Education Support at the Labour Party Conference

Education Support attended the recent Labour Party Conference to raise the profile of our mission and all the issues affecting the mental health and wellbeing of teachers and education staff.

Education Support works to help teachers and education staff at three levels:

• Individual – by helping staff who need us most through services like our helpline
• Workplace – by working with school and college leaders to think about creating organisational cultures that support better staff mental health and wellbeing
• The wider system – this means working to influence Government policy, to try to affect positive change to the whole system.

Many of the challenges facing education staff, such as the impact of child poverty, SEND pressures, workload and working hours, cannot be solved without policy changes that drive change across the whole system. That’s why we attended the Labour party conference, to understand the direction of travel for the new Government and to work to influence policy related to our mission.

Despite the persistent rain, there was a palpable sense of optimism, hope and change in the air as 21,000 people – including Ministers, MPs, party members, charities and businesses - gathered in Liverpool to shape and debate policy.

Building relationships

Attending the Conference is a great opportunity for us to build connections with influential political stakeholders, such as the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, and many of the 335 newly elected MPs. Our aim is to improve their understanding of why the mental health and wellbeing of education staff has been so consistently poor, and galvanise them to want to change things for the better.

Calling for change

We attended a wide range of fringe events, and participated in private roundtables hosted by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) thinktank and the National Education Union (NEU). These events brought together school leaders, education unions, sector organisations and MPs, as well as the opportunity to speak directly with the Minister for School Standards, Catherine McKinnell MP, and the Minister for Early Education, Stephen Morgan MP. During our many meetings and interactions we talked about:

• The need for a strong retention strategy to counter the levels of staff attrition in the sector
• High quality professional development for all education staff, at every career stage
• A clear plan for child poverty and proper funding of children and family services, so teachers and education staff can ensure that their most vulnerable pupils get the support they need

We were also delighted to see that the Government has scrapped Ofsted single-word judgements with immediate effect – a vital step forward - but further reform is still needed. We were pleased to see Education Support’s recommendations were included in Dame Christine Gilbert’s independent learning review for Ofsted.

Looking ahead

We are excited to expand our policy and public affairs engagement and look forward to giving our brilliant supporters the opportunity to get involved in this work too.

If you would like to find out more about this work, and to how you can get involved, feel free to reach out to Lucy Rycroft, Policy and Public Affairs Officer, at lucy.rycroft@edsupport.org.uk.

Together, we can continue to make a real difference in the lives of those who dedicate themselves to education.