Bridget Phillipson: Bullied at school and rotten windows - Labour's new education secretary
The education secretary was brought up on benefits and studied at Oxford before returning to her hometown in the North East to work in local government and a women's refuge.
Friday 5 July 2024 16:55, UK
Bridget Phillipson joined the Labour Party aged just 15.
Twenty-five years later, Ms Phillipson has been re-elected as an MP for the fourth time and after Labour's win in the general election, she has been appointed education secretary.
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Bullied at school for being poor
She was born and raised in the former mining town of Washington, Tyne and Wear, to a single mother, Clare Phillipson.
The family grew up in a council house and relied on benefits.
In an interview with The Times, Ms Phillipson recalled having "no upstairs heating" and "rotten windows".
She said she was "bullied at school" because "parents didn't want their children mixing with people like me".
Her father was absent, having left her mother while she was still pregnant. He lived nearby but didn't have a relationship with his daughter.
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After years of struggling, her mother bought their council house and set up a women's refuge called Women In Need.
Meanwhile, Bridget became a Grade A pupil at secondary school, with her mother insisting she went to drama school on the weekends, which landed her a role as an extra in the TV series Byker Grove.
Having entered into politics as a Labour Party member at 15, Ms Phillipson got into Oxford to study modern history, where she became co-chair of the university Labour club.
When she finished her degree, she returned to the North East and worked in local government before managing the refuge her mother founded between 2007 and 2010.
She was put forward as a parliamentary candidate for Houghton and Sunderland South in 2010 as part of Labour's all-women shortlists, brought in by Sir Tony Blair in 1997 to improve female representation.
Although Labour lost the election, she was elected as an MP with a majority of just over 10,000.
After that, Ms Phillipson was re-elected in 2015, 2017, and 2019.
Removing the 'class ceiling' through education
She refused to be part of the shadow cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, accusing him of a "lack of self-reflection" over the party's antisemitism scandal.
When Sir Keir Starmer replaced him in 2020, she was given the position of shadow chief treasury to the Treasury, before taking on her current role as shadow education secretary in November 2021.
As a recipient of free school meals, and crediting Education Maintenance Allowance with her decision to pursue A-levels instead of getting a job, Ms Phillipson has been fundamental in shaping Labour's education policies.
Her shadow cabinet is pledging universal free breakfasts for primary school children, 3,000 new primary school-based nurseries, and 100,000 new nursery places.
She has vowed to tackle the "class ceiling" through education, telling Politics Home in 2023: "Kids from working-class backgrounds often don't get a second chance.
"If you're better off, often your parents can step in, they can provide money, they can give you those opportunities. But for lots of kids from communities like mine, they only get one chance at it."
Among the other policies she's been behind are reforming maths teaching to make it "real-world"-relevant and implementing two weeks' obligatory work experience for all young people.
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She has been criticised for failing to rule out an increase in tuition fees, in a departure from Sir Keir's pledge to abolish them when he was first opposition leader.
Ms Phillipson splits her time between Sunderland and Westminster, with her husband Lawrence, and their two children.