Ready, set, go: Sir Keir Starmer launches fifth and final mission

Today, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer unveiled his fifth and final mission as he announced what Labour’s education policy would look like. Speaking in Gillingham, Kent, within the Medway council area that Labour won in May, Starmer drew on his working class roots as he vowed a Labour government would shatter the ‘class ceiling’ and ‘tear down’ obstacles to opportunity.  

The speech marks the fifth of Starmer’s missions announced earlier in the year, which will “form the backbone” of a future Labour government. 

During the speech, the Labour leader announced a range of goals, including a mass recruitment drive for teachers as Starmer looks to address recent recruitment and retention issues facing schools. He also pledged that a future Labour government would recruit more than 6,500 teachers by 2030 and offer teachers one-off payments and better salaries, a move funded by removing the charitable status of private schools.  

Another key reform revealed is an improvement in pupils speaking abilities and oracy skills. Writing in The Times yesterday, Starmer argued that “an inability to articulate yourself fluently is a key barrier to getting on and thriving in life.” He also attacked the “snobbery” surrounding vocational courses and promised to expand opportunity and offer more vocational courses as well as reforms to Ofsted, with the introduction of annual inspections and an alternative grading system.  

The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) union welcomed Labour's proposals but warned they must be matched by "significant additional investment". Whilst Kevin Courtney, joint General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said: “This announcement sketches a broad and ambitious programme of reform. If implemented boldly and funded well, it will repair much of the damage of the last 13 years.” 

The speech marked Labour’s fifth and final mission and concluded a series of speeches delivered by Starmer across the country throughout the first half of the year. His other missions are for the UK to have the highest sustained growth in the G7, making Britain a green energy superpower, improving the NHS, and reforming the justice system.  

The missions were initially seen as a bid from Starmer to match the five pledges that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made to the country at the start of the year, but, crucially, Starmer will not be held accountable or have to deliver on these missions, for now anyway.  

Some quarters have criticised the missions for lack of genuine policy shifts and being too sound-bite heavy. It is worth noting that Labour has already had to u-turn on the £30bn financial commitments announced during their green mission, so what is announced today and makes it into the manifesto commitments could, of course, change.  

Nonetheless, with the Conservatives struggling in the polls and facing the prospect of another by-election following the findings of the Parliamentary standard watchdog into allegations against Chris Pincher MP, Labour has now set its stall out for what their priorities will be if they win power at the next general election, expected for Autumn next year.