Education has the power to transform lives and the country. It gives our children and young people the tools they need to navigate the world and to shape the future.

At a time when financial, social and health inequalities are widening, education has an important role to play in narrowing those gaps.

Instead, the last decade in education has been tumultuous.

Negligent underfunding, repeated changes to the curriculum, and high-stakes testing and inspection regimes have led to instability and pressure on both young people and professionals.

Mental health issues are increasingly prevalent in the classroom, teachers are leaving in high numbers, support staff are being cut, and schools are increasingly managed as businesses. This is not what our families and young people deserve.

Trust our educational professionals

The people who educate our children need to be supported and valued. It is time that their skills and dedication were recognised and rewarded.

Teachers and other school staff should be paid well and know that their government trusts them to provide the best start in life for our children.

The current regime is leaving education professionals anxious and overloaded. We owe our children schools that nurture their curiosity, creativity and critical thinking; where all subjects are valued; and where a teacher’s passion can inspire their students.

I will work with teachers, school leaders, support staff, governors and unions about how best to support them and create the environment they need to educate our children.

To start with, teachers need a real pay rise to help make up for a decade of below-inflation settlements.

Just as urgent is addressing the pay and professional standing of support staff.

Support staff make up the majority of the workforce and are currently chronically undervalued. Denied recognition and clear routes for training and progression it is a national scandal that teaching assistants earn just £13,000 on average.

Staff deserve a catch-up rise after a decade of austerity.

The School Support Staff Negotiating Body must be restored, and it is time to look at how we can strengthen the independence of the School Teachers’ Pay Review Body and give it a clear remit for challenging central pay policies if the evidence shows those policies are not working.

Resource education properly

Education needs to be properly funded at all levels. The EMA needs to be restored as does a properly funded further education sector. We need to level the playing field for all young people to realise their potential.

It is truly a scandal that SEND budgets are at crisis point. The very high rates of successful parent tribunal appeals over Education, Health and Care Plans is a symptom of a system that is broken, and SEN Support provision is being relentlessly squeezed. 

We also need to ensure early years’ provision is at the very least protected if not enhanced. That is where inequality begins and if not addressed pre-primary that gap in educational attainment widens. Our children, parents and schools deserve better. 

Ease pressure and support mental well-being

Schools need to be a place of safety, security and well-being. They should not be places where teachers and children are anxious and stressed. A third of teachers leave the profession in the first five years.

With recruitment and retention being a serious concern we need to seriously address the pressures all staff are under. Since 2016 the number of schools commissioning mental health services for students has doubled but it is still incredibly difficult to access CAMHS services.

The answer lies both in properly resourcing schools and also in removing obstacles such as unnecessary high stakes accountability measures for both children and schools and trusting the profession to assess and moderate teaching quality and the attainment of its students.

Locally accountable

Schools should meet the needs of the local area and be locally accountable. For all Michael Gove’s rhetoric of returning power to school leaders, since 2010 the Conservatives have replaced community accountability with remote multi academy trust boards and an unprecedented centralisation of power in a Department for Education that is not equipped to wield it.

I will end the culture of preferential treatment and backroom deals. Representation should be local, not in Westminster nor in the head office of an academy chain. We need to rebuild expertise to support schools locally and take the lead from the.

School leaders should have the freedom to focus what their students and families need, not on running their schools like a business.

If we are truly going to address inequality and equip our children to live, lead and create in the 21st century we need to support our schools.

We need to properly resource the sector, remove barriers that make it difficult to access education and be locally focused.  Should I be elected as Leader of the Labour Party, this is what I will do.