The minutes said Ms Phillipson offered for officials to meet Ms Birbalsingh and her team to explain the measures in the Bill and the head “refused this offer” – but Ms Birbalsingh said “that never happened”.
Government minutes of a meeting between the pair on February 3, obtained by Schools Week under the freedom of information act, claim Ms Birbalsingh repeatedly interrupted the Education Secretary and asked if she was introducing the Bill because of her own ambitions to lead the Labour Party.
Ms Birbalsingh has contested some of the Government’s minutes of the meeting – including a section where it claimed the headteacher asked Ms Phillipson if she “hates maths”.
The minutes drawn up by the Department for Education (DfE) said: “The SoS (Phillipson) stated she would need to ask KB (Birbalsingh) to lower her tone, and asked they remove the heat from the discussion.
It claims that Ms Birbalsingh said colleagues in Westminster told her to ask if the reason the Education Secretary is introducing the Bill “is because she wants to become the leader of the Labour party”.
