In recent months, Wes Streeting has been one of the government’s most pointed critics on education policy. He was appointed Labour’s shadow minister for schools in October 2020 before being promoted this May to the newly created role of shadow secretary of state for child poverty. Tes interviewed him shortly before he announced he was taking a break from work for health reasons.

He spoke candidly about his experience of hardship as a child and why his concern about educational disadvantage is personal, as well as his belief that the education system takes advantage of teachers’ “goodwill”.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

I think the person who, in primary school [in Wapping, East London], probably had the biggest impact on my life was Mrs Dodd, the headteacher. She was a ferocious woman and a slightly terrifying character, and she sort of ran the school with an iron fist.

And yet the school was such a fun place to be and we loved being there. You didn’t want to get sent to Mrs Dodd’s office but she really cared.

2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?

School drama definitely stands out as the best. I did school plays from the very first year in primary school right through to Year 13 in secondary school [Westminster City School - a boys comprehensive], and I loved it.

The downsides? Being bullied for being one of the clever kids, being bullied for being one of the different kids. I didn’t come out as gay until my second year at university but I think one of the cruel things about childhood, sometimes, is that other people pick up on your differences earlier than you’ve probably understood them yourself. And so homophobic bullying was a challenge for me and some of my friends at secondary school.

But overall, I look back on my time at school with much more happiness and joy than feelings of misery or sadness.

3. Why do you work in education?

My biggest passion in life and politics is tackling educational disadvantage, and it’s something that really means a lot to me because it’s so personal.

I grew up on a council estate in a single parent family. The simple fact is that I wouldn’t be where I am today without a great state education.

4. What are you most proud of in your career and what’s your biggest regret?

I have to say one of the things that I’m most proud of since being elected to Parliament in 2015 was a successful campaign to save our local accident and emergency department.

One of the most painful experiences I’ve had as an MP was going to one of my local primary schools and a kid, [who] must have been about 10 or 11, pulled me to one side and basically said his mum and his two brothers were stuck in temporary accommodation in a single room, and could I get him a council flat like the one that I grew up in?

And it just broke my heart because, although we did end up getting him and his family rehoused, the answer I should have been able to give him was: “Yes, we’re going to get you a decent home and we’re going to do it tomorrow.”

5. Who would be your colleagues in your perfect staffroom?

I would definitely want Emma Hardy [Labour MP and former teacher]. I think I would make her my deputy head. She’s definitely got more experience of teaching than I have and I think she would be really good on things like oracy and behaviour.

I think I would get Matt Hood in. I’d say: “Sorry, Matt, you can’t work at the Oak National Academy anymore; you have to come in and help me with my kind of edtech revolution in the school.”

I would try to dragoon Malorie Blackman in from being a children’s author to help put together a really fun, knowledge-rich and joyful curriculum that looks like our cohort of children wherever our school is.

6. What are the best aspects of our school system today?

I really think the best thing we have within the education system is the people. There are countless examples of not just teaching staff and leaders but support staff as well, going above and beyond, and doing things way beyond their pay grade - way beyond their contracted hours - and they’re doing it because they really, really care.

The downside of the education system we have is that it takes far too much advantage of that goodwill and doesn’t resource the system to the extent that it really needs to be to provide a truly world-class education to every kid, in every part of the community.

The other thing about the education system that’s gone wrong, particularly in the past decade, is the extent to which too many decisions from the Department for Education have been ideologically driven rather than evidence driven - and sometimes, we’ve seen a whole series of unintended consequences kick in.

So, for example, the abolition of Sats at [Year 9] plus the EBacc [English Baccalaureate] equals a narrowing of the curriculum from Year 9 onwards because key stage 3 is crammed into Years 7 and 8. And GCSEs are run over three years and around a narrower range of subjects because the government said the EBacc’s more important.

7. Your own teachers aside, who in education has influenced you most?

Someone who I had the privilege of meeting when I was much younger and was still involved in NUS [Streeting is a former NUS students’ union president] was Mike Tomlinson [the former Ofsted chief inspector].

He’s one of the people that made me think really strongly about a career after NUS that was about tackling educational disadvantage. He’s had a bigger impact on my career, and passion and interest, than he probably knows.

8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d do?

The first thing I would do is back Sir Kevan Collins [the government’s education recovery commissioner at the time of interview] to the hilt, and go with him to Number 10 and the Treasury to tell them exactly what is needed for the education recovery. I do think it is the biggest and most urgent issue.

I think the other priorities for me will be to make sure that schools have got the funding that they need - in particular, to make sure that we’ve got the investment in teaching and staff that we need - to get the very best people into teaching, to invest in people so that we develop them throughout their careers, [and] that we make sure we’ve got a really good pipeline to school leadership because schools are nothing without the people who work in them, and I think that’s how we get the best impact for kids.

9. What will our schools be like in 30 years?

In 30 years’ time, I would love our schools to be ones where every child, whatever their background, has access to the best education in the world, and has outcomes that reflect their talents and ability, and do not reflect their social background. I would hope that, within 30 years, we’ve got rid of the attainment gap. I think we should be much more ambitious than that.

I would hope that schools of the future are ones that are bright, modern and have all of the latest technology and kit. I would hope that the schools of the future are filled with joy and laughter, where kids want to go to school and have great fun learning.

I would hope that schools of the future are able to recruit the very best teachers and support staff, and are elbowing out of the way the big graduate recruiters in finance and law, and other top professions, because teaching is seen as a really great thing to do, with great professional rewards in every way imaginable.

10. What one person do you think has made the most difference to our schools in the past 12 months?

The single person who has made the most difference to children’s education this year has been Gavin Williamson, for all the wrong reasons.

He has a huge amount of personal responsibility to bear for the failure to deliver laptops to keep kids learning, for the exams debacle in 2020 and the challenges we’ve now got in 2021 - the absolute mess of the January return, the failure to get testing in place for the start of the school year back in September and the huge consequences that flowed from that. Everything has been much harder during this pandemic than it otherwise should have been because of Gavin Williamson.

And thinking more positively, I’m going to take a leaf out of Tes’ book and say that there isn’t one person that’s made a positive difference to children and young people this year. I think that every Tes reader will have done that; I mean, the people that Tes is primarily for - the staff in schools, leaders, support staff, teachers. I certainly feel that we all stood on our doorsteps and clapped for the NHS and clapped for care workers, but I still don’t think that school staff have had the recognition they deserve, I really, really don’t.

Throughout the entire pandemic, whether in school or at home, they have kept kids learning, kept kids safe and worked their backsides off to do that. It is just a very powerful and timely reminder that we are very, very lucky to have the people that we do working in the education system.

Interview by Tes reporter Amy Gibbons

This article originally appeared in the 4 June 2021 issue