There was optimism in the air at this year’s Labour conference as members met amid a 20-year high in the polls for their party, a government facing financial turmoil and leader Sir Keir Starmer predicting a “Labour moment”.
But this feeling was definitely in shorter supply at education events around the event, as a sector facing up to the prospect of an unaffordable cost crisis, unfunded pay rises and a shortage of teachers sought to get its concerns heard.
Perhaps the biggest concern of all for leaders and experts in education gathered at this week’s event in Liverpool has been that the problems and potential of the sector do not appear to be top of the political agenda.
Part of the issue this week was perhaps that shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s speech to conference did not come until today, the final day of conference.
But, of course, the glaringly obvious reason for a lack of focus on education in today’s politics is that we are living through a time of conveyor belt crises, meaning the government’s focus is permanently distracted away from anything beyond the short term, with ministerial line-ups coming and going in short order.
Nonetheless it seems that education is not getting top billing on either side of the political divide.
In his speech, Sir Keir sought to draw parallels between the party’s position now and previous paths to milestone Labour victories in 1945, 1964 and 1997.
But whereas just over 25 years ago - as would-be prime minister Tony Blair said his new government’s three main priorities would be “education education...” and, well, you know the rest - it was striking that, during the leader’s speech on the main stage yesterday, there was scant mention of it at all.
As an education journalist waiting for the bit that will affect teachers and school staff, it reminded me a little of the frustration felt on the day of prime minister Liz Truss’ reshuffle, when appointment after appointment came and went before attention finally turned to our sector.
The sense from many of the education-related events at the conference over the past few days is that leaders and teachers are seriously worried about the challenges in front of them and need to hear that politicians will give them solutions and support.
Three of the main education unions have joined forces to push this point at this week’s Labour event and will do so again at next week’s Conservative gathering.
The NAHT school leaders’ union, the Association of School and College Leaders and the National Education Union are staging events examining the impact on education of the shortage of both funding and staff.
Much of the negativity among the education sector in attendance at the Labour conference was directed squarely at the Conservatives who, after all, have been in power in various forms for more than a decade.
The feeling that the sector needs more funding to cope with rising costs and teacher pay rises has certainly been exacerbated by the sense that the latest financial difficulty facing the government has made this ever more unlikely.
There is also real uncertainty about the new look Department for Education’s political priorities.
Questions over academies policy
During an Education Policy Institute panel on the Schools White Paper and Schools Bill, it was suggested that this legislation, which had already been mired in difficulty before the collapse of Boris Johnson’s government, would now not make it through.
Similarly, the government’s renewed interest in grammar schools was also dismissed. Labour’s shadow school minister, Stephen Morgan, said he did not expect the government to legislate on it at all, and dismissed the attention on grammars as a “culture war issue”.
But if the Schools Bill - and its plans to form a new system of multi-academy trust regulation - do not proceed, there will be a big question mark over the future direction of an education system of both maintained schools and academies.
There was, therefore, an impatience among some education figures to know how a Labour government might approach things differently.
However, Mr Morgan was non-committal on what academy policy would look like. When asked about this, he simply suggested that meddling with school structures was not the right focus.
But for many in the sector, a policy announcement would have been welcome, especially for critics of the current system, such as National Education Union general secretary Mary Bousted, who raised concerns about off-rolling and school admissions.
She urged Labour to address the issue of the middle tier of school oversight and told Mr Morgan that some “structural buttress was needed to ensure schools do the job that they are paid to do, which is to educate children and their community”.
Labour’s vision: ‘Skills as well as knowledge’
When Ms Phillipson spoke today, she earned big applause both when telling her own personal story and when pledging to remove tax breaks from private schools.
The main focus of her speech, however, was on Labour’s plan for all primary schools to have a funded breakfast clubs.
And while there was not much new detail in terms of schools policy, she did signal that a Labour government would have a fresh vision of education.
She told delegates that we need a system that looks to the future, not the past, and ”a curriculum that prizes skills as well as knowledge; that values and nurtures creativity alongside academic success”.
This will be well received by many in attendance who had raised concerns about the current approach to school curriculum, exams and accountability.
For example, there was a warning from NASUWT general secretary Patrick Roach that a narrow curriculum focus was working against disadvantaged students, while Ms Bousted said that, for the past 12 years, there had been a moratorium on discussion about education.
“It’s been knowledge-rich curriculum assessed with end of term exams,” she stated at one event.
Any reinvention of the curriculum or shift in emphasis on the purpose of education will, of course, be contentious, but this was perhaps the biggest single signal of how education policy might change if we see a Labour administration in the near future.
Next stop: Birmingham
The issue for schools, leaders and staff is that their problems exist in the here and now.
Next week, attention shifts to the Conservative Party gathering in Birmingham, where representatives from the sector will once again raise their concerns.
Will the need for more funding, or the struggles to recruit and retain staff, be acknowledged by those in power? Will the policy focus be on the expansion of grammar schools?
And will education still find itself struggling to get attention, or even a mention, from those at the top table?
