‘Labour must show how buildings aren’t the only way schools are crumbling’

Repeatedly claiming a public service is falling apart is a much easier political message to land if it is, literally, crumbling.

This rather obvious point was not lost on shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson and her team over the weekend when they finessed and the repeatedly deployed the line that crumbling concrete in England’s school buildings “was the defining image of 13 years of Conservative-led education”.

Phillipson’s media rounds went well and while many on social media were wondering about the whereabouts of the actual education secretary Gillian Keegan as this scandal came to a crescendo, it was hard to miss her shadow condemning the government for its failure to invest in schools.

“It’s scandalous what they have allowed to happen in our schools”

Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson says “Rishi Sunak himself bears responsibility” for crumbling concrete in schools, because “he cut the budgets”#BBCLauraK https://t.co/H5cHGUu3Es pic.twitter.com/7VvbH86VdZ

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 3, 2023

As a back-to-school story, it is honestly hard to imagine the Conservatives being more generous to the shadow education team. And then, today, there was the extraordinary sight of Keegan imploding as she finished an interview with ITV News.

And yet this feels like the start of something bigger too. I have argued for a while that education was likely to bubble up as a tier one electoral issue in time for the general election next year, and so it is coming to pass.

Your kid’s school is literally collapsing and the Tories want you to thank them for it. pic.twitter.com/zp1ejgkIMy

— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) September 4, 2023

And this won’t be just about school buildings, as useful as the current shambles is in making an intangible metaphor tangibly real.

I spend a lot of time in focus groups taking to parents of school-aged kids (who make up a voter base of roughly 14m adults) and there are a few very specific areas that are now resonating with mums, dads and careers to a point that I suspect they have become electorally salient.

Special educational needs support is crumbling too

Firstly, the Special Educational Needs system is crumbling. There is growing awareness among parents the structures of diagnosis and support both in mainstream schools and in special schools just aren’t functioning.

A perfect storm of greater awareness and woeful under-funding means that fewer and fewer mums and dads believe that their kids are getting the care they need. Reports yesterday that record numbers of parents are successfully appealing against council’s when it comes to special school placements.

The trouble for the government is that it’s not just parents of SEND kids who are angry, increasingly it’s parents who don’t have to engage with the system too. It’s a shared rage at the school gates.

Soaring child mental health issues  – and struggles getting help

Secondly, Children’s and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are crumbling.

Like SEND, this was previously a minority interest. Previously you would not have heard much about this in focus groups with “average parents”. No longer: today, with the huge rise in mental health conditions among young people since Covid, the emasculation of funding for CAMHS has become a conversation that comes up unprompted in many a focus group.

Parents in my focus groups all seem to know a teenager who has a chronic mental health issue who is at the end of a terrifyingly long waiting list. When young people who are experiencing suicide ideation and can’t access a psychologist, voters will be horrified – and demand change.

Teacher shortfall now noticed by parents

Thirdly, teacher supply is crumbling.

The government is now at the point that it can’t honestly guarantee a qualified teacher in front of every class.

This scandal, which has been slowly coming to a boil for a number of years, doesn’t have the same horrifying immediacy of collapsing roofs or the absent mental health support.

But the procession of supply teachers though our classrooms is now something parents bring up unprompted when you ask about schools.

A Labour slogan? ‘Your children’s futures are crumbling’

The route forward for Labour on education in advance of the election is now clear. Repeat after me: “Under the Tories, your children’s futures are crumbling.”

This slogan doesn’t have the optimism of “Education, Education, Education” in 1997 but then nor do the times in which we live.

It also doesn’t rule out presenting a more hopeful and optimistic take on what education might look like under a Labour government, but if the Tories can’t even guarantee students are safe in the classroom, then the blame needs to be pinned on them time and again.

Parents are, quite understandably, furious – and this righteous rage needs to be channeled.