The Rt Hon Justine Greening’s speech to the Conservative Spring Forum

“Good morning.

It is fantastic to be here in Cardiff – not so very far from the renowned Atlantic College, which attracts students from around the world – and to be holding our national Conservative Spring Forum together with our Welsh Conservative colleagues, bringing together Conservatives from all over our country.

Here in Wales, Conservatives are leading the charge, standing up for the people of Wales and really taking the Welsh Labour Government to task over its years of failure. I want to pay tribute to Andrew Davies and the Welsh Conservatives in the National Assembly, and of course our fantastic team of Welsh MPs in Westminster. I don’t think any of us will ever forget the last general election night, when we saw those great Conservative gains in Wales.

Now: as the Prime Minister set out on the steps of Downing Street last July, the British people have told us in no uncertain way that it is time for a change in the way our nation works.

It is time, quite simply, to make Britain a country that works for everyone, and to make this a fairer society, where success is based on merit, not privilege.

And that’s why I am so proud to stand here today as Education Secretary.

Because education is at the very heart of that ambition, of making a society based on merit, not privilege. A key part of our plan to make a more confident, more outward-looking Britain.

We have got to start with our young people, and making sure that they get the education and skills that they need to be successful in life.

Increasingly children are growing up facing a postcode lottery on educational standards across our nations.

In England, today, right now, thanks to the educational reforms of the Conservative Party in Government, there now almost 1.8 million more children being taught in schools that are good or outstanding than when the Labour Party were voted out in 2010. Nearly nine out of ten schools are rated as good or outstanding.

That is an extraordinary achievement.

Because don’t forget, we inherited a system from Labour in 2010 where too many children left school without the even the basic qualifications and skills they needed.

We made exams more rigorous, we ended grade inflation, failing schools became academies under new leadership, we gave more choice to parents by enabling free schools to be set up, new schools but free from local authority control.

Those reforms were not easy. But they were the right thing to do.

And our work doesn’t stop there. There’s more to do and that is why we have set out plans to create more great school places within reach of more parents, in more parts of the country. And especially in the communities that have not yet seen those improved standards.

This change for the better has been achieved in the teeth of outright opposition from the Labour Party.

On education, as in so many other areas, Labour simply has no positive contribution to make. Today’s Labour Party is a rhetoric-rich but policy-free zone.

It’s a throw-back to the Labour Party that I recognise all too well from my time growing up in Rotherham in the 1980s – at its heart is a nasty, divisive, aggressive form of politics that, frankly, is a turn-off for most people who want to have a constructive debate about Britain’s future.

The Labour shadow education secretary has said she is suffering from ‘sleepless nights’ worrying about Labour’s lack of education policies.

Quite simply, they have nothing of substance to help move our country forward.

For education in Wales, as with their mismanagement of the NHS in Wales, the Welsh Labour government has proved nothing short of a nightmare.

Under Welsh Labour, we have seen Wales’ education system deteriorate according to the OECD’s international PISA study. Wales’ most recent PISA results ratings show Wales has gone backwards in maths, backwards in reading and backwards in science, and continues to score significantly worse than any of the other UK countries.

In its worst performing subject, reading, under Labour Wales now sits on a par with Hungary and Lithuania.

Under Labour in Wales, education standards have gone backwards. Under Labour in Wales, education outcomes are worse.

And sad to say, it is a similar story to what has happened in Scotland under the SNP.

In the latest international PISA tests in December, Scotland recorded its worst ever results.

In both Scotland and Wales, weakening of education is a betrayal of the hopes and aspirations of thousands of young people.

And that is something we as Conservatives feel particularly keenly, because we understand the role that education plays underpinning our nation’s future prosperity.

Because our ambition is a society where education unlocks the potential of all:

Where anyone can go as far as their talents and hard work can take them, no matter what their background or where they grew up, no matter how much money their parents earn. We want people to be able to make the most of themselves.

That’s why, under our Plan for Britain, at the same time as navigating our country through the Brexit process and securing the right deal for Britain, the Prime Minister has also set out an ambitious domestic agenda with education and skills at its heart.

This Government is about delivering opportunity. The opportunities that matter to ordinary working people up and down our country. The opportunity to work in a skilled, well-paying career. The opportunity to send your children to a good school. The opportunity to contribute to a shared society – where everyone can and wants to do their best for their community.

That’s why I want to see more young people from all walks of life attending the very best universities, winning places on apprenticeships, entering the top professions, and progressing through the most rewarding careers – and I want employers to do more to draw out and develop the potential and talents of all.

But we know that in many parts of our country, we need to go further to enable local areas to overcome barriers to opportunity. 

That’s much easier said than done.

So in October I announced that six areas identified by the Social Mobility Commission as social mobility cold spots - Blackpool, Derby, Norwich, Oldham, Scarborough, and West Somerset - would become Opportunity Areas.

These areas are seeing local partnerships formed with early years providers, schools, colleges, universities, businesses, charities and local authorities, focussed on ensuring all children and young people in that area have the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Since then we have added a further six areas, to include Bradford, Doncaster, Fenland & East Cambridgeshire, Hastings, Ipswich and Stoke-on-Trent.

Ensuring all children can access high-quality education at every stage is critical.

And we are focussing not just on what we can do to help inside schools, but also on creating the opportunities outside school such as mentoring and work experience that will raise sights and broaden horizons for young people.

And we want to apply the lessons that we learn from these opportunity areas to boost opportunity for young people in other parts of the country.

