I was fortunate enough to be supported by MetroPolis to attend the Labour Party Conference 2025 in Liverpool. It was two days of intense and energising engagement. I was there in my capacity as Director of Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU), and with my ear for discussions about public service reform – and there were plenty of them!

Tagging along with a Manchester Met heavyweight contingent, including Prof Deborah James, Prof Michelle McManus, Prof Jill Griffiths, Ian Harvey, Peter Wasson, Nick O’Dowd, and of course, our VC Prof Malcolm Press, it was apparent that Manchester Met is a serious source of leadership in current and hotly debated themes in the UK: making lifelong learning viable for all; fundamentally understanding and telling stories of communities of neighbourhoods; and helping structural reform across public service.

A few sessions particularly stood out as formative for the debates being held among academics and politicians alike. Firstly, a panel session chaired by The Lifelong Education Institute featured Malcolm Press, Sir Philip Augar (author of the Augar Review, 2019 on post-18 education and funding), Mary Curnock Cook (former UCAS Chief Exec), and David Hughes (Association of Colleges) and was an impassioned debate on how to diversify education across the life course. As we now occupy a post-GDP era (a term introduced to me by Prof Kevin Albertson), this discussion touched on the fundamentals of what education is for – a subject close to my heart and the centre of my emerging arguments on relational evaluation – people learn to feel fulfilled, to understand and participate in the world, and to earn money. Educational policy is about helping ensure society is prosperous in financial terms and in human flourishing terms.

These themes were continued in a panel run by Demos, a cross-party think tank on public policy, featuring Georgia Gould (Minister for School Standards), and Jonathan Slater (Former Permanent Secretary). While this discussion was about building a movement for public service reform, this conversation was about what it feels like to be a member of British society and how to join up political narratives with the conversations we all might have in the pub. “No one sits around talking about ‘civil society’” stood out! But we do talk about schools, neighbourhoods, money, the state of the streets. Demos’ project, the “Nation of Neighbourhoods”, where schools are at the heart, leans heavily into how we care for children, a key theme across PERU and Manchester Metropolitan’s Institute for Children’s Futures (ICF).
Few people are better placed to discuss this than Deborah James. Her discussion in a Policy Connect session with Daniel Elkeles (Chief Executive of NHS Providers) and others, where we furthered the debate on which skills are needed where to support children and young people, and the advances possible in key pieces of policy like the Industrial Strategy and the NHS 10 Year Plan. There was agreement that attending to ‘whole person’ perspectives in policy is helped along by amazing examples across the northwest of England where collaboration across sectors has been key.

A highlight for me was listening to Andy Burnham before my train home. Having tried to access the venue where he was being interviewed in by arriving very early, I was outside the cut-off in the line so listened from the comfort of an armchair in the doughnut café right next door with a coffee. I heard the cheers from through the wall as his interviewers tried to get him to commit – chips or gravy, United or City, Mayor or PM! While he played down the middle on those, he was certain on a few things: he has encouraged 3.1% growth over the last 10 years in the Manchester City Region, universities as well as technical skills educators enhance the life chances and aspirations of young people, people and places should be prioritised before party politics, requiring cross-party collaboration so that people feel the difference when they step outside their front door. This collaborative politics, the Mayor thinks, will help us through the choice looming before us when we next vote – between a progressive or a “dark and divisive” British future. On my journey home, I felt even more convinced that public policy research and engagement at Manchester Met has an important role to play.