Last month I had the opportunity to be on the panel for the Labour Conference at a fringe event for the Edge Foundation and National Foundation for Educational Research titled “Skills for the Future-Are we prepared?” alongside: Olly Newton the Executive Director of the Edge Foundation, Jude Hillary Quantitative Research Director at NFER, Alison McGovern the Labour MP for Wirral South, Toby Perkins the Labour MP for Chesterfield. It was an experience that I’ll never forget as we travelled up to Liverpool where I was able to meet politicians from across the country.
As the conference was approaching, I had mixed emotions of excitement and nerves because I’d been on panels before even chaired panels too but I’d never been on a panel for a political event let alone the annual Labour party conference. I hadn’t really had an interest in following politics prior to the event, however I was excited for what I would experience at the conference, who I might potentially meet and of course going up to a city like Liverpool for a couple of days.
While I was on the panel I was lucky enough to be able to be the first person in the room to ask questions to Alison McGovern and Toby Perkins thanks to Olly Newton which I am very grateful for and due to hearing Toby Perkins briefly mention apprenticeships when he answered one of Olly’s questions I decided to ask a question directly about apprenticeships as I have experience of doing an apprenticeship myself and know a lot of fellow young people who also do apprenticeships.
My role on the panel was primarily to bring a youth perspective to the discussion on whether I feel that my experience at school set me up with the right skills for the future. Jude outlined amazing insights in his “Skills to 2035 imperative” which I recommend that everybody reads.
As someone that would like to improve his political acumen, attending this conference was a great opportunity to get started with that as there were a range of panel discussions occurring throughout the event on topics such as: Education, the digital world and much more. I met up with a friend that I met at a networking event in London a few months ago who took me to different panel discussions happening at the conference, he also introduced me to individuals within the political world that he knows, and we even bumped into Ed Miliband.
I would like to thank both Matt Bezzant from the National Foundation for Educational Research and Elena Wilson from the Edge Foundation for inviting me to come to the Labour Conference and be on a panel at the event. As I said in the first paragraph it is definitely something that I’ll never forget and to add on to it, going to the conference has made me want to learn more about how politics works and the history of it. I’ve already begun by watching channel 4’s “Make Me Prime Minister” show which I am enjoying so far.