Labour’s school reforms ‘setting back a generation’ of children and erasing gains made over 20 years warns ex-education secretary Michael Gove_Nhy
Labour is ‘setting back a generation’ of schoolchildren with a wave of education reforms, former Tory minister Michael Gove warned today.
The ex-education secretary accused his successor Bridget Phillipson of undoing two decades of improvements in English, maths and science with a raft of changes.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, currently making its way through parliament, would limit the freedom academies have over pay, curriculum, staff recruitment and uniform.
But it is coming up against increasingly strong kickback, with warnings that it is a union takeover of education and uniformity will lead to a drop in standards.
Speaking to LBC today Mr Gove, who became editor of the Spectator magazine after quitting Parliament at the election, said: ‘It’s setting back a generation.
‘It’s not just me. Labour MPs like Siobhan McDonough have attested to the fact that the changes that we saw over the last two decades, which were backed by Labour politicians like Andrew Adonis and Ruth Kelly and Liberal Democrats like Nick Clegg and David Laws, they have seen English students be the best readers in the western world, to have the best maths and science results of Western developed nations. All that is put at risk…
‘The National Education Union, run by someone who was a Jeremy Corbyn fanboy, is delighted by this bill, and the key question that Keir Starmer has to ask is, if Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest supporters are cheering, what’s he getting wrong?’
He also lashed out at plans to reduce the amount of branded uniform children must wear, to make buying clothes cheaper for parents.
He said it risked importing ‘street culture’ into schools, which should have ‘an atmosphere of calmness, purpose, discipline, and a sense of cohesion’.
The ex-education secretary accused his successor Bridget Phillipson of undoing two decades of improvements in English, maths and science with a raft of changes.
He also lashed out at plans to reduce the amount of branded uniform children must wear, to make buying clothes cheaper for parents.
‘What we don’t want to have, and [headteacher] Katharine Birbalsingh, has pointed this out, is a sense that the street culture and some of the chaos that people will inevitably experience outside the school gates, is imported into the school gates.
‘And we all know that the best schools, both in the state and in the independent sector, have a policy which tries to ensure that people feel that in that school, they are in a safe place with a real, defined character.
‘And we all know good schools when we see them in uniform, is an integral part of that.’
The government has said changes to uniforms could save families as much as £50 per child.
The Bill aims to ensure all state schools – academies and those run by councils – follow the same pay and conditions framework.
Academies, which are independent of local authorities, currently have the freedom to set their own pay and conditions for staff, and some academies exceed the national pay scales for teachers.
The new Bill would ensure all teachers will be part of the same core pay and conditions framework, whether they work in a local authority-run school or an academy.
Education Secretary Ms Phillipson has said there would be ‘no ceiling’ to what academy leaders can pay their teachers.
The Department for Education this week said an amendment will be tabled to make it clear that there will be a floor on pay with no ceiling for all state schools.
Other measures contained in the Bill include allowing councils to open new schools which are not academies, and it will end the forced academisation of schools run by local authorities which are identified as a concern by Ofsted.
All state schools, including academies, would be required to teach the national curriculum and the Government also plans to bolster child protection, with a new register of all home-schooled children in England.
Ms Birbalsingh last night warned the changes would ‘destroy the huge gains made over the last decade and a half in helping disadvantaged children across England’.
In a letter to Ms Phillipson, the London head said: ‘I don’t know if you are being ideologically blind and therefore ignoring the obvious negative impact of your decisions – or perhaps you just don’t understand the harm your changes will cause.
‘I don’t actually believe you hate poor kids. I just think you don’t know what they need and what true social mobility looks like and requires to succeed. You give the impression of having an unreasonable and unwarranted dislike of academies and free schools, blinded by a Marxist ideology.’
Proposed legislation would ensure all state schools had the same pay scales, followed the national curriculum, employ only qualified or qualifying teachers and limit uniforms to three branded items.
Forcing such uniformity will lead to a drop in standards and have ‘catastrophic consequences for the poor in this country’, Ms Birbalsingh claimed.
While a ‘broad academic core’ was understandable, a ‘rigid’ curriculum that ‘dictates adherence to a robotic, rigid and monotonous programme’ will ‘kill’ creativity and cost schools time and money to change their teaching plans.
Kemi Badenoch yesterday claimed the Government’s proposed education reforms are a ‘tragedy in the making’ for pupils, parents and teachers.
She used Prime Minister’s Questions to describe the Bill as ‘pure educational vandalism’ and the ‘worst of socialism’.
But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer countered by insisting the Bill benefits children and parents with its support for free breakfast clubs in every state-funded primary school in England, making school uniforms more affordable and introducing safeguarding measures.