Bridget Phillipson MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising this issue; I know she always bangs the drum for her constituency, and we have discussed this many times. If she requires an update on wider issues, I will be more than happy to make sure that she gets one from the new Minister.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  The review took an evidence-driven approach, informed by the data, with input from across the sector and experts, to make sure that we get this right. However, it did not seek to fix things that are not broken. I recognise that young people in England sit more hours of exams than their peers in many other countries. We will therefore work closely with Ofqual and exam boards to reduce GCSE exam time by two and a half to three hours. Ofqual is confident that that can be achieved while maintaining the integrity and validity of the qualifications system.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  That sounds like a wonderful project in my hon. Friend’s constituency. When our children study history, it can often be brought to life by local examples that demonstrate a wider connection to our nation’s past but also allow us to shape our future. It is in precisely those kind of examples where I want teachers to have more opportunities to expand children’s minds and provide them with greater opportunity.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  No, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I set out earlier, it is important that young people have the opportunity to study triple science. I recognise that the implementation and delivery of that will be important, and we will work with the sector to do that. The number of those entering initial teacher training in subjects such as physics has increased massively this year, but there is more to do, including through subject knowledge enhancement, which we also want to provide to more teachers in other science subjects. I recognise what the right hon. Gentleman says about computing; it is important to get this right. Every area where there will be change will be subject to full consultation with expert input. Computing is one area where we also need to ensure that there is the opportunity to refresh content more regularly, given the pace of change. We will of course ensure that the qualification is rigorous. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the review and welcomes much of Professor Francis’s work, for which I am grateful. The review found that the EBacc measure did not translate into increased study of those subjects at 16 to 19 and unnecessarily constrained student choice, affecting students’ engagement and achievement. Our revised Progress 8 measure will balance a strong academic core with breadth and student choice. I believe that is the right approach, but we will consult on the options.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I agree with the right hon. Member in so far as he is saying that we should make sure that a range of subjects are available to young people, including languages, and that young people should have a good range of options, including the chance to go on and study at university. I think it is important alongside that, as the Prime Minister set out in his target, that two thirds of young people move into higher-level learning—be that through an apprenticeship or university. That is why we are also investing more in post-16 education. I do not accept what he has to say about the EBacc or Progress 8. It did not work as intended, and it has not solved the problem that he suggests it would. Our revised Progress 8 measure will ensure that we have a strong academic offer for all young people alongside the breadth and choice that they deserve.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I would be keen to hear the hon. Gentleman’s ideas and those of the all-party parliamentary group, and I thank him for the work he is doing in this important area. I am glad that he welcomes many of the changes we are setting out around financial education. I note what he has to say about post-16, and I will make sure that those ideas are considered.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I know that this can be done only through the amazing work of our teachers, our support staff and our school leaders. We will work with them as we roll out the new national curriculum. We are investing more this year and every year in our schools. We have also delivered two pay awards for our teachers. This year, we have seen 2,300 more secondary and specialist teachers, and we are retaining more teachers across the board. We have achieved a lot, but there is more to do. I look forward to working with the hon. Member on that.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  As we move towards votes at 16, it will be important that our young people understand our democracy, our laws, our history, and their responsibilities as active citizens. That is why we want to make sure that there is better statutory teaching of citizenship in primary schools, and improvements at secondary as well. There is much brilliant practice already out there, but there is more to do to spread it.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is right to raise that point. This is an area that the review drew attention to. We will develop a new 16 to 19 level 1 stepping-stone qualification as a preparation for GCSE for lower attainers. The review was clear about the importance of GCSE English and maths, and I share that view. We need to make sure that more young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, secure a strong pass in English and maths.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I agree that PE and sport are vital elements of the rounded and enriching education that every child deserves. They can also motivate young people, give them a sense of purpose, help with wellbeing challenges and much more besides. That is why we have committed to strengthening the national curriculum for PE, and we want to work with many fantastic sporting bodies and other organisations that deliver enrichment activities, through the enrichment framework, to deliver that.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. At the moment, access to triple science is uneven, with big gaps in access for disadvantaged students and big geographic inequalities. It will take time to ensure that we have the subject specialists in place to deliver that, but all children in our schools should be entitled to do triple science, so that they can go on to study the relevant A-level and T-level subjects.