Neil O'Brien

The Bill does not set out any kind of clear plan or vision for our schools. It does not address the big challenges that need addressing. It is silent on discipline and behaviour—one of the biggest issues. It comes after the Government scrapped simple Ofsted judgments and will be followed by moves to dumb down the curriculum and lower standards further. The Secretary of State has no positive vision. She has axed programmes for advanced maths, physics, Latin and computing because she thinks that they are elitist. She has axed behaviour hubs with no replacement, even though schools that went through the scheme were twice as likely to be good or outstanding. Yet, somehow, she is able to find £90 million for advertising. The Bill is the worst of all. We have tabled numerous amendments to it. It takes a wrecking ball to 40 years of cross-party reform of England’s schools. Those reforms worked. There is much more to do, but England has risen up the international league tables even as Labour-run Wales has slumped down. Under successive Governments of all colours, England’s schools have been improved by the magic formula of freedom plus accountability. The Bill attacks both parts of that formula. On the one hand, it strips academy schools of freedoms over recruitment and curriculum and reimposes incredible levels of micromanagement, taking away academy freedoms now enjoyed by 82% of secondary schools. On the other hand, it strikes at accountability and parental choice, ending the automatic transfer of failing schools to new management, reversing the reforms of the late 1980s, which allowed good schools to expand without permission from their local authority—a reform that ushered in parental choice. Let me unpack this. First, the Bill takes away academy schools’ freedoms over the curriculum. We have tabled amendments to that. As Sir Dan Moynihan, who leads the incredibly successful Harris schools, explained: “We have taken over failing schools in very disadvantaged places in London, and we have found youngsters in the lower years of secondary schools unable to read and write. We varied the curriculum in the short term and narrowed the number of subjects in key stage 3 in order to maximise the amount of time given for literacy and numeracy, because the children were not able to access the other subjects… why take away the flexibility to do what is needed locally?”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 71, Q154.] Likewise, Luke Sparkes from Dixons argued: “we…need the ability to enact the curriculum in a responsive and flexible way at a local level…there needs to be a consistency without stifling innovation.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 79, Q167.] Katharine Birbalsingh, the head of Michaela school, which has been top in the country three years in a row, wrote to the Secretary of State: “Do you have any idea of the work required from teachers and school leaders to change their curriculum? You will force heads to divert precious resources from helping struggling families to fulfil a bureaucratic whim coming from Whitehall. Why are you changing things? What is the problem you are trying to solve?”