Education and Skills in the 2026 Leaders’ Party Conference Speeches

Over the past month, every major political party has held their annual conference, giving party leaders an opportunity to address their members and set their political course for the coming year. We took a look at each party leader’s conference speech to determine what they might mean for education and skills, and see where their priorities lie in relation to our team’s recent work.

Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman Conference Speeches: 

While there was little directly related to education and skills policy within the Reform UK leader’s speech, Farage did commit to boosting NHS training; producing more ‘homegrown’ doctors and nurses to reduce the UK’s dependence on importing skilled labour.  

Our Higher Education Commission’s latest report, Trained for Tomorrow, speaks directly to this phenomenon. In the report, we make several clear recommendations for protecting the longevity and sustainability of the NHS workforce, including creating more flexible entry routes and study pathways into healthcare careers, strengthening regional workforce planning through Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), and improving equitable access to continuing professional development (CPD). 

Farage also drew attention to student tuition fees and Reform’s position that we are sending too many people to university and overlooking other routes into work.  

The next day, in her conference speech, Reform UK spokesperson for education, skills, and equality, Suella Braverman MP, set out three pledges for her first 100 days in power. These all centred on the NHS workforce pipeline and higher education funding. Several of the problems she identifiedare ones our Education and Skills team has recently examined in Trained for Tomorrow and our Skills Commission’s Earning or Learning report. These reports often share Braverman’s diagnosis but give different accounts of causes and propose different solutions.  

The three announcements: 

1. Lift the cap on medical training places: for “homegrown British doctors”, with a pledge to resign if this is not delivered, plus new medical schools.  
2. Scrap interest on student loans for British nurses: Braverman states this will save British nurses £250,000 over their careers. 
3. Cut taxpayer funding to student loans and tuition fees by 20%: saving £4bn/year, targeting the “bottom set” of universities through a new value for money test. 

Braverman’s speech also proposed ending loans to non-British students, a “balanced patriotic curriculum” with compulsory anthem singing and flag raising in schools, and “a record number of apprenticeships” funded through higher education savings.  

Trained for Tomorrow speaks directly to all three of Braverman’s pledges. She attributes rejected medical school applicants to intake caps, but our inquiry found that placement capacity, educator shortages, and the availability of training posts also constrain expansion, with the Royal College of Nursing reporting that 75% of universities have cut nursing staffing costs and a third of nurse lecturers teach 80 or more students. Her pledge on nurse debt shares the premise of one of our recommendations, which proposes reimbursing loan repayments for each year of NHS service, weighted to shortage areas and covering all healthcare professions. However, evaluation of the equivalent scheme for teachers found no statistically significant effect on retention. The proposed 20% funding cut would follow a 2025 Spending Review that gave universities no new core teaching funding, and it’s unclear how a value for money test would treat providers of nursing and allied health courses. Braverman’s example of a student leaving her village echoes the report’s evidence on graduates allocated far from home, while midwifery degree apprenticeships, with attrition of 0% to 4% against 13% on the traditional route, show how her apprenticeship ambitions could support the NHS pipeline. 

Our Skills Commission’s Earning or Learning report shares Braverman’s concern about opportunities for young people but locates the causes elsewhere. Where Braverman links worklessness to low-value degrees, the report emphasises ill health, noting that 45% of 16-24-year-olds not in employment, education, or training (NEET) are disabled, up from 24% in 2013/14. She identified poor GCSE English and maths results as a problem without proposing a policy solution, whereas our report addresses this group directly, since lacking Level 2 qualifications is the strongest predictor of NEET status. There is convergence on the system favouring academic routes, but Braverman focuses on the expansion of higher education whereas our report focuses on Progress 8 and school accountability as the most significant contributing factor. Her promise of “a record number of apprenticeships” funded through higher education savings treats this as a funding question, while our report identifies wider barriers, including £3.3bn of levy returned unspent in 2019-22, the administrative burden on SMEs, and families losing about £80 a week when a 16-18-year-old starts an apprenticeship. 

