What is the ‘National Education Service’?

Labour has discussed the idea of a National Education Service for some time, but what does it actually mean?

During her speech to this year’s Labour Party conference, Angela Rayner, shadow secretary of state for education, name-checked the National Education Service eight times. After her speech, Labour released a set of principles that would underpin the NES in a document entitled Toward a National Education Service.

However, are we any the wiser as to what it means and how it will impact higher education? Labour will soon set up a commission to help put flesh on the bones of what remains a rhetorical placeholder to describe its approach to life-long learning and integrating further and higher education.