Labour has gone to war on excellence
As he stands down as an MP, it is worth reflecting on one of Michael Gove’s greatest achievements: his education reforms. School standards have soared, England has risen up the international league tables in subjects such as maths, and the grip of “progressive” educationalists and the unions on the education system has been dramatically loosened, all to the benefit of the nation’s children and their parents.
Now, the Labour Party could put much of this at risk. Not content with taking a wrecking ball to private schools through its vindictive plan to put VAT on school fees – which, incidentally, is likely to increase pressure on the state sector, if the number of parents able to afford an independent education declines – the party is believed to be plotting a reversal of Mr Gove’s reforms.
As this newspaper has reported, the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is thought to want local authorities to be given the power to close down undersubscribed academies, threatening to roll back parental choice and competition. Labour thinks that the school system has become too fragmented. The party wants all schools to “co-operate” much more closely with local councils.
But freeing schools from local authority control was one of the key mechanisms for improving standards, alongside competition between institutions. The fear must be that Labour’s education policy will be motivated not by an impulse to ensure that children receive an excellent education, but by Left-wing ideology and the demands of the public sector unions.
It has also been weak in resisting the incursion of gender ideology into the classroom. Labour did not immediately commit to keeping the Government’s new sex education guidance for schools, and its wider policy on gender remains unclear. It would hardly be surprising if pressure from the Left encouraged a Labour government to “decolonise” the school curriculum.
Sir Keir Starmer’s war against private schools is pure class envy, a disgraceful attack on excellence, aspiration and parental rights. But his party’s plans for the state sector also deserve greater scrutiny. Labour might be about to unwind the progress that has been made since 2010 to ensure that every child in England gets a good education. There would be nothing “progressive” or “fair” about that.