Sir Ed Davey Conference Speech: 

Sir Ed Davey’s leader’s speech contained few direct announcements on education and skills, with its main pledges focused on income tax, closer ties with Europe, and AI. Several of its arguments nonetheless touched on the sector. Framing his speech around “the fight of our lives”, Davey argued that the country is not short of talent but of a system that empowers people to make the most of it. 

Davey linked public disillusionment partly to young people who “can’t see a future for themselves” in their communities and turn to their screens instead. Our Skills Commission’s Earning or Learning report found that 12.8% of 16-24-year-olds, roughly 957,000, were NEET between October and December 2025, the second-highest figure in more than a decade. The report gives more weight to health and household finances than the speech did. It highlights that 45% of NEET 16-24-year-olds are disabled (including long-term illness), up from 24% in 2013/14. It also finds that families lose approximately £80 per week in Child Benefit and the Universal Credit Child element when a young person aged 16 or over starts an apprenticeship. 

His case for community politics, doing things with people rather than to them, drew on a residents’ ballot over an estate regeneration in Kingston. Earning or Learning applies a similar principle to youth provision. It recommends a devolved Youth Opportunity Fund overseen by Youth Skills Boards, in which paid youth representatives, including young people with experience of being NEET, hold at least 20% of voting rights. The report sets this against a 73% real-terms fall in local authority youth services spending in England since 2010-11. 

Drawing on his family’s experience, Davey described parents of children with SEND battling a system meant to support them, and called for care that empowers families rather than managing them. Our report focuses on a later stage, the transition out of school. It recommends funded Transition Coordinators for young people with SEND or in alternative provision, to prevent a post-16 or post-18 “cliff edge”. 

Davey pledged one-to-one maternity care and described midwives as exhausted and working in buildings not fit for purpose. Our Higher Education Commission’s Trained for Tomorrow report notes that nearly one-third of nurses, midwives and health visitors are over 50. It highlights the Registered Midwife Degree Apprenticeship, where attrition rates of between 0% and 4% compared favourably with 13% on the traditional route. The report finds that wider adoption is held back by employer backfill costs and recommends a dedicated funding mechanism to cover them. 

On tax, Davey pledged to raise the personal allowance to £15,000 and the higher rate threshold to £56,000, arguing that a band designed for stockbrokers now holds back teachers and nurses. Trained for Tomorrow takes a more targeted approach to the finances of NHS staff. It proposes a student loan repayment reimbursement scheme modelled on the existing scheme for teachers, with priority for underserved areas and shortage specialities. The report also notes that evaluation of the teacher scheme found no statistically significant effect on retention rates, suggesting such incentives need to sit alongside improvements to working conditions. 

Andy Burnham Conference Speech: 

Andy Burnham’s first conference speech as Prime Minister set out a ten-year plan built on public control of essentials, devolution, and a new social contract. Education and skills sat within his argument that the country must choose between investing in young people and “paying for failure” through the benefits system. Several commitments relate to education and skills, though much of the detail is deferred to the final report of Alan Milburn’s review on Young People and Work. 

Burnham pledged to rebuild comprehensive education with parity between academic and technical routes, led by Lucy Powell, and “good quality pathways for all from 14”. Our Skills Commission’s Earning or Learning report shares this ambition but finds that school accountability currently works against it, with GCSE entries outnumbering Technical Award entries by 16 to 1. Our report argues that the proposed restructuring of Progress 8 still confines vocational qualifications to “choice” slots and therefore recommends that approved technical qualifications count on an equivalent footing to other subjects. 

Burnham also proposed a youth offer which included a 45-day work placement between 16 and 18. This is roughly the length of the industry placement already built into T Levels, so it is not yet clear whether the pledge extends that model or creates a new entitlement. Earning or Learning suggests delivery capacity is a concern even at a smaller scale. It cites Careers and Enterprise Company data showing that 26% of schools are not delivering the required work experience provision, and recommends a funded Work Experience Coordinator in every Careers Hub. 

