Shadow education secretary announces new childcare taskforce to help London parents meet high costs

Outspoken: shadow education secretary Angela Rayner speaks on the third day of annual Labour Party conference in Liverpool
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The shadow education secretary today vowed to use her experiences as a teenage mother to deliver a childcare revolution to benefit parents across London.

Angela Rayner, an outspoken Left-winger with no university degree, said the blueprint for the shake-up was the way London schools have been radically improved.

Announcing a new childcare taskforce, she told the Standard: “Parents all over London are struggling to meet the soaring costs of childcare which is flexible enough to fully meet their needs.

“Labour’s childcare taskforce is now charged with ensuring that every parent in London — whether single or a couple, working full-time or part-time, on shift work or nine-to-five — has access to affordable, top-quality care for their children.”

Highlighting how poor-performing schools in the capital were turned around, she added: “Labour has already shown, through the London Challenge, that we can raise standards amongst children living in some of the most deprived areas of the capital. Our task now is to focus on the early years, which can make such a huge difference to a child’s future life chances and social mobility.”

Mrs Rayner, MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, was today to tell Labour delegates in Liverpool how Labour’s Sure Start centres had helped her.

“I left school at 16, pregnant, with no qualifications,” she was due to say. “Some may argue I was not a great role model for today’s young people. The direction of my life was set.” But she stressed that excellent childcare had helped as she strived to get the best for her three sons.

Mrs Rayner has led Labour’s attack on Theresa May’s plans to expand selection in schools, including with more grammars.

“Selection is toxic,” the Labour MP was set to argue today at the party’s conference, dismissing the Prime Minister’s stance that it can be used to help more children from poorer backgrounds get into good schools.

Describing Labour as the party of “comprehensives”, she added: “Selection — or segregation as it should be called — entrenches division and increases inequality.”

Labour is to launch a campaign on Saturday against more grammar schools. Mrs Rayner also emphasised that “failings” in the existing school system needed to be tackled including oversized classes, teacher recruitment problems, and ensuring all academies and free schools are “fully accountable” to the local community that they serve.

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