Fiddling with what works and not dealing with what doesn’t
Another tendency in education (as elsewhere) is deference to public-sector unions, whose members make up much of Labour’s rank and file. The party is right to fret that teachers are getting harder to recruit and retain. The long-term answer is higher pay. But the government seems keener to offer other concessions that put standards at risk. It has ordered schools inspectors to issue vaguer, gentler (and thus less informative) reports. It says it will reduce schools’ freedom to set curriculums and pay star teachers better. Some school leaders have used their autonomy poorly. But others have bred excellence.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has identified some serious problems in state education. One is absenteeism: about a quarter of secondary-schoolers are missing at least 10% of the time, twice as many as before the pandemic. The share who miss half their lessons is going up. Another is the buckling system for the one-fifth of pupils with special educational needs, who are not doing any better than they were five years ago, even though spending on it has soared. Yet in both these areas Labour has little by way of convincing plans.
