I’M DELIGHTED to be Labour’s shadow education secretary. It really is a dream job. I am passionate about state education and believe there is no better route to tackling inequality in Britain than making sure that a good education is not a privilege but a right for all our children.

Our vision for a better society will not be achieved unless we transform the life chances of all children and ensure that every child has the very best start in life, regardless of their background.

I am also determined to hold the government to account on the issues where they are wholly failing.

Everyone, except the Conservative Party, agrees that our education system will face huge challenges over the next five years.

Schools up and down the country are seeing a drop in teacher applications, missing recruitment targets and watching the largest number of teachers quit since records began. It’s no wonder so many good teachers are leaving when the government is demonising the profession, moving the goalposts at the last minute and teacher workload continues to rise. The Tories continue to ignore these problems, risking the quality of education in our schools and labelling any call for action “scaremongering.”

There is also an ever-growing need for more school places, and the government’s failure to deal with this properly over the last parliament has led to more young children crammed into supersize classes, music rooms and libraries lost for more classroom space and mobile classrooms built on playgrounds.

While investment in and a focus on post-16 education is fundamental for both our economy and preparing the next generation for further study or the world of work, under this government many good sixth form and further education colleges are struggling to see how they can continue faced with the severe cuts that the Tories are laying out.

For all his warm words recently about social mobility, you would be fooled for thinking that David Cameron would understand the importance, and the urgency, of resolving the many challenges facing the education system. And yet significantly the Tories marked the beginning of the new academic year by announcing plans to open 18 more free schools and turn every state school into an academy.

On the one hand, this isn’t surprising. Over the last five years, despite the fact that time and time again it has been shown that free schools and academies are not a panacea and that they can and do fail, the Tories have not wavered from their obsession with them. They are stuck in old ideological thinking. We would end the free school programme.

They continue to see forcing schools to become academies as the silver bullet to improvement but they miss the point completely. We should be proud of Labour’s sponsored academy programme, which helped transform a number of failing schools in disadvantaged areas — and brought much needed investment, support and innovation.

But our programme was never about turning all schools into academies. As a result of the Tories’ fixation schools are increasingly controlled from the centre, with the Education Secretary personally trying, and failing, to run thousands of schools from her desk in Whitehall.

It is the responsibility of the next Labour government to ensure that there is strong local oversight and accountability of all schools. Local authorities should be able to ensure sufficient places and fair admissions, and have the ability to intervene in any school that is failing. I want to encourage collaboration in communities of schools and for all schools to work with their local communities to drive up standards.

We would hold all schools, whatever their type, to account for the same high standards. And I’ll fiercely contest any moves by the Tories to bring back selection at 11 by the back door with new grammar schools. The evidence could not be clearer: grammar schools do nothing for social mobility, with just 3 per cent of children on free school meals being admitted.

Under this Conservative government, our education system is under threat from all angles. I won’t sit on the sidelines. As someone who comes from a family of teachers, and also as a mum of three kids in school and nursery, I’m looking forward to working alongside the profession and parents to hold the Tories to account for our children’s future and make sure that our education system delivers for all.

• Lucy Powell is shadow education secretary and Labour MP for Manchester Central.