Starmer: Tories against ‘working-class aspiration for university’

Sir Keir Starmer has answered Rishi Sunak’s attack on the last Labour government’s target for higher education expansion in England by accusing the prime minister of seeking a “levelling down of working-class aspiration to go to university”.

In his speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool, the party leader took on the prime minister after the latter set his sights on Tony Blair’s 1999 pledge to ensure 50 per cent of young people gained a higher education qualification.

Mr Sunak said in his speech to the Conservative conference that “the Labour government pursued the false dream of 50 per cent of children going to university and abandoned apprenticeships”, which he called “one of the great mistakes of the last 30 years”.

Sir Keir said: “I never thought I would hear a modern Conservative prime minister say that 50 per cent of our children going to university was a false dream.”

He then referred to his father, who worked as a toolmaker.

“My dad felt the disrespect of vocational skills all his life,” said Sir Keir. “But the solution is not and never will be the levelling down of working-class aspiration to go to university.”

Sir Keir also included in his list of the last Labour government’s achievements a reference to “more students than ever”.

The Labour leader also committed to the creation of technical excellence colleges, which the party said in an earlier announcement would feature “improved links to local universities”.

Sir Keir said these colleges would be linked to regional economies and “planted firmly in the ground of young people’s aspirations”, giving the example of training “lab workers in Derbyshire, automotive workers in Wolverhampton, computer scientists in Manchester”.

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com