Furthermore, the promise of “an apprenticeship at 18” reads closer to a guarantee than an aspiration, which raises questions of supply and affordability. Our report finds that families lose approximately £80 per week in Child Benefit and the Universal Credit Child element when a young person aged 16 or over starts an apprenticeship rather than staying in full-time education. It also notes that £3.3 billion was returned unspent to the Treasury under the Apprenticeship Levy between 2019 and 2022, with employers citing bureaucracy and administrative complexity as key barriers to participation. 

Burnham also proposed funding new opportunities through a rethink of the welfare system, with young people required to take up the help offered.Our report shows that the share of NEET young people citing ill health as a barrier to work rose from 26% to 44% between 2015 and 2025, and cautions against sanctions that exacerbate mental illness. Whether the requirement works as a guarantee of support or as tighter conditionality will depend on its design. 

Burnham’s theory of growth rests on devolving power to places, alongside a £2 bus fare cap across England through 2027. Earning or Learning goes further for young people. It recommends a national free bus entitlement for 16-18-year-olds modelled on Greater Manchester’s Our Pass scheme, introduced during his time as Mayor. It also recommends that every Local Skills Improvement Plan include a Youth Guarantee Implementation Chapter, though the Youth Guarantee itself was not mentioned in the speech. 

Burnham highlighted start-ups and scale-ups emerging from world-class universities while criticising a school system “overly focused on the university route”. Our Higher Education Commission’s Trained for Tomorrow report suggests parity can be built through higher education rather than against it. It points to degree apprenticeships and to Anglia Ruskin University’s (ARU) decision to accept T Levels for entry to medicine. It also finds these routes under strain, with levy funding for Level 7 apprenticeships restricted to those aged 21 and under from January 2026. Burnham told NHS staff they had been let down, but the speech did not address the training pipeline.  

Taken together, the speech sets a clear direction for education and skills, but delivery will depend on reforms to school accountability, welfare and funding that are yet to be set out. The final Milburn report and the Chancellor’s first Budget will show whether these ambitions are matched by the mechanisms and funding needed to achieve them. 

Zack Polanski Conference Speech: 

Education and skills did not feature as a standalone theme in the Green Party leader’s speech. Instead, young people’s circumstances were used mainly to illustrate the case for rent controls, but his speech made no explicit reference to apprenticeships, further education, tuition fees, schools funding, curriculum, or skills policy. 

The most direct reference to higher education described “nineteen-year-olds who can’t afford student housing, so they’re living with their parents and commuting to uni.” Polanski went on to argue that these students are missing lectures because they cannot afford the train fare, and missing out on the friendships that come from living with others. This links accommodation and transport costs to attendance and the wider university experience, issues of clear relevance to our Higher Education Commission. However, no student-specific policy was proposed. The remedy offered was the general three-year “emergency brake on private rents”, followed by a longer-term “national Fair Rents Guarantee”. 

The closest the speech came to the Skills Commission’s territory was a reference to “twenty-five-year-olds who can’t find a job, no matter how many tens or hundreds of applications they send.” This was framed as a housing issue, with young people who “can’t imagine ever being able to afford to rent even a room of their own”, rather than as a question of skills, careers or NEET status, and no employment or training measures were attached. Our Earning or Learning report points to other factors behind youth worklessness, including ill health, with 45% of NEET 16-24-year-olds now disabled, up from 24% in 2013/14, and the absence of Level 2 qualifications, the strongest predictor of NEET status. Housing costs and these factors may well interact, but the speech and our report place the emphasis in different places. 

On schools, Polanski stated that in London “more than 90 primary schools have shut down since 2019 because there aren’t enough children to fill them”, presenting falling school admittance as a consequence of young families leaving the capital or delaying having children because of housing costs. The speech did not give a source for this figure, and falling pupil numbers also reflect other factors, such as the national decline in the birth rate.  

