Daily Sceptic Editor-in-Chief Toby Young has written in today’s Standard about the insanity of Bridget Phillipson trying to undo all the education reforms, some of them dating back to the Blair era, that have transformed England’s state education system into one of the best in the world. Here’s an excerpt.
In 2010 I debated Ed Balls on Newsnight about the Conservatives’ education plans. “The danger is that there will be winners in this policy,” he warned, a line later quoted by David Cameron to ridicule Labour’s attitude to his Government’s education reforms.
Fifteen years later, those reforms have proved to be the Tories’ proudest legacy. The performance of English schoolchildren in the international PISA league tables between 2009 and 2022 improved dramatically, rising from 21st to seventh in maths, 19th to ninth in reading and 11th to ninth in science.
Compare this with the performance of children in SNP-run Scotland and Labour-run Wales, which stubbornly resisted every reform. In the same period, Scotland slumped from 15th to 25th in maths, while Wales fell from 19th to 29th in science. Their results in the other subjects weren’t much better.
As Michael Gove — the politician responsible for these reforms — says, it is like one of those famous studies involving twins separated at birth. Over the past couple of decades we have carried out a twin study on an epic scale, educating children in England according to one philosophy and children in Scotland and Wales according to another. The results are in and there’s a clear winner. Which begs the question: why does Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s current Education Secretary, want to dismantle the reforms that have turned English state education into the envy of the world? …
But Gove went much further that his Labour predecessors, granting academies the right to employ ‘unqualified’ teachers (e.g. retired nuclear physicists), set their own pay and conditions, vary the length of the school day, manage admissions and — crucially — depart from the National Curriculum. …
Alongside the turbocharged academies, Gove allowed groups of parents and teachers to set up free schools — the most controversial of his reforms, but also the most successful. …
Children make more progress at England’s 600 or so free schools, on average, than at any other type of school. They’re more likely to be ranked good or outstanding by Ofsted and more likely to be oversubscribed. And needless to say, the school that gets the best A-level results in the country — better than Westminster, Winchester or St Paul’s — is a free school.
Yet Phillipson has pulled the plug on the programme, in what I can only describe as an act of wanton vandalism. No more free schools will be set up on her watch and those that were due to open soon, including a new chain of sixth forms jointly sponsored by Eton and one of the best multi-academy trusts in the country, will be throttled at birth.
If the education bill is passed academies will lose all the freedoms granted to them by Gove, while Ofsted will be rendered toothless. Control over state education will be handed back to local authorities so they can take up where they left off, driving standards down and consigning generations of schoolchildren to the scrapheap.
But none of that matters in Phillipson’s eyes. The important thing is that there should be no winners — and when she’s finished wrecking our state education system, there won’t be.
Worth reading in full, obviously.
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Phillipson by name, Phillistine by nature.
Do we need a Department of Education?
If only there was a counter-factual where we could see what happens when the sclerotic hand of the state is removed.
It’s going to be so interesting seeing how DOGE works out.
Perhaps they could reorganise it to be part of the Net Zero department. The terms could fit together well.
I can’t see that a Department of Education is essential. I think there’s a case for providing financial support to families that cannot afford to educate their children, and possibly a case for saying education is compulsory. I am a bit torn between allowing parents to choose what they think is best and protecting children, who are vulnerable, from atrocious parents – tricky to come up with a clear line that limits the state interfering in parenting decisions but protects children from abuse. But we definitely to row back quite a long way from where we are now.
I don’t think it is possible to come up with a clear line and which is why we only look to remediate when there has been injustice.
Take for example someone considering the teaching only one particular religion as dangerous for the child.
Indeed. Do you think that a parent choosing NOT to have their children taught to read and write is committing “an injustice”. I tend to think they are, so after that you are into defining what a “suitable” education is and later on we’re off the rails. Tricky.
There is absolutely no reason not to allow the population to set up and run schools as they chose, give parents vouchers and let them chose the school they want for their children.
Except of course to control people and indoctrinate them.
Schools solely run by parents could choose their own indoctrination, especially those schools located in large conurbations, and their own uniform.
Why would this be a reason for the state to interfere or intervene?
Islamic schools, for example?
Well that’s a hole we’ve dug for ourselves. Minimal government and generally libertarian approach works best with a fairly monocultural country.
I agree, but do you feel that it should be illegal to NOT have your children educated at all? I am not sure many would, but I think it’s tantamount to child abuse. But then you have to define what “education” is…
How else would the ruling elite train the drones to comply?
More broadly, I think, it’s goal its about programming the next generation of Labour voters.
Labour is effectively continuing the changes of the 1960s started by Anthony Crosland during the first Wilson government. They want to do away with good results, because inevitably these show up what is wrong when there is widespread low achievement with no good excuses.
VAT on private school fees is something the loathsome Leftwaffe has wanted for many decades, presumably because all their members who were themselves products of private education learned absolutely nothing from their experience within it.
