The shadow education secretary has demanded urgent action to tackle the “utterly shameful” antisemitism in British schools.
Speaking to the JC after her giving her speech to the Conservative Party’s annual conference on Monday, Laura Trott said: “No Jewish parent in Britain in 2026 should have to choose between sending their child to a mainstream school where they may face antisemitism, or a Jewish school behind high security. That is not the country we should accept.”
She urged the government to “tackle antisemitism at its source” and that the response to rising antisemitism in schools amounted to “test of us as a society.”
Trott continued: “Every parent should be free to send their child to the school of their choice without fear of discrimination or abuse. Jewish children deserve to feel safe, enough is enough.”
In her keynote speech, Trott had cited the work of Parents Against Antisemitism, a campaign group which has highlighted the abuse faced by Jewish students in classrooms in Britain.
She also criticised the National Education Union over its ties to the “divisive” Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
She slammed schools for allowing “extremism” to get into the classroom and their “failure to vet external speakers and organisations”.
Trott lamented that “antisemitism has doubled in schools in the last three years”.
She also highlighted the dilemmas faced by Jewish parents, whether to “send their children to mainstream schools where Jewish children are heckled, bullied, singled out, or send them to Jewish schools, with prison-like security where they’re under constant threat from outside.”
She told the crowd in Birmingham: “Politicians like me can stand up and wring our hands and say how awful that is, and how horrific it is that Jewish children are coming to school in this country, in the year 2026, terrified for their own safety, or we can actually be honest about how antisemitism is seeping in, how all extremism is seeping in, and we need to cut it off at source.
“The government won’t do anything about it. They can’t. They’re too in hock to their activist MPs and their union paymasters. We will have to do it. Because we’re the only ones showing leadership in education.”
During her speech, she also complained that a lot of what was taught “under the guise of equality or citizenship” was often “just total trash.
“Of course, it matters that children learn human skills: Empathy, curiosity, resilience, especially in the age of AI. But we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. For empathy, try Dickens. For curiosity, try Darwin. For resilience, try Winston Churchill.
“We don’t need campaign materials dressed up as education resources. We have a bank of material, centuries in the making. Our literature, our history, our fine tradition of scientific discovery. Let’s try something radical, let’s try teaching them.”
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