Andy Burnham’s first cabinet as Prime Minister included a notable, and potentially unexpected, return: Lucy Powell, the Manchester Central MP and Labour Deputy Leader, has been named education secretary. The appointment marks a rapid change of fortune, since Powell returns to government less than a year after being removed from cabinet by Keir Starmer, and it places her as the tenth person to hold the education brief in the past decade, a figure that reflects the degree of turnover the department has experienced in recent years.
Powell is not new to this portfolio, however. She previously held the shadow position for Childcare and Children from 2013-14 and was appointed Shadow Education Minister by Jeremy Corbyn in September 2015 to succeed Tristram Hunt, a period in which she argued for bringing free schools and academies back under local authority control, a position that sits on the more sceptical end of Labour opinion on academisation and diverges from the trajectory English school policy has followed over the past fifteen years. She went on to serve on the Commons Education Select Committee between 2017 and 2020, giving her sustained exposure to the system’s structural pressures ahead of taking direct responsibility for it.
Powell succeeds Bridget Phillipson, who had held the role since Labour entered government in July 2024 and remains in cabinet as Minister for Women and Equalities. The two contested last year’s Labour deputy leadership election, which Powell won. While the role of Labour deputy leader does not automatically confer the office of Deputy Prime Minister when the party is in government, Powell’s victory nevertheless established her as senior figure in the Party and positioned her as a credible cabinet appointment when Burnham came to assemble his top team. On taking up the role, Powell described education as, in her view, the most important responsibility any government holds and said she was looking forward to beginning the work ahead.
The positions she brings to the role
Powell’s record points to several areas where her approach is likely to differ from her predecessor’s. Her longstanding reservations about the academies system suggest she may be more inclined to strengthen local oversight of schools than to pressure a complete shift toward full academisation in the near future. On early years provision, she has previously argued, in a Guardian interview for free universal childcare for children. She stated that:
“I’d love it to be [introduced]. My job is to make the political and economic case for childcare, not just the childcare offer that we have right now but an extension of that. I am absolutely firmly of the belief that if you invest in childcare it pays for itself over time because it increases maternal employment rates.”
This position may be an indication of where she might look to move policy if fiscal conditions allow.
On student finance, she criticised the interest charged on Plan 2 loans in February 2026, describing it as “unfair” and “egregious” and the resulting burden on graduates as effectively endless, while acknowledging that substantial reform would carry significant costs to the Exchequer – a view that puts her at some distance from Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who has defended the existing system as fair. Powell’s preference for greater local accountability in education also appears broadly consistent with Burnham’s wider programme of devolving power from Whitehall.
The reforms already under way
Powell takes on a department in the middle of several substantial and, in places, contentious reform programmes. Foremost among them is the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system, which a cross-party group of mostly Labour MPs has described as being in crisis, calling on government to align funding with need and to give schools inflation-proofed budgets as the overhaul proceeds. Phillipson’s School’s White Paper had proposed replacing most Education, Health and Care Plans with individual support plans by 2029, a change that campaigners have warned risks rationing support according to cost rather than assessed need. Powell will need to determine whether to proceed with that model largely as designed, revise its terms, or secure additional funding to mitigate its effects, against continued pressure from parent groups and disability organisations to preserve the existing legal protections. This pressure comes as the Education for All Bill, announced during this year’s King’s Speech, is set to be introduced in the coming months, an opportunity for parliamentarians to address SEND provisions, and for Powell to establish her stance on the topic.
Beyond SEND, Powell is expected to carry forward an overhauled curriculum and assessment framework alongside the wide-ranging provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which spans issues from safeguarding to school standards. Moreover, teacher pay presents a further point of tension: a 3.5 percent increase has been offered for 2026-27, though schools will be required to fund 1.8 per cent of that award from their existing budgets, a formula likely to renew concerns about underlying funding pressure even as the Government points to progress on recruitment, having reached well over two-thirds of its manifesto pledge to add 6,500 teachers. There is also a structural change to contend with: the end of a standalone science department, with its functions folded into a newly merged business, innovation, science and trade department, a decision that has drawn criticism from universities and technology bodies. Powell must manage that reorganisation while universities continue to face significant financial strain of their own.
Alignment with Burnham’s agenda
The appointment is best understood alongside Burnham’s own stated priorities for education. In his first remarks as Prime Minister, he described changes to the education system, together with expanded mental health support for young people and a wider housebuilding programme, as part of a circuit breaker for Britain, representing the most significant change in four decades. That framing built on positions he had already set out during the leadership campaign, where he argued that too much of the school system remains oriented around the university route and called for greater parity between academic and technical education, with clearer pathways for young people into a reindustrialised economy. He has repeatedly cited estimates that close to a million 16-to-24-year-olds in the UK are not in education, employment or training, and has proposed expanding short work placements and apprenticeships in response, drawing in part on his own account of graduating from university and struggling to find employment. He has also spoken of positioning universities at the centre of local economies and of devolving greater control over skills and employment support to mayors and local authorities, an approach reflected in Greater Manchester’s own plans for an integrated technical education system developed with local employers and colleges.
That agenda gives Powell’s brief a different emphasis from Phillipson’s. Where her predecessor was primarily focused on delivering a Whitehall-designed settlement on SEND and curriculum reform, Powell’s task extends further, toward rebalancing a system still structured around a single university-oriented pathway, while continuing to implement reforms already under way rather than restarting them. As a Greater Manchester MP aligned with the same devolutionary strand of the party as Burnham, she is well placed for that shift in emphasis. Whether she is able to deliver it will depend on how she manages the more immediate pressures – SEND funding, teacher pay and university finances – all while the broader reorientation of the system takes shape.