Labour's education pledge is 'ill thought through’, says Gillian Keegan

Gillian Keegan has slammed Labour’s pledge on education as an “ill thought through” plan that is “Tory lite”.

The Education Secretary told GB News: “If you look at the one in my area, which I think is to get 6,500 more teachers, we've actually got 27,000 more teachers since 2010 and 59,000 more teaching assistants, all without destroying our private school sector, which is an important part of the provision for SEND [Special Educational Needs].

“They're not only Tory lite, they're actually quite destructive. In fact, it's the first time in our history we’ll introduce a tax on education and it will probably result in a bill for about £1.6 billion, so they're ill thought through as well.”

In a discussion with Stephen Dixon and Ellie Costello, she added: “40% of the special educational needs provision is actually provided by small independent private schools.

“When people think of private schools, they always think of the large ones that everybody knows, but there's 2,400 independent schools across our country and many of them are providing provision either to councils or to parents who are paying for special educational needs.

“And none of this they've looked into because it's a really ill-thought through policy and it is to get fewer teachers than we've already got, additional since 2010.

“It's really a very poor, very ill-defined and poorly thought through policy and it will impact both the Special Educational Needs sector, which we're trying to build more places because we know we've got more demand than we're keeping up with.

“It will really impact that sector as well as independent private schools that parents choose to send their kids to.”

On new guidelines for sex education in schools, she said: “One of the big things we're introducing is what's appropriate to be taught at what age.

“We're also making it crystal clear that it should be transparent to parents and parents should be able to see the materials as they are the first educators of their children so they should be able to see what's also going on in school.

“And we're also on top of our gender questioning guidance, which we published for consultation earlier on, we’re also making it very clear that gender identity is a contested view and should not be taught as fact.”

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