Bridget Phillipson

This was wrong, and we are sorry.

Even a white working-class boy growing up today on the same street that I did, he just can’t see the point in going to school at all.

But this report lays bare the fact that those promises to so many people in our country have been broken.

I think it’s vital that we don’t use stories like mine to obscure the wider story of working-class communities.

It’s an approach that tells white working-class kids that to succeed, they have to either be exceptional or exceptionally lucky.

As this report makes so depressingly clear, the distant dream of social mobility has failed a whole new generation of white working-class kids.

My mother bought that home to give me and our family a better life and that’s what families in our country will always seek to do.

It’s faintly ridiculous and it’s just another highly personalised attack. I mean, the numbers and the way that’s being presented is just not accurate.

I think it represents just a continuation of the nonsense that we’ve seen in recent days from the Conservative Party. It’s a manufactured smear on my family.

This is about all of us across society taking action, and yes, that means supporting parents as well.

This is a big, big, big generational challenge.

We know that children born into less well-off families are more likely to arrive at school further behind their more affluent peers.

Class is a huge driver of outcomes, never mind in our politics, but right across society.

The report is also clear, and the evidence is also clear, that children arrive at school not ready to learn, having not achieved the levels that they should.

For the first time in a long time white working-class children have a government that will fight for them.

The communities in this report are my communities. I know what they've given this country and what this country has failed to give back.

If you want robust political debate, I'm here for that every day of the week, but I think reducing this to Nazi analogies, reducing it to that level of highly personalised abuse, I think says more about Kemi Badenoch than anybody else.

I said that the public will see her for who she really is.

It says more about her that she sinks to this level. Every passing week at Prime Minister's questions, she sinks lower and lower, completely devoid of any kind of grace.

If being a spiteful class warrior means lifting children out of poverty, delivering better life chances at school, investing in the support that our young people need, then I will wear that as a badge of honour.

Kemi Badenoch seems to have a problem with those of us who are proud of where we're from, proud to be working class, proud to be state school educated.

From September, it'll be compulsory for young people to learn about water safety, but given the hot weather we've got at the moment, and the tragic loss of life that we've seen in recent weeks, it's more important than ever that young…

No parent should ever have to experience the unimaginably awful loss of a child, and I pay huge tribute to those now turning heartbreak into action, including Sam Haycock’s parents as part of the Mirror’s brilliant Save Lives for Sam…

Every day of absence and lesson missed has a cost – and that cost falls hardest on our most disadvantaged pupils and working class communities.

I know hot weather can be a struggle. But my message to families is simple: if your child’s school is open, you should keep sending them into school.