Disastrous school reform agenda is a solution in search of a problem
A long time ago I got involved in a battle to help a school leave council control and become an academy. This was shortly after Michael Gove, as education secretary, continued the reforming efforts of his Labour predecessors to inject more choice and freedom into the state education sector.
The local council, faced with losing the money and jobs supposedly necessary to oversee the single school under its control, embarked on a campaign of such fierce resistance that the police ended up being involved in a saga that included allegations of espionage, intimidation and corruption.
That was regarding a single school in a single (tiny) unitary authority. I’m pleased to say that the school in question, along with thousands of others across the country, successfully took advantage of Gove’s reforms and achieved academy status, but the resistance shown by the bureaucratic class was extraordinary and now, nearly 15 years on, the battle could be fought all over again thanks to Labour’s ill-informed, ideological and damaging Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
The Bill will strip academies of many of the freedoms that have helped drive up standards across so many English schools in recent years, such as the ability to set pay and vary the curriculum. I say English schools, because the freedoms were never adopted by Wales and Scotland, where the devolved administrations stuck to an old-fashioned and centralised approach to education.
The results of the two different approaches are clear, as Conservative MP Neil O’Brien made clear in The Times yesterday: “between 2009 and 2022, England went from 21st to 7th in the international Pisa education league table on maths, while Wales went from 29th to 27th.” In Scotland, “the imposition of the ironically named but disastrous Curriculum for Excellence has been one reason for Scotland’s schools having plummeted down the international league tables.”
Sir Daniel Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation of academy schools, spoke for many in the sector yesterday when he questioned the wisdom and rationale for Labour’s impending changes, telling the BBC that, prior to joining his federation, many of his 55 schools “were failing in the most deprived parts of the capital city with highly disadvantaged kids, low income children.” Today, “most of those schools are now outstanding.” He added: “We’ve been able to achieve that because of the freedoms that academy powers have given us.”
Labour is now set on dismantling one of the most successful public policy initiatives of the last 30 years, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
The proposals amount to nothing more than a solution in search of a problem, designed with unions and local councils in mind – rather than the interests of children.