Peter Fortune MP's latest column in the News Shopper.
Our country faces some significant challenges from falling economic confidence to out of control immigration. This is what should be keeping Labour politicians up at night. Especially as the Chancellor’s job-cutting Budget starts to bite businesses across the country, and illegal channel crossings increase by a third on their watch.
With so much to do and so many of their policies going wrong, one thing Labour ministers should avoid is meddling with what isn’t broken. Yet that’s precisely what Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is doing with her ill-considered Schools Bill - and it will impact schools across Bromley and Biggin Hill.
This rushed legislation attempts to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Phillipson claims it will increase educational standards, but England’s schools are already some of the best in the world. Our schools are ranked seventh best globally for maths and ninth for reading and science. Over a decade ago, under the last Labour government, they languished in the 21st, 19th, and 11th positions, respectively.
There are undoubtedly challenges in education, not least in recruiting more teachers and improving the provision for children with special educational needs. However, the Schools Bill will not solve these challenges. Instead, it’s undoing decades of progress by stripping school leaders and teachers of the freedoms they need to drive up educational standards.
Labour’s legislation will strip schools of freedoms over curriculum and staffing. Superb schools that have crafted knowledge-rich curriculums must return to a national agenda set by Whitehall despite outperforming other schools. Headteachers will be stripped of the power to hire excellent teachers from independent schools or overseas because they don’t have Qualified Teacher Status, adding to teacher shortages and the cost of recruitment.
Three local schools almost faced pay cuts because Labour’s initial plans would stop schools from varying teachers' pay. Luckily, following our Conservative campaign in Parliament, they amended their plans to halt academies paying teachers more. But this is one minor improvement of a still poor bill.
Whenever I go into a school locally - whether they are independent embattled by Labour’s new education tax or academies worried about losing their freedoms - everyone seems baffled by Labour’s plans. Nor have I heard a convincing argument from a Labour MP in Parliament for why taxing and putting a straight-jacket on schools is a good idea.
Locally, we’ve seen our schools go from strength to strength. In July 2024, Ofsted ranked 96% of schools in the Bromley and Biggin Hill constituency as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’. Soon we will not be able to so easily tell how our schools are doing as Labour is axing Ofsted’s rating system; this is good news for Labour who risk crashing educational standards but bad news for parents choosing schools.
When state schools are thriving, educational standards are higher than ever, and independent schools are easing the pressure and providing sports facilities to communities, Labour’s policies can only be described as one thing: thoughtless vandalism that must be dropped.
