Freedom and parental choice are under threat from school reforms
The government’s schools bill will undo all the progress that’s been made in English education and had power over our children’s futures to unions and activists, rather than the people who know best, says Mark Lehain
English schools really are better now than 35 years ago, by any number of measures. Things improved by design, not accident, because governments of all stripes realised that their job was to set ambitious standards for schools and to leave teachers to work out the best ways to achieve and exceed these.
I started teaching in 2002 and have seen first hand how increased freedom combined with parental choice and proper accountability transformed things. Our nine-year-olds are now the best in the West for reading, and scores in maths and science are up too. When Covid set education back around the globe, standards in England held up better than almost any other country, even with all the extended closures.
I run two smashing schools with wonderful staff. Our job is clear: to help students become knowledgeable and confident young adults ready to make their way through life.
My team and I have real flexibility as to how we do this. The curriculum can be tweaked to give more or less time to subjects and topics as needed. We can employ people who are brilliantly qualified but don’t have traditional teacher qualifications. I can allocate my budget how I choose and spend money saved in one area to recruit more staff or pay them better.
However, this successful special sauce of accountability, freedom and parental choice is under threat.
Headteachers know better than Whitehall
Today the government’s “Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill” had its second reading in parliament. As currently written, loads of the things that helped make schools better will be undone. The freedoms that I and thousands of other headteachers have come to rely on to improve standards will be taken away and decisions returned to Whitehall.
Ministers claim they’re tidying things up and it’s about consistency and best practice. But the bill goes way beyond this. Politicians in London – and the activists, academics and unions they listen to – will have a much bigger say.
They will decide what goes into a new National Curriculum and, unlike now, every single state school in the land will be compelled to teach it. They will determine who heads can employ and how much they can pay them.
They’re ignoring everything that has been learned under Conservative and Labour governments since the 1980s
The bill also reduces parental choice as it makes it harder for successful schools to expand if the local council don’t want them to, or even stay the same size if pupil numbers locally are falling!
It’s so frustrating. They’re ignoring everything that has been learned under Conservative and Labour governments since the 1980s.
It muddies the waters for everyone too. Right now, if you’re not happy with what your child has been taught or who has been employed to teach them, you know it’s down to the head and that you can actually go and see them about it.
Once this bill is passed, the government decides what’s taught. Good luck getting an appointment about that with Bridget Phillipson. And there’ll be no point switching schools as they’ll all have to do the same thing. The only way to avoid the inevitable negative impact on standards will be to go private or home school – and through other means the government is doing their best to make that harder for folk too.
Nearly all of these things were trailed before the election or in the Labour manifesto. They won, fair and square, so have every right to do them. However they’ve changed their minds on other pledges – like the winter fuel allowance and higher taxes on workers. I hope, for our children’s sake, that they have a change of heart with this bill too.
Mark Lehain is executive headteacher at Wootton Academy Trust and a former special adviser at the department of education