Andy Burnham’s class war posturing will hold back working class kids and harm school standards

IN LIFE it shouldn’t matter where you come from – it’s where you’re going.

And in politics we shouldn’t be trying to put people in boxes and keep them there, but liberate them to decide their own future.

That was the lesson of the Eighties, when Mrs Thatcher believed that people shouldn’t be prisoners of a rigid class system but should be helped to earn more, own their own property, aspire to a richer life and leave their children a better future.

She was battling against the assumptions on the Left of the Know Your Place Tendency.

Those in the Labour Party, and beyond, who thought that working people should have their lives set by others – whether as council tenants, or trade union members, or minorities to be patronised.

It was Maggie’s great achievement to help working people buy their own homes, free themselves from the trade union barons, aspire to more choice in their lives and be accorded the dignity of sovereign individuals.

It was that spirit that inspired me into politics, to be on the side of the liberators.

That’s why I was so proud to have Maggie’s old job, as Education Secretary under a Conservative Prime Minister.

I believed that we could extend the horizons of future generations by making our schools powerful engines of social mobility – giving every child the chance to become author of their own life story.

And I was pleased that I could work with Blairite Labour folk, and even Lib Dems, who also believed we should be breaking down the old class barriers of the past.

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This week I was delighted that the evidence was now in that we did indeed make opportunity more equal.

English schools have risen up international league tables.

Our children are in the top ten globally for reading, writing and science. In Europe only tiny Estonia does better.

The improvement in our education system, and in children’s opportunities, came as a result of hard work by teachers and students but also our decision to embed ambition into everything schools did.

We gave heads more powers, especially over discipline, by making it easier to exclude unruly students, allowing teachers to teach and pupils to learn.

We made the curriculum more aspirational, rigorous and stretching.

We toughened up exams to deal with grade inflation. We recruited talented people from outside teaching to bring additional expertise and excellence into the classroom.

Together, these policies have transformed opportunities for thousands.

And it has been children from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds who have been helped most of all.

New “free” schools which we set up in poorer parts of the country, in the teeth of Labour and trade union opposition, have had amazing results.

Schools like Michaela in Wembley and Mercia in Sheffield have sent pupils from the poorest homes on to places at our best universities.

And all by embracing the freedom from bureaucracy we gave them and the ambitious academic standards we believed in.

But that progress is now at risk. Under Keir Starmer, Labour tried to turn back the clock on the changes we made, curbing the freedom of schools to set higher standards for poorer pupils.

And I fear, under Andy Burnham, the situation could become even worse.

His new Education Secretary Lucy Powell has said that we had an “over-focus on academic outcomes”.

In other words – working class kids, know your place, curb your ambition, don’t get above yourself by thinking you can rise through education.

Both Burnham and Powell have said that the universities they attended – Cambridge and Oxford – were not really for them, and unwelcoming places for working class students.

The message again, even if unintended, is clear – don’t aspire, don’t aim for the top.

Burnham and Powell’s policies will have a direct impact on the children, grandchildren and kids to be of Sun on Sunday readers.

Alongside their drive to make almost every new home a council house – and thus restrict home ownership, they’ve also set up a new unit in Government to entrench class thinking and set social groups against each other.

This reads like the Old Labour, pre-Blair, playbook – stereotyping people by class background instead of treating each individual with respect.

The irony is that both Andy Burnham and Lucy Powell, like Bridget Phillipson and others in the Labour Cabinet, are role models.

Individuals from what were thought of as working class backgrounds who, thanks to loving parents, strong support at home, hard work, a commitment to education, and good personal values, have gone on to scale the professional summit.

As the adopted child of a mum and dad who both left school at 15 I admire them and their professed desire to help individuals from every background.