I never thought I would get a degree of any type.
— Angela Rayner
I don't pronounce all my words exactly how they do on the BBC. I am who I am.
Every one called me scruffy, a scratter, that's what they used to call me. I was known as that. Scratter was the nickname.
Inherently I think the goodness in most people, we get a warm sense of satisfaction if we help someone, it makes you feel better.
I mean getting into parliament was quite an achievement in itself and then I have to pinch myself at the thought of actually running a department.
I never got hugged as child.
I think technical education and vocational skills and having a trade mean something.
I believe Ofsted measures poverty. It measures deprivation. It doesn't measure excellence.
I've always been the girl who can't sit on her hands. If there's a pink elephant in the room, I'll identify it and say it.
My mother suffers mental health problems and has a learning deprivation.
I don't want to stick a sticking plaster on it, I don't want to fix children once the system's broken them, I want to give every child the opportunity before that - because the system should protect and nurture, and not damage our children.
If I hadn't had access to the vital support of my local Sure Start centre, I would never have had the help I - and my son - needed.
Politics changes lives. You would expect me, as a politician, to say that. But I don't say it as a politician: I say it as someone whose own life was changed.
Only Labour will provide the radical changes needed to create a free, fair and funded education system, which protects education as a right for the many, not a privilege for the few.
Our admissions system should be a vehicle for justice, but it is failing working-class students, especially those who are the first in their family to go to university.
Our higher education admissions process is neither fair nor effective.
At 16, out of school and pregnant, my own life could have been written off. It was the help I had from some of the then Labour government's policies such as Sure Start that turned it around.
I do my best to be true to who I am.
You'd be surprised how many politicians have a working class background but they get it beaten out of them.
I remember I had to have steel toecaps because my nana said, 'They'll last,' and I remember being bullied because my shoes weren't like anyone else's. Everyone had Kickers.
My kids live in a different environment than I did as a child. They've got privileges I didn't have as a child, but they have disadvantages. They don't see their mum as much. They see the threats that one gets. They live in a house where they've got panic buttons, and I've had to teach them about safety.
There was a council house waiting for me when I had Ryan, there was a welfare state. I never put into the system before I took out, I was on income support before I'd even paid a penny of tax.
We had poverty in our house. Even on the council estate I knew I was one of the poorer kids. I used to go round my friends houses on a Sunday to get their Sunday dinner because my mum couldn't cook either so I used to love going round my mates and say: 'Can you ask your Mum if I can come in for Sunday dinner?'
People are still programmed to think that if your child doesn't get straight As, get A-levels and go to a Russell Group university, that somehow they are not going to achieve in life. I think that's sad.
I am not OK with the system that allows certain people to fail or be chucked out. I don't accept that.
My mum didn't understand that education was an important thing. She couldn't do my homework with me. I was helping her read stuff. She once brought shaving soap thinking it was whipped cream.
I'm the only member of the house, who at age 16, and pregnant, was told in no uncertain terms, I'd never amount to anything.
I think class is still an issue in this country.
I went to my local Sure Start centre, and they put me on a parenting course. I learned things that might seem simple - that it was important to hug and love your child, and read to them. This might seem obvious, but it wasn't to me at the time.
As a young single mum struggling to get by, I didn't get to go to university, but that level of debt would have been unimaginable.
Labour is the party for the many.
Working-class students more often lack the advice, guidance and support needed to navigate the tricky application process, whereas their wealthy peers at top public schools have admissions tutors to help their students game the system.
The British people overwhelmingly favour big businesses and the wealthiest individuals contributing their fair share so we can invest in our schools, hospitals and services.
I first learned the power of a Labour government to transform lives growing up in my hometown of Stockport.
Anyone can achieve it if they're given the opportunity to.
If you want to underestimate me because I speak like a Mancunian, like the people I grew up with, then so be it at your peril.
I wanted to be the best mum I could be. I just wanted the means to be able to help myself. And, luckily for me, I had a Sure Start centre and I had adult education I could go back into.
Regardless of what tribe people think they're in, we don't work in isolation as human beings, we want to do what's right.
Ideology never put food on my table.
The way I want to try and end private schools is by making our national education service so good you wouldn't want to waste your money.
Private schools are gaming the system. There is way too much state money going in, and people who go to private schools seem to be given a head start for all of the top jobs and that's something that needs to be dealt with as well.
My school, we affectionately nicknamed it Avonjail, but it was called Avondale, Avondale high school in Stockport. I left with no GCSEs above a D.
I remember going round to my friends' houses and asking them to ask their mum and dad if I could stay for dinner because I wasn't going to get fed.
School, for me, was not a place where you went to be educated, but a place where you got away from your parents for a couple of hours while they got some respite from you, and where you were able to see your mates.
My brother and sister are smarter than me. But I'm the most successful because I've been given opportunities that they never had.
I was born on a council estate with a mum who, despite doing everything she could for me, couldn't help me learn to read and write because she had never been taught herself. As the jargon would have it now, I was not 'school ready.'
If the Tories are serious about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to learn, regardless of their background, then the only thing they need to review is Labour's manifesto.
No deal wouldn't return sovereignty to the U.K., it would make us dependent on a sweetheart deal with Donald Trump.
Underestimating grades has serious consequences for a student's choice of university, and their future.
I cannot be clearer about this. I am not in politics, let alone Labour's shadow cabinet, to keep things as they are.