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  Yes. In the schools White Paper, we will set out our vision for the school system into the 2030s and beyond. A central part of that will be how we better support children with SEND. So many young people face an adversarial system, in which it takes too long to get the right support, and in which parents have to battle and fight. That is why the guiding principle behind everything that we do in this area will be better outcomes and better life chances for children with SEND. I am always willing to discuss with my hon. Friend the changes that he believes are necessary.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. We are investing through our music hubs and the new national centre to make that a reality. By the end of next year, we will have delivered 130,000 new instruments, pieces of equipment and other music technologies to schools to support our young people to pick up instruments and create music.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I agree about the need to provide better training and support for teachers and support staff. That is why this year, for the first time, there is expanded content on SEND in initial teacher training. However, there is more to do around teaching, training and support for the existing workforce. We are considering all that through the schools White Paper, as well as what more we can do to support staff, so that they can better identify early need and put in place the required support. It will also be important to do that through our Best Start family hubs, in which we can work with families at a much earlier stage.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I recognise the challenges, and I have heard directly from many children and families about the struggles that they face. The review looked closely at this area. I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, and I recognise its importance, but alongside that, we need to continue to have high expectations of what children with SEND can achieve with the right level of support. Through the schools White Paper, we will set out how we make that a reality for every child.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  We are investing more in our schools and providing more support to teachers. Enrichment is important. That is why we will develop the framework with experts across education, youth services, sports and art sectors to make it a reality. I encourage the hon. Lady to look at the proposal we are setting out on Progress 8 reform, because I think it will deliver the breadth, alongside the academic core, that she seeks.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Lady said at the start that any criticism was levelled my way, but she then went on to criticise many of the recommendations in the review. Has she even bothered to read it at all? She comes here time and again, every single time full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—and yes, Shakespeare is here to stay on the national curriculum. She tries to paint the report and our response as undoing the achievements in schools. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not abandoning it; we are building on it, with a curriculum that will allow all young people to achieve high standards, with core academic subjects alongside the breadth that they deserve. Our reforms have higher standards right at their heart. They will raise standards of pupils right across the curriculum, including in speaking and listening, reading, writing and maths. Our improved Progress 8 and Attainment 8 measures will ensure that students retain a strong academic core, but with a breadth to expand into further study. The right hon. Lady might oppose the changes we are setting out, but today they have won support from the Sutton Trust, from employers like the CBI and from Sir Hamid Patel, the wonderful leader at Star Academies, who backs the changes we are making, saying that they “signal both a welcome emphasis on creativity—reflecting amazing career opportunities…but with continued affirmation that success in English and mathematics is crucial for everyone’s life chances.” I could not agree more. We know that it is important that our new measures provide breadth and enrichment. Leaving aside that the arts and creative subjects are worth up to £125 billion to our country and employ 2.4 million people, I want more young people to have brilliant careers and opportunities in those fields. The two are not in opposition. We can and will deliver high and strong academic standards, alongside making sure that a broad and rich curriculum is the entitlement of every child. There was once a time when the Conservatives supported that idea. It is why they introduced a national curriculum to apply in every school. We are restoring the Conservative principle of the national curriculum applying for every child. I benefited from that, and I want every child in our country to benefit from it. The curriculum has not been updated for over a decade. Parents want one that is fit for the future, employers back what we are doing and children deserve it. The changes we are setting out today will secure better life chances for all our children.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  We want to build on the review’s work in this important area, and we will set out more detail next year, through the schools White Paper. We know that outcomes for children with SEND are not where they need to be. Parents and families have to battle, and it can all be an uphill struggle. That is why early identification of need and more support for families, as well as better training and support for our staff, will be critical elements of any reform programme.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend always champions the importance of music education, and the right of every child to access to music. Our new national centre for arts and music education will provide support for schools and teachers in delivering the reformed curriculum, and I am delighted that 43 music hubs are rolling out music instrument tuition, and opportunities to take part in music production and creation. I know that he will continue to champion those things.