26 February 2025

The “success story” of Tory education reform is a mirage

False claims about academies’ performance are obscuring the ambition of Labour’s Schools Bill.

Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images

In the culture wars over education, a false narrative has taken hold. It contends that the performance of England’s schools is one of the greatest achievements of the last Tory government, and that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will reverse this by curtailing academy freedoms. These privileges include the power to decide admissions, set staff salaries, and hire unqualified teachers; academies are also exempt from teaching the national curriculum. Labour’s proposed changes to these powers have been labelled an “act of vandalism” that will “destroy our schools”. This hyperbolic response has been repeated so often – by politicians, CEOs of multi-academy trusts and people such as Katharine Birbalsingh – that it is in danger of reshaping reality.

The Westminster village and the media have accepted it largely without challenge, and have furthered the erroneous belief that the bill’s opponents speak for all schools. They do not. The Headteachers’ Roundtable, a group of experienced school leaders in the academy and maintained sectors, wrote an open letter to Bridget Phillipson in support of the bill, claiming it “is kind, inclusive and fair in its intentions”, and “reminds the public that state education should be of high quality for all children in every school”. In a recent survey of 120 multi-academy trust leaders, a majority said key policies in the bill would not affect how they manage their schools. Only 10 per cent said the requirement to use statutory pay scales as a minimum would negatively affect their schools, while 68 per cent said implementing the national curriculum would have no effect.

Those who consider the Tory reforms from 2010 (which included changes to the curriculum, assessment and Ofsted, as well as the acceleration of Labour’s academy programme and the creation of free schools) to have turned around the prospects of English schools attribute this to academisation. No evidence, other than anecdotal, has been produced that supports this. Research by Stephen Gorard of Durham University found that academies are no better at raising attainment than local-authority-maintained schools. They also do not attain better Ofsted ratings.

The media furore around the Schools Bill has obscured Labour’s ambition to ensure every child, whichever type of school they attend, has the best start in life. It has also deflected attention from the many failings of the past 14 years.

The Tory record on education is patchy. The evidence cited by those who claim otherwise are the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) league tables. There has been some progress: England’s ranking in reading and maths has improved. But not all the data puts England in a positive light. Shifts in its rankings may be to do with a change in the number of countries taking part, or decline in other nations. Comparing England against itself, performance in reading and maths rose between nine and six points respectively between 2009 and 2018, before falling to near-2009 levels in 2022. (England did not meet the minimum response requirements for the most recent results, which Pisa reports may have biased the figures towards higher-performing schools.) Between 2009 and 2022 performance in science declined. Another study, Trends in International Science Study (Timss), found a similar pattern between 2007 and 2023.

Both Pisa and Timss also survey other aspects of our education system. Out of 43 countries in the Timss study, England had the third highest proportion of teenagers who reported that they did not feel they “belonged” at their schools – a key factor that impacts on attendance and attainment. Similarly, Pisa found that 15-year-olds’ “life satisfaction” had plunged between 2015 and 2022; England is now second bottom by this measure. This surely justifies the focus on wellbeing in Labour’s much-maligned bill.

While the education agenda is hijacked by Phillipson’s opponents, many issues facing schools are ignored or forgotten, such as the provision of support for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, which is in crisis. The National Foundation for Educational Research’s recent study shows teacher recruitment is far below target levels, where ten out of 17 subjects were under-recruited in 2023-24. The number of teachers saying they intend to leave the profession was up 44 per cent.

Schools are struggling with budgets that fail to keep pace with inflation. Buildings are in disrepair; the RAAC crisis is ongoing. In 2022, the UK average for persistent absence was 11.4 per cent; the OECD’s was 8.6 per cent. We have an accountability system that encourages the exclusion of pupils who might “harm” outcomes. The number of suspensions in 2022-23 (790,000) was 36 per cent higher than the previous record in 2021-22; exclusions rose to 9,000, up from 7,900 in 2017-18. The curriculum has narrowed in terms of subjects (with the arts and creativity being sidelined) and pedagogy, which is determined by the DfE through teacher training. And Ofsted is still seen by many as unfit for purpose.

Instead of declaring England’s schools a great Tory success story on the basis of carefully selected data, attributed to unevidenced policy, we should support our schools in addressing the issues they face in reality. All else is a distraction from the ambition to create a school system in which every child is included and both their attainment and well-being matter.

Alasdair Macdonald is the chair of the New Visions for Education Group and a former headteacher