As Andy Burnham settles into Downing Street, Comprehensive Future is highlighting his longstanding support for comprehensive education and fair school admissions — a record that stretches back over a decade.
Burnham’s opposition to selection is not new. As Shadow Secretary of State for Education in 2010, he said: “I oppose selection with everything I’ve got.” He described his belief in an education system that brings children from all backgrounds together, giving them “the ability to see things from all sides and deal with all comers.”
Speaking at the 2024 launch of Time’s Up for the Test — a campaign calling for an end to the 11-plus exam and academic selection at age 11 — he went further. “Education should be a true level playing field. Instead, it’s like a climb where some people are beginning halfway up the mountain face and others are at the bottom with no ropes.” He called for “an education system where all children have an equal start in life” and urged politicians to “call time on the test.”
In his 2024 book Head North, Burnham described joining Comprehensive Future as a “minor act of defiance,” criticised the “snobbery” surrounding comprehensive education, and argued that comprehensive education should be a phrase to celebrate with “everyone educated together, seeing life from all sides and a broad curriculum catering for all talents.”
Burnham himself attended a Catholic comprehensive school and has spoken warmly about his own children’s experience of state comprehensive education.
The new PM has appointed Lucy Powell as Education Secretary, who is also a long-standing critic of grammar schools. As shadow education secretary from 2015, she was one of the most vocal opponents in Parliament of plans to expand selective education. Writing in 2017, she argued that grammar schools which failed to urgently reform their admissions and substantially increase the number of low-income pupils should lose their state funding.
Comprehensive Future Chair Dr Nuala Burgess said:
“We congratulate Andy Burnham on becoming Prime Minister. He has been one of the clearest advocates for comprehensive education. It’s really encouraging to have someone in Number 10 who understands both the strengths of comprehensive schools and the inequalities created by grammar schools and the 11-plus.
“We are proud that Andy speaks so warmly about Comprehensive Future in his book, ‘Head North’. His description of the value of young people from all backgrounds learning together reflects the principles that have always been at the heart of Comprehensive Future’s work.
“We recognise the government will be working within the commitments of the Labour manifesto, and that wholesale reform of selective education isn’t on the table in the near term. But there is still real scope for practical, achievable change. We very much hope that when the time is right Andy will consider a review of the future of the 11-plus, and to take steps to make all school admissions fairer and more transparent for every child.”