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  In 2026, it will be the National Year of Reading, and in our work on that, we are thinking about not just physical books that can be delivered to children, but what a strong digital offer could look like. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to get involved in that process.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  High-quality history education should allow students to understand both our role in the world and local history. There are many powerful examples of how learning about local history can really bring a topic to life. To give one example, earlier this year, I helped unveil a statue to women shipyard workers in Sunderland who stepped in to replace the men who went to the second world war. That really brought the topic to life. It is a fantastic example of how we can combine the local and the national to understand our past and look to the future.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member is right to draw attention to the importance of political impartiality. The review found that the current non-statutory status of citizenship is leading to uneven and inconsistent progress in the subject. There is the chance to do this better to ensure that it is taught well and that young people are able to think critically and challenge what is in front of them. That is more important than ever given how some of those who are hostile to our nation’s interests seek to use social media to exploit division and poison the minds of our young people.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  We are investing more in our SEND system and in teacher training and development, including new SEND content for those entering the profession, but there is much, much more that we need to do, as we have discussed in this House on many occasions. I know that my hon. Friend cares very deeply about improving outcomes for children with SEND, and I look forward to working with her as we bring forward the schools White Paper and reforms that deliver a brilliant experience for children with SEND throughout our school system.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I note your comments, and I will make sure that they are taken forward. With permission, I would like to make a statement to update the House on this Government’s plans to renew the national curriculum, to secure for every child an education steeped in our rich history, ready to shape our country into the 2030s and beyond. As I outline the future of our national curriculum, I do so in full knowledge of its past, because I was part of the first wave to benefit from a process begun by Jim Callaghan’s great education debate—his ambition for a curriculum of universal high standards. When Lord Baker introduced a national curriculum for the very first time in 1988, my generation secured a common entitlement to share in the core wisdom that we as a nation value most. Since then, our national curriculum has evolved under successive Governments, and now it must evolve again, because the world is changing as never before as a result of artificial intelligence, machine learning and hyperconnectivity. Where once our young people had to compete locally, the playing field is now global. They are stepping into a world of huge opportunity, but it is also one of immense change and challenge—a muddy landscape of misinformation and social media. Our current curriculum no longer arms them for this brave new world. It lacks the breadth of knowledge and skills that our children need, not only for the jobs they will go on to do, but for the lives they will go on to lead. We need more, and they need more. Our curriculum sits at the centre of an education system that has forgotten too many children—white working-class children; children with special educational needs and disabilities; the children who are bright but bored, not engaged as they should be and not achieving as they should. That is why I asked Professor Becky Francis and an external panel of experts to review our curriculum, assessment and qualifications—to equip every child and every young person to achieve and thrive. I thank Professor Francis and the whole panel for their hard work and expertise. The review’s final report and our Government’s response have both been published today. We will publish a revised curriculum in 2027 for first teaching in 2028; we will update our GCSEs for first teaching from 2029; and we are planning to deliver new V-level qualifications from 2027. This Government are facing the future boldly, taking our education system from narrow to broad. That means a curriculum rich in knowledge, strong on skills, and, in everything that we do, uncompromising on high standards, grounding every child’s education in the most important knowledge and disciplinary skills to master every subject—more specific on the most important content, to sharpen understanding, and more coherent in how different subjects slot together, to spark connections. It will be a truly world-leading curriculum: supportive, challenging, and urging all children on. The House should be in no doubt that I will put high standards to work, in the service of every child’s future. Our work starts in the early years. Through our Best Start family hubs, we are supporting parents as their children take those first steps into learning. We are setting the foundations for their futures: developing language early, expanding the reach of maths champions, and introducing children to numbers early on. As children arrive at school, they will begin to master the core subjects—the ones that unlock the rest of the curriculum—and reading especially. Whether it is for step-by-step instructions in a science experiment or a question in maths, reading is essential in every subject. It adds texture, colour and context—such as in history, by reading letters from soldiers on the frontline of the second world war. We have to build that right from the beginning. That is why we are introducing new training for reception teachers, to meet our ambition for 90% of children to reach the expected standard in the phonics screening check. We will double our reading ambition for all teacher training, for children who need the most help, reaching more than 1,200 primary schools, and we will train more teachers in 600 schools to help them teach reading fluency. Together with reading must come writing and speaking, because in life we