Labour is taking a wrecking ball to British education. All of the hard-won progress of the past decade is being dismantled, not with a single blow but brick by brick.
What we are witnessing is educational vandalism: a series of ill-conceived reforms that threaten to drag England’s schools back to the direst days of the Blair administration, when educational excellence was seen as a kind of elitism and teaching standards were deliberately dumbed down.
All the rhetoric by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson claims that the Labour government is intent on supporting disadvantaged children.
But the evidence shows that these are the pupils who suffer most when schools give up on the core subjects of maths, English and science, to promote a vague, politically correct curriculum that focuses more on ‘relatability’ and ‘belonging’, and less on academic rigour.
We have seen where this leads. Scotland’s hopeless mishandling of behaviour problems and Wales’s faltering education provision stand as warnings of what happens when ideology triumphs over evidence. Yet England under Keir Starmer seems determined to outdo even the SNP in its pursuit of mediocrity.
After introducing a tangle of ill-judged and damaging policies over the past few months, Ms Phillipson showed her true intentions this week as she ripped up the reforms painstakingly introduced by Michael Gove and Nick Gibb under the Tories.
Her decision followed a full-scale review of the national curriculum by Professor Becky Francis. Prof Francis – who appears never to have taught in a school – published her recommendations this week: they included scrapping the English Baccalaureate or EBacc, a tough suite of GCSE subjects including science and a foreign language.
Schools which achieved good EBacc outcomes were rewarded in the performance tables, a system of monitoring pupil achievement and progress that some within the unions detest. Sir Nick Gibb, the former Conservative education minister, has warned that ditching the EBacc will lead to ‘a precipitous decline in the study of foreign languages’ – and he is right, though this is just the beginning of the wholescale destruction being wrought by Labour.
Scrapping the EBacc is also designed to give equal status to the creative subjects. All this will do is lower standards, with more children studying less rigorous courses, subjects that are essential for further study and future life chances.
The curriculum is being filled with additional content without any understanding that essential knowledge will inevitably be squeezed out. For disadvantaged pupils, in particular, our focus should be on ensuring mastery of core academic knowledge, the foundation for future success.
After introducing a tangle of ill-judged and damaging policies over the past few months, Ms Phillipson showed her true intentions this week
The reforms would also simplify primary school tests and the requirement for Year 6 pupils (those starting secondary school) to learn the rules of English grammar will be diminished.
Instead, there is a growing emphasis on ‘decolonising the curriculum’, when we should be teaching our children British history and our great authors, ensuring they acquire the cultural capital of the country in which they live.
Lord Nelson, Sir Francis Drake and Sir Winston Churchill do not cease to be important simply because some on the Left disapprove of them. Learning about these great figures is our children’s birthright.
This is especially true for those from immigrant backgrounds. To teach them that Britain’s role in history is reprehensible is dangerously divisive and seeks to turn them into victims, when we should be empowering all our children.
My parents came to this country in the 1960s – my father from India and my mother from Morocco – precisely because they respected and understood all the great things Britain has given the world, and they wanted to be part of that. By the time I was born at the end of the 1970s, currents of opposition to the monarchy and British heritage were growing, but in my family there was nothing but respect and admiration for this country.
That’s the same for a great number of families who came here from overseas. To discourage this patriotism is utterly disastrous.
I felt so strongly about this that I left my job in the City as a banking and finance lawyer to set up a school in one of London’s poorest boroughs, to help students from similar backgrounds to mine.
I was educated in a state comprehensive school in Ilford, East London, and studied at the London School Of Economics. I knew that many other pupils were just as academically able as me – but few of them were achieving the grades to get into the top universities. And I believe that, irrespective of their background, everyone deserves a first-class education.
The school I founded, the Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre (NCS), has extremely high expectations: teachers plan and deliver lessons that consistently stretch and challenge students. We are very proud of our school and everything the pupils and staff are achieving – this year, 95 per cent of A-level students received offers from Russell Group Universities and NCS is ranked in the top two per cent of all state schools in the UK.
But I sense a bewildering hostility by Labour towards schools which have achieved academic success for disadvantaged pupils that adopt an ideology and philosophy which is different from their own.
One of the restrictions imposed by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools bill currently going through Parliament, for instance, insists that no more than four items of school clothing can feature branding. Labour policy-makers claim this is to save parents the expense of buying endless ‘branded’ garments such as ties, blazers, bags, hats and so on.
I know that wearing a school emblem helps instil a sense of unity, pride and self-respect. School leaders must be given the freedom to decide what is right for their own cohorts. Uniform plays a vital role in promoting discipline and reinforcing adult authority.
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Moreover, for those of us working in areas affected by high levels of crime, a strong uniform policy helps to keep elements of ‘street culture’ out of our schools, creating a safer and more focused environment for learning.
Sadly, it does not appear that Labour fully understands these challenges. Instead, it seems intent on reclaiming power and imposing central control, the very opposite of what made the academies and free schools programme so successful.
The curriculum is no different, one more top-down diktat which removes our freedoms to do what is right for our cohort.
Another of the bill’s provisions, to provide all primary school pupils with bland breakfasts – what I call ‘orange juice and cardboard toast’ – is just performative symbolism, a way for the government to extend the influence of the socialist state without giving children what they really need: excellent education.
And by making students and parents ever more dependent on the state, they hope to shape their political attitudes, moulding some of them into future Left-wing voters. All the evidence is that this is bad for educational outcomes – that is, pupils taught according to this ideology do worse and achieve less.
Unless this trajectory changes, we will witness a decline that future governments will have to painstakingly undo.
The tragedy is that it need not be this way. The blueprint for excellence already exists, and we have seen it work.
But if Labour continues to dismantle the very foundations that raised standards for all, the next generation will inherit a crumbling education system.
Mouhssin Ismail OBE is Chief Standards Officer, City of London Academies Trust
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