![Pupils from Corpus Christi Catholic School, Brixton arrive at St Martin's in the Field Girls' School in London, as they are relocated after their school was affected with sub standard reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/09/05/TELEMMGLPICT000348049753_16939360767110_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
![Pupils from Corpus Christi Catholic School, Brixton arrive at St Martin's in the Field Girls' School in London, as they are relocated after their school was affected with sub standard reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/09/05/TELEMMGLPICT000348049753_16939360767110_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The last words of Custer at Little Bighorn are not recorded, so it’s conceivable that as disaster unfolded around him he might just have uttered, in a final ejaculation of self-pity: “Does anyone ever say: ‘You know what, you’ve done a f------ good job’, because everyone else has sat on their a---s and done nothing?”
It’s hard not to pity Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, joining the ranks of Gordon Brown and King Charles in the hot-mic “gotcha” stakes. Whether it’s bigoted women, bloody pens or other people’s backsides, the broadcast media loves nothing more than an unguarded microphone gaffe. But after the gaffe came the tin-eared comms. The Department for Education released an infographic, proclaiming “most buildings unaffected” by the crumbling concrete crisis afflicting schools. This caused Labour to counter with a genuinely funny meme, referencing Jaws: “Most beachgoers not eaten by big shark.”
It would be wrong to blame everything on “Tory cuts”, as the Government’s critics inevitably are doing; the aerated concrete problem has been swept under the carpet by multiple administrations and dates back further still, to shoddy postwar construction methods. Yet ultimately, none of this will matter to voters. Political memories are short, and the state of the nation metaphors write themselves. Like dumped sewage, disintegrating classrooms are the sort of cultural totem that quickly bleeds into the public consciousness, crystallising that existing sense that everything is a bit rubbish. In this context, “nothing to do with me, chum” isn’t going to cut it.
But let’s hope for everyone’s sake that this crisis can be swiftly defused, rather than morphing into the cladding scandal 2.0. Unlike reforming governments such as the Thatcher or Blair administrations, which, for better or worse, remade the country in their own image, there is very little this Conservative regime can claim to have improved or radically changed. Perhaps the only area where the party could counter that narrative of inertia is in education, where Tory-led governments have unarguably made a big difference. How disastrous if their legacy came to be, in the popular memory, one of collapsing schools rather than the quiet revolution that has gone on within them.
Under Michael Gove’s reforms, academies and free schools have flourished, with notable triumphs such as Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela Community School, Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford and the Reach Academy Feltham. Schools minister Nick Gibb’s phonics revolution has worked miracles, in the face of maniacal opposition from many in the educational establishment. England now ranks as the top Western nation for primary school reading levels. An insistence on high standards, discipline and the mastery of discrete academic knowledge rather than pupil-centred teaching methods has also been vindicated in the international rankings.
These upgrades have taken years to surface, but the typical pupil in the average state school now undoubtedly fares far better than he or she did before. As it takes so long for improvements to register, decline, too, takes years to show up. It is only relatively recently that the dire consequences of Scotland’s progressive education system have become clear.
Admittedly, the Tories have made mistakes. Some of the complaints levied at the Government on education are universal woes; there’s scarcely a country in the world without a teacher recruitment crisis. But there are certainly specific failings, too. The Government pursued a catastrophic policy of school closures, and has since dragged its feet in providing catch-up support to negate the devastating effects of lockdown. Since the last general election, the revolving door of the DfE has also admitted no fewer than six education secretaries. There are fruit flies with longer lifespans than this particular branch of government; it’s not so much a political graveyard as Westminster’s very own Pet Sematary.
The sheer rate of churn has hampered the government’s reforming zeal and allowed the educational establishment to wrest control of the agenda – the Blob thrives in turmoil. During the Coalition years, educational policy enjoyed continuity and consistent support. George Osborne championed free schools at the Treasury, backing up long-serving ministers like Gove and Gibb. More recently, the programme has stalled, thanks in part to Whitehall reticence on capital spending.
But what Labour promises is orders of magnitudes worse – a thrust away from rigour, and towards discredited “personalised learning” methods. The Tony Blair Institute recently called for A-Levels and GCSEs to be scrapped – a view echoed by Starmer’s education guru Peter Hyman. As Fraser Nelson observed on these pages, Hyman’s oracy-focused free school, School 21, has plummeted in the Ofsted ratings in recent years, from “outstanding” to “requires improvement”. So it doesn’t bode well that Starmer has chosen oracy, rather than phonics, or discipline, or a knowledge-rich curriculum, as his political lodestar.
Crucially, Labour plans to remove academy freedoms that have been critical to their success, like choosing whom to hire and what to teach. It intends to rewrite the curriculum, with a renewed focus on “diversity” and “inclusion”, and force it on all schools in the state sector. There have been ominous briefings about Labour reserving the right to sack the next Ofsted chief and replace him or her with their preferred candidate – talk about marking your own homework. As well as overturning measurable successes, this centralising tendency would remove vital space to allow experiments to take their course, then to learn from best practice.
Labour even proposes giving local authorities a greater say in school exclusions, so council apparatchiks, rather than headteachers, might decide whether a child should be expelled for, say, bringing a knife into a classroom. (My views on this are unprintable; suffice to say that Gillian Keegan would term it “choice language”.) Finally, its tax raid on private schools would force thousands of children into an already over-subscribed state system.
I wonder, though, if privately many independent schools would welcome a Starmer government, since a failing state education sector ultimately helps their business model. But for the rest of us, most of all in the probable next administration, we should fear Labour’s plans for education, and the unpicking of the finest Conservative legacy of the past 13 years.
The Conservatives are fast turning their one triumph into a disaster
The crumbling concrete crisis risks souring the fine Tory record on education, letting Labour overturn it