Several further commitments touch on skills without naming them. The “clean energy revolution”, with every home “transformed to highest energy efficiency” and “a massive expansion of community energy”, would require a substantial retrofit and green skills workforce, yet the speech did not mention the training or workforce needed to deliver it. Youth centres were also listed among the “cornerstones of our neighbourhoods” that “are no longer there in the same way”, in the context of community cohesion and online harms. 

Overall, education appeared in Polanski’s speech as evidence of housing pressure rather than as a policy area in its own right. The convergence with our work lie in student cost of living, youth worklessness, and the unstated skills implications of the party’s energy commitments, all areas where further detail would help clarify how Polanski’s proposals would work in practice. 

Kemi Badenoch Conference Speech: 

The Leader of the Opposition’s conference speech contained several key announcements related to education and skills. Intertwined with her promise to grow the economy was a promise to create new jobs. She spoke of her time as a recent graduate in 2003, and how she had the pick of graduate jobs, contrasting this with the situation many young people find themselves in today. 

Badenoch committed to scrapping interest on student loans and removing every ‘job killing’ measure within Labour’s 2025 Employment Rights Act. Like Braverman’s pledge for nurses, this treats debt as a deterrent, though our Higher Education Commission’s Trained for Tomorrow report takes a more targeted approach for the NHS workforce, proposing loan repayment reimbursement for each year of NHS service. She attributed the growing number of NEETs in the past two years to the increase in employers’ NI contribution, before promising to cut this in half for under-25s. She argued that the best approach to getting more young people into work was by making it easier for employers to hire them.  

Our Skills Commission’s Earning or Learning report shares this focus on employers, recommending a single service to reduce the burden on SMEs, but finds that small employers cite complexity rather than direct wage costs as the main deterrent. It also places the rise in NEET numbers within a longer trend, with economic inactivity linked to ill health increasing since 2013. 

She reaffirmed the Conservative Party’s commitment to reforming the welfare system, calling for a “tough love” approach and claiming it is morally wrong to tell young people with mild anxiety that they’re disabled and cannot work. Our report offers a different reading of the same trend, highlighting that 45% of NEET 16-24-year-olds are disabled (including long-term illness), up from 24% in 2013/14, and recommending specialist employment support as the default offer for young people with significant mental health needs. 

She also spoke of the “back to work card”, announced last month. Under this plan, unemployed claimants who haven’t paid enough into the system will have their benefits cut by 30%. The card itself will only allow claimants to buy essentials, banning them from buying alcohol, cigarettes or gambling. Those straight out of school or university will be unable to claim benefits and will instead be put on a ‘get to work’ programme. How this would interact with education and training routes is not yet clear. Our report cautions that the benefits system currently penalises young people who move into learning, with families losing about £80 a week when a 16-18-year-old starts an apprenticeship. 

On schools, she promised to strip out the politics and put academic standards first, taking aim at Lucy Powell’s comments about the current overfocus on academic outcomes in schools. Positioning the Conservatives apart from other parties, Badenoch expressed her trust in giving young people the tools to find their own pathways, be they academic or vocational. Earning or Learning shares the desire for greater parity, but argues for greater wrap around support of young people and recommends that accountability measures, such a Progress 8, currently work against it, with GCSE entries outnumbering Technical Award entries by 16 to 1. 

Looking ahead, the coming year will be an important one for education and skills policy, with major questions around youth employment, technical and academic pathways, higher education funding, workforce development and how the system supports people through key transitions.

Policy Connect’s Education and Skills team will continue to develop this work through the Skills Commission, Higher Education Commission and APPG for Skills, Careers and Employment. Pasted text

To find out more about upcoming work or opportunities to contribute, please contact this pieces co-author: Rhiannon Tuckett-Jones at Rhiannon.Tuckett-Jones@policyconnect.org.uk.