{"id":240129,"date":"2026-01-13T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schoolsweek.co.uk\/?p=240129"},"modified":"2026-01-12T16:52:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T16:52:34","slug":"baroness-barran-shadow-education-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schoolsweek.co.uk\/baroness-barran-shadow-education-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Baroness Barran, shadow education minister"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few days after she was appointed as academies minister in 2021, officials described to Baroness Diana Barran the severity of a key item in her in-tray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is your Grenfell, minister.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were describing the RAAC crisis <\/a>that has now blighted hundreds of England\u2019s schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huge sheets of reinforced autoclave aerated concrete installed decades ago were sat above thousands of children. If water gets into the material, its metal reinforcements rust, causing it to fall down as one piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barran recalls the \u201cpeace time\u201d during 2022 and early 2023, when she agreed that the department would offer free surveys to all schools where staff thought they might have the crumbly concrete and then replace it, before the dramatic \u201cwar time\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 2023, three \u201clow risk\u201d planks collapsed. Thankfully no one was harmed, but this kickstarted a chain of events that dominated newspaper headlines for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 100 schools were told days before the start of the academic year to close entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few will have forgotten then education secretary<\/a> Gillian Keegan\u2019s \u2018hot-mic\u2019 moment, in which she was recorded asking why she wasn\u2019t thanked for doing a \u201cf***ing good job\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Shadow
Barran in the House of Lords<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But while admitting others may disagree, Barran believes the government\u2019s response to the crisis was one of her proudest moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She visited every school that couldn\u2019t teach on-site while facing remedial works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was a very difficult school with autistic children and I went there several times and met with the parents,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether it did any good or didn\u2019t do any good, but I just felt the decent thing was to look them in the eye because if you\u2019ve got a severely disabled child, school closing is just much more than school closing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey had terrible worries about whether the children would be able to go to another setting \u2013 it was really, very difficult. I think we behaved as decently and as humanly as I knew how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe might have been able to do it better, but it was as good as I knew how.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resisting the churn<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

During a period of huge churn in education ministers towards the end of the last Conservative government, whether you agreed with her policies or not, Barran became a consistent face in Parliament for the sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She served as minister for the school system from September 2021 until the general election in 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think if I put myself into the shoes of civil servants, it must be so frustrating when ministers change every five minutes, I had five secretaries of state in three years. Admittedly, three of them were very short, but even so, it\u2019s far from ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She quickly earned a reputation for hard work, not something always considered synonymous with the public reputation of the House of Lords. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Barran’s first day at nursery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, during the dying days of Boris Johnson\u2019s government, she was tasked with introducing the schools bill \u2013 a proposed blueprint for academy system reform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former academies ministers joined a cacophony of opposition, and after long debates and late nights in the chamber, the bill was finally dropped by Rishi Sunak\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the 2024 election, fellow peer Lord Leigh of Hurley described Barran as \u201cone of many Lords ministers who quietly got on with their job to improve people\u2019s lives without fuss, seeking credit or even pay\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many other Lords, Barran did not draw a ministerial salary on top of her attendance allowance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barran knows the Lords like the back of her hand. When we meet, she walks us down corridors and up small staircases resembling a scene out of Harry Potter to find a tucked-away meeting room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although she is a Tory peer, Barran doesn\u2019t consider herself particularly political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just want to do the right thing, which I know sounds a bit cheesy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charity career<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Before being nominated to the Lords by then home secretary Theresa May, Barran had a long history in the charity sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She set up a domestic abuse charity, called SafeLives<\/a>, after realising existing help was \u201cunacceptable\u201d as it usually expected women and children to go to a refuge. Barran believed they should be supported to stay safe in their homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The charity instead looked at what other support routes were available, such as having one consistent person to advise women on their options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as helping to change these women\u2019s lives, Barran said one of the things she\u2019s proudest of was giving opportunities and jobs to those \u201cwho maybe otherwise in life might not have had them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really care how many O-levels, A-levels, degrees, anybody had. And there were a number of people who were very senior at SafeLives who were absolutely brilliant and I was a part of giving them an opportunity to shine and change the world a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the \u201cdistinguishing features\u201d in 66-year-old Barran\u2019s childhood was her elderly father, a City banker who was diagnosed with dementia when she was about 11 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her Jewish mother had fled Budapest aged just 22, hours after Hitler invaded. Barran described her as coming from a \u201cculture which felt that women could do anything\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, Barran\u2019s grandmother had set up a business in the 19th century which only employed women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe was quite a long way ahead of her time,\u201d Barran explained. \u201cSo I definitely was brought up believing there\u2019s nothing you can\u2019t do as a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Barran graduating from Cambridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Barran studied at a Catholic convent junior school, a girls\u2019 grammar school and then Benenden School, an independent boarding school in Kent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy brother was eight years\u2019 older than me, he\u2019d already left home, my dad was very ill. So just being around, selfishly, people your own age was good fun,\u201d Barran says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She initially read law at Cambridge, but transferred to history and stuck with it after her father died as she did not wish to study a four-year degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think I would have done much better at law as I have a pretty analytical brain, but I just feel actually, I\u2019ve had so much luck in my life, I have absolutely no grumbles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During her first career working in investment in the City, she was one of about five women out of 800 employees who were not administrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she never felt \u201cany discrimination at all\u201d, adding: \u201cI always thought I was treated exactly the same as everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whip hand<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the Lords, Barran served initially as a government whip and then as minister for civil society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, when she was asked to become an education minister, she was handed a \u201cwhopping\u201d portfolio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It included academies and multi-academy trusts, intervention in underperforming schools, capital investment, admissions, safeguarding and counter extremism, to name a few. She also became the department\u2019s go-to minister for everything AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s invidious to make comparisons, but it was huge. So one of things I tried to do was work out what were the big things that I was going to concentrate on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of those things you can\u2019t choose, like the RAAC crisis. But other things I actively chose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI suppose the battle is not to get sucked into all kinds of micro stuff and just say, what are the things that are going to move the needle for children?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her big focus was on the number of children in inadequate or \u201cdouble requires improvement\u201d rated schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were about three quarters of a million children and we did a not very sophisticated back-of-the-envelope [calculation] as to how many kids you could move out of those schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo bring in a new trust, the school [could] be inspected \u2013 we reckoned it was about 100,000 a year. It\u2019s a massive thing for children to go from a failing school to a high functioning school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘It was super rewarding for civil servants’<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Barran said they beat their target, but it was a \u201cjourney\u201d as civil servants were \u201cso sceptical and not believing that I really meant that this was a real target\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy the end I would be getting text messages at nine o\u2019clock on a Friday night going \u2018minister, really sorry to interrupt you but last month we were at 37,000 which means we\u2019re ahead\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuddenly, it was super rewarding for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She felt she was able to \u201cunlock brilliant work\u201d by a team of civil servants on attendance data, with more granular data now published on types of absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But Barran wishes she could have focused \u201ceven more on execution and implementation much earlier\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the early days, you\u2019d go into a meeting and you\u2019d agree something. And then six months later I\u2019d say \u2018what happened to that?\u2019. And the answer was \u2018nothing\u2019, and I thought it was happily happening in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo I became an unbelievable pain but I kept track of everything myself and then got my private office to chase it up. After a bit, people realise that you\u2019re actually serious. When you agree \u2018X\u2019, it means that it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barran still keeps a close eye on academies, now serving as opposition education minister in the Lords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of Labour\u2019s proposed changes, the one she disagrees with most is the removal of automatic academy orders for failing schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember going into a school that had been sponsored and asking one of the children who was showing me around \u2018what was it like a year ago?\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe looked at me in horror and said, \u2018we wouldn\u2019t have left you alone in the corridor, miss\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days after she was appointed as academies minister in 2021, officials described to Baroness Diana Barran the severity of a key item in her in-tray. \u201cThis is your Grenfell, minister.\u201d They were describing the RAAC crisis that has now blighted hundreds of England\u2019s schools. Huge sheets of reinforced autoclave aerated concrete installed decades ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311127,"featured_media":239866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2511],"post-theme":[3420],"class_list":["post-240129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-profiles","tag-baroness-barran","post-theme-profile"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t