TODAY, students around the country will pick up their GCSE results.
They have put in years of hard work and it is time for us to celebrate their amazing success.
I’m so proud of what they have achieved. And I want to thank our wonderful teachers for all they have done.
But our young people have had to fight against the odds every single day to get here.
They faced a pandemic that trapped them at home. They were Zoom guinea pigs, forced to learn alone in their bedrooms from a voice on a screen.
They were then told by Rishi Sunak that his government had “maxed out” on catch-up support.
When schools reopened, they came back to crumbling classrooms, thanks to an RAAC concrete crisis made by the Tories, and got more disruption because of strikes that could have been avoided if Conservative ministers had behaved like grown-ups.
Now I want to make sure every single one of our youngsters has the opportunities they need to succeed.
My message to them is this: If you want to take the academic path and go to university, great, we’ll help you get there, no matter where you come from.
But it is not the only way to get on. There are so many other great routes to success, like apprenticeships and other technical courses. This country has ignored these pathways for far too long.
They have been sneered at as options for other people’s kids, that they aren’t as good as going to university.
I know, and Sun readers know, that’s rubbish. Let’s set the record straight. This country needs graduates.
But to get Britain moving again, we also need skilled technicians — brickies, electricians, IT engineers, plumbers, builders, carpenters, mechanics, welders, roofers.
These are good, well-paid trades that help people get on in life and drive economic growth across the UK.
But too few young people are pursuing these careers and it’s holding Britain back.
I was really pleased to see that the Sun launched its Builder Better Britain campaign last year to put these issues front and centre.
We need skilled construction workers more than ever before and this government is determined to work with the sector to train them up.
It is time we took skills seriously again. That is how we restore hope and opportunity to this country. It is how we rebuild the belief that if you work hard, then you can earn a decent wage, buy a good house and raise a family.
I want to deliver an age of opportunity in this country, and that means securing a new era of vocational training for our young people.
We will do that by reviewing the curriculum and closing any qualification gaps so that kids have a better choice of vocational pipelines.
And we will simplify taxes on employers that fund apprenticeship training to open up routes that get young people into good, skilled jobs.
Alongside the Prime Minister, last month I launched Skills England, a new body that brings together businesses, colleges and mayors to deliver new ways for young people to skill up and get on.
Thanks to the Tories, the foundations of opportunity are rotten to the core.
But I’m going to rebuild them. It is my mission to break down the barriers to opportunity and spread success to all four corners of the country.
Our young people collecting their results tomorrow have fought major disruption to their learning to get here.
And now I’m going to fight for them.
I am going to fight to make sure all our young people, no matter their background, get the opportunities they need to get on and succeed.
