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Lucy Powell has been appointed as education secretary by new prime minister Andy Burnham.

She will replace Bridget Phillipson, who has held the role since the Labour government first took power in July 2024 and had been shadow education secretary for the preceding two and a half years.

Ms Phillipson has retained her role as minister for women and equalities.

Ms Powell, the MP for Manchester Central, has previously voiced a strong anti-academies stance.

More recently, she and Ms Phillipson went head-to-head last year to become deputy leader of the Labour Party, with Ms Powell winning members’ votes.

Her appointment comes amid a cabinet reshuffle after Andy Burnham, the former Manchester mayor and now MP for Makerfield, became prime minister today.

Other Department for Education ministerial roles were yet to be confirmed at the time of writing.

Powell: Teaching is ‘micro-managed’

Ms Powell��was state educated at Manchester’s��Parrs Wood High School and Xaverian Sixth Form College,��where she stood as a Labour candidate in the school’s mock elections held to coincide with the 1992 general election.

She studied chemistry at Somerville College, University of Oxford,��and King’s College, London.

She is not new to education policy, having been shadow childcare and early years minister from October 2013 to November 2014 and taken on the shadow education role under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership from 2015-16. She later sat on the Commons Education Select Committee.

Her mother was��a headteacher and a multi-academy trust leader, and her uncle, grandfather and two aunts were all involved in education.

However, in her shadow role, Ms Powell argued for all academies and free schools to return to local authority control.

Her voting history shows that she consistently voted for nationalising teacher pay and the curriculum for academies, tightening child-protection duties and introducing free breakfast clubs.

In a 2019 interview with ����Vlog, she also issued a warning against education being “overprescribed”.

“You have got to the position where policy keeps pushing and pushing but are we expecting to have identikit kids when we are saying, ‘All schools should teach these subjects in this way. Everyone needs to take them and everyone needs to do this handful of GCSEs,’” she said.

She further warned: “[Education is] becoming overprescribed and micro-managed. And that is the same for teachers as well. Some of the joy has gone out.”

Strikes could be on the horizon

The new education secretary faces a busy autumn, with the NEU teaching union set to poll members on industrial action over school funding and teacher pay, as revealed by ����Vlog.

����Vlog also revealed last week that the Association of School and College Leaders will survey its members this autumn “to ascertain the impact on school budgets” of the DfE teacher pay announcement.

Teachers have been offered a 3.5 per cent pay rise in 2026-27, as first revealed by ����Vlog earlier this month. However, schools will have to fund 1.8 per cent of the award out of existing budgets.

Ms Powell will also be expected to see through the government’s landmark��SEND reforms, as well as delivering an overhauled curriculum and assessment system and overseeing a huge range of measures brought in via the .

Bridget Phillipson loses education brief

Early on in Ms Phillipson’s time as education secretary, she saw off teacher strikes with a 5.5 per cent pay offer.

Since then, the government has��scrapped Ofsted’s single-word effectiveness grades for schools, set out an ambition for all schools to be in trusts as part of a Schools White Paper, commissioned a review into curriculum and assessment, and launched plans for major reforms to special educational needs provision.

Under her watch, the Department for Education has also delivered the giant Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, after a lengthy parliamentary ping pong that saw some of the government’s initial proposals watered down, including on academy powers.

Ms Phillipson also faced��legal challenges over the introduction of VAT to private school fees, which led to accusations of her being a “spiteful class warrior”��- a tag that she chose to lean into.

In an interview with ����Vlog in 2024, she said that Labour’s policies would not make the system easier for school leaders.

She added: “It is going to be a different system and in many ways a more robust system that will shine a light on areas where there is poor performance [and] where we need to make more progress, especially when it comes to support for children experiencing the greatest levels of disadvantage.”

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