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Rayner: ‘I’ll turn my back on Gove’s reforms’

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, plans to “turn her back” on Michael Gove’s school reforms, she said today.

The MP told a Guardian fringe event at the Labour Party conference that party policies going forward will focus on “collaboration not competition” and ending “fat cat salaries”, indicating she will seek to address concerns about the academies sector in her speech tomorrow.

Rayner is expected to flesh out some of her plans for a National Education Service when she addresses the event in Liverpool tomorrow afternoon.

But she offered a sneak preview during a fringe event organised by the Guardian at the conference today.

Asked by Guardian editor Kath Viner if she would turn her back on Gove’s reforms, which kick-started the controversial free school programme, among other sweeping changes to school structures, she said: “Absolutely.”

Rayner also criticised Gove’s decision during his tenure at the Department for Education to label parts of the educational establishment as “the blob”, saying she would instead refer to them as “the heroes”.

More to follow.

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