Bridget Phillipson

Tim, um, I, uh, spoke earlier to Sir David Bell, who's carried out this government review into antisemitism in schools.

To her credit, Bridget Phillipson, when she was Education Secretary, asked for it because there were, of course, uh, m- a spike in, uh, students particularly and some teachers complaining that they were being, uh, harassed by people because of their Jewish faith.

And in that discussion, which we're gonna hear in just a minute, we discuss whether teachers should be allowed to wear pro-Palestinian symbols.

And we now have this new poppy that has been invented by an NHS trainee doctor-

Oh, yeah.

I want them to put their money into that because it is a waste, and, uh, look, he said, he said, uh, these people, Nigel Farage said, "These people are bad apples," and I did think Bridget Phillipson, who's an, uh, a, a free school meals girl from, uh, Sunderland, uh, now in the cabinet, of course, uh, did say, "Well, bad apples don't fall far from the tree." I thought that was a rare glimpse of humor from her that had a real political punch.

Indeed.

Right.

year.The plans come after what the article calls a barrage of complaints that the new system was dangerously stressful and damaging teachers' mental health.

Education Secretary Lucy Powell is set to tell Ofsted to go back to the drawing board after becoming concerned that changes overseen by Bridget Phillipson were creating problems.

The article quotes sources who say Powell does not want to scrap the new rating system, but she does want inspectors to take greater account of the social and economic background of each school and its pupils.

The changes are due to be communicated to Ofsted in the coming weeks and will mean a significant shift from those carried out by her predecessor.

But meanwhile, those people Labor can still boss around through council agreements, they're not exactly falling over each other to kiss the ring either.

Labor Party Chair Bridget Phillipson's instruction is that local Greens must reject their party's Zionism is racism motion if their arrangements with Labor are to continue.

They have a week to respond.

As many as 19 councils throughout England and Wales may be in danger as a result of this stupidity, and yesterday I put out coverage where we looked at several of them.

Burnham condemned it and ruled out partnership with the Greens while the policy remained.

Then the following day, Labour Chair Bridget Phillipson took that position into local government.

Local Greens must publicly reject the policy and urge their national leadership to reconsider, or Labour withdraws from any working arrangements with the Greens.

Change your policy at our demands or else.

They've given them a week, a deadline of a week, and if, uh, they don't, they will... all deals are off.

Um, that could, I mean, potentially create chaos and turmoil in some town halls.

Um, but, uh, B- Bridget Phillipson said, uh, "This isn't an issue of party politics." No.

[laughs]

She wants much more practical elements to dominate.

This goes further than her predecessor, Bridget Phillipson, who favored a far more cautious attitude to changes in the wake of the curriculum and assessment review that she commissioned.

This year-long piece of work by Professor Becky Francis recommended evolution not revolution.

However, Powell has insisted she will build on the Francis review rather than scrap it.

So that's the response to that particular challenge.

And then the third was, broadly speaking, all of the proposals in the White Paper that can be grouped together as structural reform, and I, I called that, using Bridget Phillipson's language, a system built for children.

So how do we build a system that is designed for all of our children? And I loved the fact that she was talking about that because I think it was the first time really that a politician, a secretary of state, had said we need structural reform, not for the sake of structural reform, but so that we can deliberately design a system that is built for all of our children.

So to come back to the second part of your question, why did I call SEND and inclusion the social justice issue of our day? And that comes back to the fact that the way that the system for special educational needs and disability has been designed has not served us well.