In my speech at our Party Conference in Birmingham in October, I talked about the improvements we are making to our already world-class university system.

But I also talked about the other education routes available to the half of our young people who don’t go on to university, and the fact that for too long our technical education system simply hasn't been good enough.

I was clear that I am determined to put the quality of technical education on a par with the quality of our academic education. And it really matters.

Building a world-class technical education system will not only generate the skills and productivity that are the foundations of a strong economy. It will also spread opportunity and increase social mobility – helping to break the link between a person’s background and where they get to in life.

A report by Boston Consulting Group and the Sutton Trust suggests that greater social mobility could boost our economy by a staggering £140 billion a year.

Different young people have different talents. If we can successfully put technical education on a par with academic routes, it isn’t just liberating those young people to reach their potential. It’s exactly what our economy and British businesses need too.

So I want technical education to take its rightful place alongside the academic track as a totally credible education path to a professional career.

And this has never been more important for our country, especially as we look to our future economic success and security post-Brexit.

As we prepare to leave the European Union, we will need to be more self-sufficient – in our workforce; in our skills; and in the training of our young people – to set ourselves up for success.

To secure and build a strong economy we need the people with the skills, knowledge and technical excellence that drive productivity and growth. 

In the end, it is people who will lift our country. And that’s why we are investing in our people.

And we can’t afford to wait.

Other economies have been ahead of us in developing the skills of the future. This government is clear that we will not fall further behind. 

We have already made a great start with our apprenticeship programme. Last week I joined apprentices at Barclays to mark the launch of National Apprenticeships Week. The apprentices I met there – of all ages – were inspiring – they were finding out just how well they could do.

Last year nearly 900,000 people were enrolled in an apprenticeship. That means more than 3 million people have started an apprenticeship since 2010.

And we know the huge difference apprenticeships can make to individuals – boosting a person’s lifetime earnings by 11% on average. More than 4 out of 5 apprentices tell us they believe that it is improving their career prospects.

And this is only the beginning of our apprenticeship reforms. This year we are introducing the Apprenticeship Levy, which will ensure that by 2020 there will be over £2.5 billion available to support apprenticeships. Contributing to the Levy will mean that employers are fully invested in apprenticeships – and it keeps us on track to meet our manifesto commitment of delivering 3 million apprenticeships by 2020.

Apprenticeships will play a key role in delivering the skills that our modern economy needs to level-up. But we need to do more to meet the challenges that our economy faces.

Apprenticeships are only part of story. They are work-based routes to train skilled professionals. But most successful countries don’t just rely on that.

Alongside that, they also have college-based routes, technical courses, with workplace experience and training as crucial elements.

So we will up our game, investing in our FE colleges, looking at reforming our technical education system – to make it a central plank of how we grow our economy.

Over many years, we have allowed the technical education curriculum to emphasise quantity rather than quality.

There are currently around 13,000 separate technical qualifications. In plumbing alone a young person has the choice of 33 different courses. How on earth are they supposed to know which course is the highest quality; which is valued by businesses; which option is the best fit for them? This can’t be right.

So that is why we are building on the review carried out by Lord Sainsbury, and replacing the current system with a streamlined set of just 15 technical skills routes.

Each route will be a pathway to skilled employment – from construction to digital, whether it’s bricks and mortar or lines of code.

And the standards for each route will be designed and agreed by our employers – to make sure there is a direct flow through to the skills that our economy needs.

This is vital because we need an approach that asks businesses what a world-class technical curriculum should look like; that invests in tools, in teaching and in the skills expertise; that helps young people navigate the complex web of choices – to find the skills and the career that is right for them.

And that approach is now backed by investment. That is why I am very proud to say that in the Budget last week, described by the CBI as a ‘Breakthrough Budget for Skills’, the Chancellor announced over half a billion pounds a year of new funding for technical education alongside radical reforms to our country’s approach on skills and training.

It means we can increase the number of hours learning for students by more than 50% - from 600 hours per year to more than 900.

That’s what countries with strong technical education like Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands do.

The funding for extra hours will roll out alongside the new technical routes, beginning with the first programmes in Autumn 2019.

Each of the routes will lead to a new certificate – the “T Level” – which will be a gold standard for technical and professional excellence.

This represents the most radical reform of post-16 education since the introduction of A-levels 70 years ago.

By investing in a world-class system of technical education, this Government has taken a crucial step in creating a flow of future productivity and skills.

We will level up opportunity.

We will lift our country by lifting our young people.

This is a massively exciting agenda.

Our Party is reaching out to young people, to the next generation, and saying: “We are the party that is creating a Britain where you can go places, and it doesn’t matter where you are starting from.”

Finally: our party.

In our Prime Minister we have someone with the wherewithal, the toughness and resilience, to steer our country through the Brexit process, and get the right deal for Britain.

At the same time as leading us towards a fairer, stronger society.

That’s what our Plan for Britain is all about.

This is a historic time, full of challenges as well as opportunity. It falls to us as a party – in government – to deliver for every part of our country.

Our country is counting on Theresa May as Prime Minister to navigate Britain through this historic moment, and through the years ahead.

The British people are counting on the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister, our Leader, is counting on us.

Whether it is knocking on some doors to canvass views or doing some leafleting, or being at Spring Forum, your efforts and support are what underpin all our work in government, delivering for our country.

And I know we will be behind her 100%. So thank you.”