Shadow Secretary of State for Education Laura Trott addresses Conservative Party Conference 2026

Today, Laura Trott MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Education, delivered her speech at Conservative Party Conference 2026.

Please see the full text of the speech below:

Checked against delivery

Conference, like me, you are probably sick of Labour and all their empty talk of hope.

I want to talk about improving education today.

That's what our team have been working on this past year.

And, as you just heard, Labour have listened to some of our ideas.

Allowing good schools to expand.

Kicking smartphones out of the classroom.

And yes, banning social media.

Conference, we did that together.

We listened to parents.

We forced the government to act.

Because we are Conservatives, and we are relentless in our mission to give children back their childhoods.

But our party is not going to stop there.

Keeping children safe from harm, that's the baseline for us.

What we really want is for every child to have the chance to succeed.

To be all that they can be.

And that is why we must turn our attention to another issue affecting our children.

Like social media, it is dangerous, it's divisive and it's a huge distraction from learning.

But it's not just happening on screens.

Sadly, it's happening in some of our schools too.

Children as young as seven are being told they have white privilege.

Pupils are learning that a woman can have a penis, a man can be pregnant, and sex is assigned at birth.

Some have been told to rewrite negative headlines on migration to make them more positive.

And others have been taught that Britain is a racist country.

This is fiction being presented as fact.

And just in case anyone needs a recap, being white does not mean you're automatically privileged.

Women do not have penises.

Men cannot get pregnant.

And illegal migrants are not welcome here.

This is part of a trend of complex, controversial, contested issues being boiled down, laced with political bias and delivered in a place that children trust; schools.

So much of it centres on identity, hierarchy, difference.

Labelling our children.

Dividing them.

Burdening them.

Young children genuinely don't think about identity like some adults seem to.

They're curious about much simpler things.

Like, what's your favourite colour?

That's the question I get asked most when I visit primary schools.

Well, it's certainly not red.

Definitely not yellow.

And never, ever teal.

It is, of course, 100 per cent blue.

Just as we saw with social media, it's parents who are raising the alarm about political activism in schools.

They do so in sorrow more than in anger. 

I hear the same thing.

I'm not happy about this, I'm not comfortable with this, I never agreed to this,

I'm worried if I make a fuss, I'm going to be called racist.

These aren't anti-woke crusaders.

They're concerned parents, rightly asking, what is going on?

So, what is going on?

The thing is schools are meant to be impartial.

It's supposed to be illegal to promote partisan views here.

We rely on our institutions to be politically neutral.

That's a deeply British value.

Though someone might like to remind the BBC sometimes.

Yet over the last couple of decades, we began asking teachers to teach more than traditional subjects,

Giving them a duty to promote concepts like equality and telling them to make space for such things in the timetable.

A lot of this came from a good place.

No one could argue with the desire to produce rounded young people.

But the problem is that good intentions have opened the door to bad actors.

People taking advantage of the time created for these less defined subjects.

People with political agendas.

And if anyone has an agenda, it's a network called Schools of Sanctuary.

Now you might not have heard of it, but it has now signed up over a thousand sixth forms, secondary schools, primary schools, even nurseries,

All calling themselves schools of sanctuaries for refugees.

The vision schools are signing up to is that the UK will be a place of welcome for all.

Except it's more nuanced than that isn't it?

We can't welcome all migrants.

We don't want to welcome all migrants, certainly not dangerous criminals.

Yet that is the simplistic political narrative they push on our children.

But when I wrote to the former Education Secretary about this blatant political activism, do you know what she did?

Absolutely nothing.

So, I'm taking action.

And today I'm launching Our Pledge to Parents which lays out my commitment to mums and dads,

I will keep political activism out of the classroom.

That means keeping Trade Union politics away from our children too.

To understand their agenda, look at what they focus on during their conferences.

What do you think they debate when the NEU, that's the National Education Union, get together?

The merits of teaching Latin perhaps?

The value of coding in maths?

The latest developments in pedagogy?

No.

Their recent resolutions include:

Defending the right to protest, opposing UK defence spending and embedding their own LGBT+ teaching materials in schools.

Friends, this doesn't sound like a professional body that cares about teaching pupils.

It sounds like a campaigning organisation bent on politicising education.

And it is deeply entwined with politics, extreme politics.

Several NEU officials happen to also be directors of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

This is the group that said October the 7^th could be understood in context.

Who think Hamas are not terrorists and who have promoted Holocaust denial.

The Trade Unions don't just campaign at their own events.

They campaign to get around Prevent in the classroom.

They also campaign directly outside the classroom too.

Some of you might remember the footage of teachers on strike,

draped in Palestine flags, with the pupils telling them to go back to work.

Well, I couldn't have put it better myself.

The group Parents Against Antisemitism point the finger at resources and incidents like this.

They say this is how extremism is getting into the classroom,

Through factually incorrect or partial materials.

Through schools' failure to vet external speakers and organisations.

And through schools being used for events with a clear political or advocacy focus.

And they should know antisemitism has doubled in schools in the last three years.

Parents like Vanessa, who I'm going to speak to shortly, are being left with an impossible choice.