all need to express ourselves clearly and confidently, whether out loud or in writing. In July we published the new writing framework, which includes evidence-based ways to teach writing to children, and we are now going further by improving the primary writing assessment to focus on fluency. We will also design a new oracy framework to support children to become assured and fluent speakers and listeners by the time they leave primary school. Too many children are falling through the gaps in the jump to secondary school, including on reading. Learning not just to read, but to read well, must be the entitlement of every child. It is the single most powerful driver of life chances that we have, yet too often problems that begin in primary are left to drift in those first years of secondary. The focus fades just when it should intensify. To make sure that every school is on top of this, we are introducing a new statutory reading test for all pupils in year 8. We will expect all schools to assess progress in writing and maths in year 8 as well, checking excellence in those vital skills. Our new regional improvement for standards and excellence—RISE—key stage 3 alliance will spread excellence from one school to the next. All children will benefit from a new combined oracy, reading and writing framework that will be embedded across the entire secondary curriculum, and the brand-new digital version of the national curriculum will help teachers to strengthen connections across subjects and stages. On those firm foundations, we will build choice and breadth as children move into secondary school. That means preparing them to tell fact from fiction, truth from lies and right from wrong. Our young people need a rich core of knowledge and skills—the high standards that I am determined to drive—but we must take literacy further and wider. The reformed English programme of study and English language GCSE will open students up to a wide range of texts to see how arguments are made across different types of media, to discover the power of persuasion and emotive language in different contexts, and to understand how they can be used not just to educate but to manipulate—exploited by dark forces online to spread lies and sow division. That is why we are building media literacy to prepare young people not to consume passively, but to engage critically and to recognise and reject disinformation. We are not just boosting media literacy. We are also boosting digital literacy through a reformed computing curriculum to allow pupils to navigate the opportunities and challenges of AI and much more, and we are boosting financial literacy to empower young people to make informed choices about money, saving and investing. All our plans aim to take education from narrow to broad. We need a fundamental shift in what we value in our secondary schools. For that, we need a fundamental shift in how we measure attainment and progress to deliver the breadth that we want to see. Today I can announce that we will consult on improved versions of Progress 8 and Attainment 8, because the current structure holds us back in subjects that strengthen our economy and our society. Too often it restricts choice, turning children away from subjects like drama, art and design, and music. Our creative industries are a source of such national pride, but as Ed Sheeran has said so powerfully, we cannot continue to lead on the world stage without a broad base in our schools at home. The arts should be for all, not just a lucky few, so we will revitalise arts education, putting it back at the heart of a rich and broad curriculum. To encourage variety to flourish in our curriculum, we will measure what matters. We will balance breadth with a strong academic core and promote mastery of the fundamentals, combined with student choice. We will strive for academic excellence, on a broad scale, in every classroom, art studio, dance hall and science lab. In those science labs, a new triple science entitlement will give all young people the best opportunity to get into exciting new careers in clean energy, digital technologies and life sciences. We will build the strongest science, technology, engineering and mathematics foundations, and introduce a new computing GCSE so that students can excel in the new advanced digital and AI qualifications, addressing critical skills gaps in the tech sector. We will go further, too, with a new enrichment entitlement for all that includes civic engagement, culture, nature and adventure, and sport, which will deepen children’s investment in their time at school. The curriculum cannot begin and end in our schools; it must stretch from the best start in life programme to the post-16 White Paper. Last month, I updated the House on our plan for skills. Much of that is about supporting young people to build on this new curriculum and to make their post-16 choices from a clear landscape of A-levels, T-levels and the new V-levels, with clearer pathways through learning and into work, which will help them to develop skills to find a good job and get on in life. Professor Francis and the expert panel have delivered a strong set of recommendations, upon which we will now build. Our new curriculum will be an expression of who we are as a modern nation—the knowledge, skills, values and ideas that will bring us together and take us forward, building on the past to shape the future. For families who have withdrawn from education, the new national curriculum will be a chance to rediscover the power of learning once again. For every child across the country, it will be an invitation not just to share in our national story, but to write the next chapter. I commend this statement to the House.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the need to ensure that children with special educational needs and disabilities secure better outcomes and have better support through their education and their school life. Every child in our country deserves the best possible school experience, and that is especially true for children with SEND, many of whom do not feel that that is a reality and whose parents are really struggling. That is why, through our schools White Paper and the wider work we will be taking forward around SEND reform, we will ensure that their voices are heard through a co-creation process as we move to a better system of support—one where every child in our country can achieve and thrive.