Laura Trott: Labour want to make more schools consistently bad – and they’ve already started

On Thursday afternoon last week, something quiet but significant happened.

Away from the noise of Westminster, the Labour-run council in Brighton rammed through changes to their school admissions policy, which will act as a blueprint for the disastrous experiment Labour want to roll-out across this country. The Government’s ideological mission to reduce school standards and undermine parental choice is based on what Labour are doing in Brighton.

Labour councillors voted to reduce the size of the good and popular schools in the area.

For the avoidance of doubt – and, yes, you did read it correctly – Labour want to shrink the best schools in Brighton, so children cannot access them. This is a move which will see parental choice taken away, failing schools propped up and mediocrity rewarded. This is plainly horrendous, but the worst thing is that Labour want to roll it out all over the country.

Labour’s discredited Schools Bill is currently making its way through Parliament.

In the explanatory notes that go alongside the Bill – their stated ambition is to create ‘more consistency’ in the education system. But what Labour have done in Brighton shows where their intent really lies. The Education Secretary is not interested in supporting and growing the best schools in our country.

Labour want to make more schools consistently bad. Their education reforms amount to levelling down.

As sure as night turns to day, this hopeless Labour government has reached for the lever of command and control.

One size must fit all, in their warped world view. Excellence is frowned upon. Labour are intent on lobbing the tops off the tallest poppies, as their move in Brighton shows. It is a policy built on ideology and envy. The tragedy of what the Education Secretary is doing is that it is sure to be the poorest pupils who will suffer most.

For readers who aren’t immersed in this policy, they may well struggle to understand why Labour are so set on these proposals. It is a mystery what they are trying to achieve by shrinking some of our best state schools.

In recent decades, parents and children have voted with their feet when it comes to our schools.

This has meant bad and unpopular schools close, while good schools thrive. A strong system driven by parent demand was created and sustained. What is wrong with that? That is the beauty of choice. But the Education Secretary is taking sweeping powers in the Schools Bill to give local authorities the ability to not only object if good schools want to grow, but the ability to object if an outstanding school wants to keep the number of pupils the same. This is madness.

At Labour Party Conference in 2002, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair rightly asked the questions I am asking myself over twenty years later, ‘why shouldn’t there be a range of schools for parents to choose from . . . Why shouldn’t good schools expand or take over failing schools or form federations?’

Why, indeed.

For the past two decades, politicians in both main parties have agreed on what has worked in our school system. That academies – by virtue of the freedoms they enjoy – are critical to improving education standards.

Again, I reach for the words of Tony Blair when reflecting on the success of academies, he wrote in his memoirs, that an academy ‘belongs not to some remote bureaucracy, not to the rulers of government, local or national, but to itself, for itself. The school is in charge of its own destiny’. This is a powerful testimony to the good academies can do, and the Education Secretary should heed the words of her party’s former prime minister.

This idea – giving individual school leaders the autonomy to innovate and adapt to do what is right for their pupils – has been at the heart of education reforms driven by Labour and Conservative Governments alike.

Those reforms have achieved extraordinary success. They have done more than anything else to break down the barriers to opportunity.

The evidence is independent and unambiguous.

Multiple international studies, which cannot be gamed by politicians seeking to burnish their own credentials, all agree – England’s schools are a twenty-first century success story. At primary level, the PIRLS study has found England’s school children are the best in the West at reading. The separate TIMMS survey found the same for mathematics. At secondary level, the OECD’s PISA study shows English children soaring up the international rankings compared to their peers in other countries.

Meanwhile children in SNP-run Scotland and Labour-run Wales, where ministers chose not to reform their education systems by increasing autonomy, have sadly fallen behind and pupil behaviour has got worse. Step by step the things that saw us climb up the international league tables are being dismantled. Just as the reforms pioneered by Conservatives in government saw our children and schools rise up international league tables, the dismantling of these reforms will surely see us go down those same league tables.

The Education Secretary is letting ideology get in the way of what works best for children and parents. In kowtowing to trade union demands, she’s putting their preferences above what is best for children.

This Bill is nothing short of education vandalism.

We will fight for parental choice, for school standards, for a rigorous system which supports those who need it most, and we will never cease to stand up for our children’s interests.

---

This article (Laura Trott: Labour want to make more schools consistently bad – and they’ve already started) was created and published by Conservative Home and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Laura Trott MP

••••

The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)

••••

Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.

••••

Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

••••

Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Liberty Beacon Project.