This government seems determined to recreate the Britain of its collective youth. Unfortunately for the rest of us, that was the 1970s.
Born in 1962, Sir Two-Tier will remember the 1970s, but the rest of the Student Union Government won’t.
Means they’re recreating the Britain of their parents’ youth. What an intriguing thought – for me, would mean recreating the 1940’s of rationing, Digging for Victory, Merlin engines, the Home Guard, keeping calm and carrying on.
The past is an other country; they do things differently there.
Come on, any engine would beyond them, let alone a Merlin engine!
And there is a difference between keeping calm and being engulfed in the miasma of Fabianism.
I think they loved “covid” because it seemed like a glorious socialist war.
The expression “sink school” springs to mind. This is what Wikipedia says about them:
“The reported causes for the emergence of sink schools vary. It includes admission codes wherein some schools get a privileged access to the most gifted potential students,[2] funding inadequacies,[3] or unsuitable curriculum”
No mention of control by Local Authorities, and thereby by unions.
The Bill is clearly there to pander to the self-serving unions, many more working class pupils will now sink into oblivion.
All reversible, if we get a Reform Government.
There is no legal requirement for children to be educated in the State system, with the support of Parents, charities, businesses, and people like Musk surely there is a way to keep such Government despised places of excellence open.
To apply the Phillipson philosophy across the board of skills, there will be no olympic medals as there will be no recognition of gifted atheletes, there will be no classical musicians at world level from England, there will be no great scientists from England, Writers etc because to produce any of these it has to be accepted that some people are naturally better at some things than others, and with the benefit of great teaching they can excel.
Instead what is being offered to our children is a future of ignorance, of less than mediocrity, they will be the basic worker drones of the future world. They will be incapable of logical thought, incapable of critical thinking or questioning. In other words dumb citizens, so much easier to control. Is that what we want?
And surgery won’t be quite as routine, especially major surgery.
I can see Darwin’s Law at work here.
I have worked and volunteered in both primary and secondary education for over 20 years in a variety of roles, including as a qualified teacher. I trained formally later in life and was totally overwhelmed by the bureaucracy, left wing ideology, indoctrination and control which permeated both the training and teaching. There is not a single area of education which is not strictly controlled, monitored and assessed ruthlessly by the government – no other profession in the world is as micromanaged and restricted as teaching. I got out as soon as I could but continue to work in a voluntary capacity, hoping to mould things a little from within. Until such time as governments pull back from their ideological stranglehold on education, children (and teaching staff) are doomed to a future of ever-increasing intense control which they resist at their peril. Can’t see this happening any time soon. Homeschooling is the only option for sane, concerned parents.
Or independent schools, which are still constrained, but much less!
I worked in a private (prep) school for a few years at one point; absolutely no difference sadly – some things were worse…
Except they are also coming for home educators too, as part of this bill.
I know! And I’ll be at the forefront of any campaign to stop them!!!
I home ed my daughter so I’m doing my best to kick up a bit of a stink but I’m not very good at that sort of thing. Incidentally, just looking at your name, I know it’s probably not linked to your real name at all but just in case… are you from Bournemouth?
Fraid not; more Home Counties! Keep up the good work with the home ed; it will pay off hamdsomely!
Sadly, this country is screwed. Instead of asking Katharine Birbalsingh to advise the country on education, they keep throwing dimwits into the mix that make the education system worse. Forget it britain, until you get a Trump like leader…..the madness will just keep going. Enjoy the ride. Watch your taxes disappear.
The basic issue is that Labour in representing (or claiming to do) those who aren’t among the winners in a competitive society and who thus think that their not winning is because they were failed by ‘the system’, seeks to equalise outcomes. Prizes for everyone. Faced not just with competition within Britain but globally this is a road to failure.
And by the way, isn’t telling a voluble woman from the sub continent to tone it down a net combination of misogyny and racism?
Really? Only if you are a pseudo-communist!
She will be remembered as a vindictive ideologue. An apparatchik of the highest order.
That has always been Labour’s plan and to their shame the Conservatives adopted it too… comprehensives.
For younger readers. Labour introduced Marxist-Socialist government as from 1945 – nationalisation of key industry “workers own the means of production”, redistribution of wealth and, sperm-to-the-worm socialist welfareism, which was Communism-plus: private enterprise was allowed so this brave new world was called a “Mixed Economy” not Communism.
The Conservatives when they regained office a few years later accepted this as the status quo and have ever since with a brief respite where Mrs Thatcher got rid of most State ownership, but otherwise our current state is a collectivist, centrally planned and controlled economy with the citizenry working as serfs to fill the treasury coffers.
It’s only just now people have woken up to this, and some imagine it is recent, blaming David Cameron, but he was just more of the same.
Will Reform UK be radical enough to break the status quo, ditch the welfare state and the mixed economy? I am not convinced, but they may be the least worst option.