all the time and you can see the explosion in mental health issues that that created.”
If children no longer have phones in their hands and if they leave social media, she predicts, it will “reclaim childhood because at the moment childhood is being destroyed”.
Both parents are teachers are “crying out” for the Government to show leadership, she claims.
“I completely get the amount of pressure that parents are under because of this and that is why the state has to step in and help,” she argues, adding: We have the power to change things.
“We must change things. This is something I am passionate about and I will not stop until we see change.”
Kemi Badenoch with Laura Trott on a farm visit (Image: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire)
More than a decade and a half at the heart of the democratic process has not dimmed her passion for politics.
She admits: “I just desperately wanted to be an MP from a very, very young age.”
She counts herself “very lucky” she always knew what she wanted to do but she is unsure what fired this ambition.
“If you talk to most people who have just had this burning desire to do something, it’s not always clear where it comes from,” she observes. “I do remember very clearly seeing John Major and recognising that he came from a state school and this was a career path that was open to me as well.”
She worked as a management consultant and then “took a 50% pay cut” to put those skills to use as part of a special unit led by Tory moderniser Nick Boles. They were charged with ensuring the Conservatives could hit the ground running if David Cameron led them to victory in 2010.
After the Tories and the Liberal Democrats forged their historic coalition she advised Francis Maude on cutting the cost of the state in the Cabinet Office, and she then helped shape education policy in Downing Street.
She won the Kent constituency of Sevenoaks in Boris Johnson’s 2019 landslide and, after a spell as pensions minister, Rishi Sunak made her Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Laura Trott after being appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Image: Getty Images)
As someone at the heart of the Cameron project, does she regret that the PM resigned after the 2016 Brexit result?
“That is ancient history now,” she says.
But could she imagine herself in a party in coalition with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK? This question is also batted away.
“These are decisions that are above my pay grade,” she says. “I am just getting on with my job right now.”
Ms Trott is equally reluctant to discuss how the Tories should take on their populist rival. Just as David Cameron pushed Gordon Brown out of Downing Street, she wants to focus on opposing and ousting Labour.
“They are the people who are in charge and they are ruining this country with their decisions and it is our job to fight them as much as we can at every turn,” she says. “Look at what they have done to pensioners.
“Look what they have done to farmers. Look what they have done to the economy.
“It is extraordinary the damage they have done in just one year. We need to be focused on delivering for our constituents and fighting the Labour party.
“I think everything else is a distraction.”
Labour will be out in one term, she states, “if there’s any justice in the world”.
Laura Trott believes Labour can be out in one term (Image: Humphrey Nemar)
The loss of power meant she swapped the Treasury for a compact office in Portcullis House, acrss the road from the Elizabeth Tower. But she carries a sense of joy in her work as an MP.
“I still feel lucky every single day coming into the House of Commons,” she says.
Her office overlooks the Palace of Westminster. It is a magnificent view of this Gothic architectural marvel but Ms Trott’s sights are set on getting her party back into power.
She has the warmest of words for the Tory leader.
“Look, Kemi is fantastic. She is a principled politician who is passionate about what she does.
“She is not afraid of taking on difficult issues and she really cares.”
And right now, she is intent on convincing the Government to drop its plans for England’s academies.
“People would forget the u-turn in a day,” she insists. “They just need to not destroy standards in this country.”
The Government defends its school plans
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “This Government is proudly delivering reform across education so that every child can achieve and thrive, and breaking the link between their background and what they can go on to achieve. The Bill will be a seminal moment for the safety and success of our children, with common-sense measures which mean parents can be confident their children are receiving the education they deserve, and schools have the freedom to innovate beyond the basics for their pupils.
“Schools already have the power to ban phones, and we support headteachers to take the necessary steps to prevent disruption, backed by our clear guidance on how to restrict their use.”
A Labour source said: “The Tories left behind crumbling schools, a raging attendance crisis, a broken SEND system and hundreds of failing schools that weren’t delivering for our children – this Labour government is turning them round and ensuring that wherever you live, your children will go to a great local school with a qualified teacher teaching the national curriculum.
“Rather than shouting into the void about the overwhelmingly popular measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, they should instead congratulate the Government on driving up apprenticeships, opening free breakfast clubs and reducing persistent absence in our schools – delivering better life chances for our children.”
