Category Archives: Bridget Phillipson

Nurseries in England say new rules have reduced care to ‘crowd control’

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The first study into Tory shake-up of childcare shows staff are overwhelmed

The first major study into the Conservatives’ controversial shake-up of childcare has revealed that nursery staff are often doing more “crowd control” than education, because of the increased number of children they are looking after.

Since September last year, nurseries in England have been allowed to increase child-to-staff ratios, so one adult now looks after five two-year-olds rather than four. The change was intended to help deliver the party’s pledge of 15 hours’ free childcare a week from this month for working parents of children aged from nine months to three years.

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Labour’s ‘change of tone’ revives foreign students’ interest in UK universities

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Admissions officers report rise in number of inquiries from international students since general election

Applications by international students to UK universities have been revitalised in a welcome boost for the sector’s ailing financial health by the Labour government’s “change of tone” on immigration since the general election.

Vice-chancellors and admissions officers said a rise in the number of inquiries about courses and feedback from overseas recruitment agents suggested that the change in the government’s stance since the 4 July election had been widely noticed by potential international students and their families.

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Starmer rejects Badenoch’s claim Labour is ‘clueless’ and urges Tories to apologise for the ‘mess they made’ – as it happened

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PM says he will not take lectures from previous government as Kemi Badenoch launches Tory leadership campaign

Kemi Badenoch is speaking now. She says she wants to talk about the future.

She was born in the UK, but “grew up under socialism”, she says (referring to her childhood in Nigeria).

Labour have no ideas. At best, they are announcing things we have already done, and at their worst, they are clueless, irresponsible and dishonest.

They are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public about the state of Britain’s finances, placing political donors into civil service jobs, pretending that they have no plans to cut pensioner benefits before the election and then doing exactly that to cover the cost of pay rises for the unions with no promise of reform, But their model of spend, spend, spend is broken, and they don’t know what to do, and this will only lead to even more cynicism in politics.

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Labour ‘putting rail passengers first’, says minister as she blames Tories for prolonging strikes – UK politics live

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Louise Haigh says she hopes three-year pay deal offered to train drivers will resolve strikes

Chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones has said the pay deal offered to train drivers was “good deal for the taxpayer”, because it was “resetting the relationship between government and public sector workers” and preventing strikes.

PA Media reports he said:

There is a direct cost to the economy if the strikes continue and we need to work together in partnership with workers and trade unions and business in order to get sustainable growth back into the economy. So this is a good deal for the taxpayer, it’s a good deal for the economy.

Making pensioners freeze, slashing services, cutting defence projects, increasing rail fares and raising tax all to fund inflation busting pay deals for trade union donors are political choices made by Labour. They are choosing to placate their union donors over everyone else.

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Education secretary warns of ‘baked-in’ inequality in English school system

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Bridget Phillipson says she is determined to reduce attainment gap as teenagers anticipate A-level results

The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has warned of “massive” inequality in England’s education system, as students brace themselves for this week’s A-level results.

After 14 years of Conservative government, Phillipson said educational inequalities were “baked in”, citing regional disparities in results and attainment gaps between children at state and private schools.

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Labour makes working-class children key to schools reform

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Minister pledges more sports and drama in curriculum review as row deepens over two-child benefit cap

• Interview Labour’s Bridget Phillipson: ‘I will help working-class pupils defy the odds to succeed’

Expanding opportunities for working-class children by broadening the school curriculum to include more sport, drama, art and music alongside core academic subjects will be top priorities for the Labour government, the new education secretary says today.

In her first newspaper interview since being appointed to the cabinet by Keir Starmer, Bridget Phillipson insists her aim is to “break the link between background and success”, and to ensure every child has the same level of opportunity, regardless of their parents’ means.

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