Sending their children to mainstream schools where Jewish children are heckled, bullied, singled out,

Or send them to Jewish schools, with prison-like securitywhere they're under constant threat from outside.

And you know, politicians like me can stand up and wring our hands and say how awful that is,

And how horrific it is that Jewish children are coming to school in this country, in the year 2026, terrified for their own safety,

Or we can actually be honest about how antisemitism is seeping in,

How all extremism is seeping in,

And we need to cut it off at source.

The government won't do anything about it.

They can't.

They're too in hock to their activist MPs and their Union paymasters.

We will have to do it,

Because we're the only ones showing leadership in education.

The only ones taking action on the issues parents really care about. 

Whatever they say, Labur put politics first.

We will never do that.

We will always put children first.

Some people might say, if you care so much about children, why don't you concentrate on school standards, not cultural matters?

Conference, everything that I do is about improving standards.

The truth is I care about political impartiality in schools because I care about standards.

Teaching time is precious, and finite.

The more time children spend on this extra stuff, the less time they've got to learn the important stuff.

My issue is not just with propaganda brainwashing our children, as horrendous as that is,

It's that what's being taught under the guise of equality or citizenship.

It is, a lot of the time, just total trash.

Of course, it matters that children learn human skills,

Empathy, curiosity, resilience, especially in the age of AI.

But we don't need to reinvent the wheel.

For empathy, try Dickens.

For curiosity, try Darwin.

For resilience, try Winston Churchill.

We don't need campaign materials dressed up as educationresources.

We have a bank of material, centuries in the making.

Our literature, our history, our fine tradition of scientific discovery.

Let's try something radical,

Let's try teaching them.

Now our new Education Secretary has her own thoughts on what's worth learning.

Not poetry, she thinks that's stressful.

Not maths, she's literally triggered by trigonometry,

which she wants to scrap.

Apparently, nobody needs to know what a formula is, just that the formula exists.

Just imagine how that would go down in the real world, in exams and in life.

I don't know the answer to this question, but I know an answer exists.

And then she tells us, I do not need to have crammed my brain full of stuff.

Well, given how light Labour is on policy, a bit of cramming might have helped.

So the dividing lines are as clear as day.

Lucy Powell says, education should be about what you can do,

and not what you can't.

We say, education is all about what you can't do.

That is what you go to school for.

To learn the things you don't yet know.

We are poles apart on what we believe

And we're poles apart on policy too.

This Labour government wants political organisations inside our schools,

We will keep them out.

We'll properly enforce the rules on political impartiality for teachers and guest speakers.

And we'll create a specific law around Trade Unions involved in education.

They must not bring politics into schools.

This Labour government wants to focus on what divides children.

We believe school is the opposite of that.

It's where we discover what we have in common.

A common culture.

A common identity.

A common country.

And what we wear at school is important too.

Uniform gives children a sense of unity, regardless of background.

It should not be used as a means of dividing, excluding or reinforcing identity politics.

You might have heard about the school in Barnet making the hijab part of the uniform for girls as young as 7.

Conference, be absolutely clear, we would not allow that under a future Conservative government.

This Labour government wants something else too.

They want to overhaul the Ofsted grading, the system they just brought in, get this, because it might be unfair on schools in disadvantaged areas.

There it is again, Conference the soft bigotry of low expectations is alive and well.

Labour see a poorer child and say, let's keep them in their place.

Let's judge them differently to others.

We say, let's give them the best possible chance.

They're as good as anyone else, and we will never, ever do them down. 

And we're not just protecting children from bad ideas here.

We're protecting the progress that we made together.

English children are now among the best in the world for reading, maths and science.

While others slipped back during the pandemic, we held our ground.

And now, in reading, the 25% most disadvantaged pupils in England

outperform all pupils in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway.

See, children from poorer backgrounds can get the best results.

It can be done.

We believe in those children and we back those children.

This turnaround is arguably the greatest public policy achievement

of the last two decades.

And it is arguably, the greatest public policy achievement of the last two decade, and, it is the result of a formula.

A formula Lucy Powell would do well to learn.

Children from all backgrounds, plus traditional subjects, rigour and discipline, equals future success.

And here were two men who understood that and put it to work,

Michael Gove and Nick Gibb.

Their current successor doesn't want to over-focus on academic outcomes.

But look at what academia has achieved, our system is the envy of the world.

And, in the age of AI, it's more important than ever.

In fact, there's no reason to believe that the importance of maths and English

will change as AI becomes more pervasive.

They're still the most important vocational qualifications.

And they are what my brilliant team, Saqib, Patrick, Rebecca and Joanne and I are all working on.

But, friends, we don't have to look far to see what happens in schools when standards are abandoned.

Look at Labour-run Wales,

Reading, maths and science now below the national average.

Look at SNP-run Scottish schools,

Getting the poorest results they've ever received.

England, meanwhile, is flying high.

But we've got to keep going.

Reversing Labour's vandalism.

Turning schools into sanctuaries of learning.

I really believe that's what they should be.

Places where you're safe.

Where you're Respected.

Able to learn and fulfil your potential.

Free from all those outside distractions of identity, hierarchy and adults with agendas.

It's what teachers want.

It's what parents expect.

It's what children deserve.

And it is what a Conservative government will deliver.