Education has been in the spotlight in recent weeks, as the government’s Schools Bill makes it way through parliament. So far, the legislation has grabbed headlines precisely for all the wrong sorts of reasons. Critics claim it will water down standards and that Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, is effectively doing the teaching union’s bidding. Particular attention has been paid to the thorny issue of Ofsted school inspections, following the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry.
Today was Phillipson’s chance to respond. In her first major speech since taking up the role, the Education Secretary sought to shift her rhetoric – while ardently standing by the changes she proposed. She insisted that she was ‘delighted’ by the ‘raging debate’ over the new rating system to judge schools, in which single-word ratings are replaced by a colour-coded five-point ‘report card’ scale. These range from the red coloured ‘causing concern’ to green shades of ‘secure’, ‘strong’ and ‘exemplary’. The change is necessary, she says, because too many places are ‘coasting’ with 600 ‘stuck receiving consecutive poor Ofsted judgments’.
Gone was the partisan Tory-bashing of yesteryear. Instead there were repeated warm words for Michael Gove, the ex-Education Secretary and current Spectator editor. She echoed his criticisms of ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’, said he ‘brought a real drive and reform to education’ and dubbed him one of ‘a succession of great education reformers’ Now, it is the unions which Phillipson suggests are her motivating animus: ‘My first responsibility as Secretary of State is to children and families and their life chances – and I won’t let anything get in the way of that.’
Indeed, Phillipson suggested that claims she has been ‘in hock to the trade unions’ have now been disproved today by their angry reaction to the proposed new rating system. This is now being framed as an extension of parental choice, with Phillipson insisting that ‘parents are more than able to understand and to take on board greater information about what’s happening within their children’s school’. ‘All the evidence’, she added ‘is clear that they do’ want such information.
Yet while the Education Secretary has changed her tune, she certainly has not done the same for the legislation. The Tories have been quick to ridicule her attempt to portray herself as merely the latest in a long line of education reformers. Laura Trott, her opposite number, pointed out that actions, not words, speak loudest, with the Department for Education last week revoking an academy order after the school threatened legal action. ‘This is exactly what those who have raised concerns said would happen’, she said.
Phillipson clearly feels the moral mission of her department, repeatedly insisting to the CSJ that ‘background shouldn’t be destiny’. But with the Tories cheered by last week’s U-turn on the Schools Bill, she will need to convince school leaders that her new ratings system does not simply co-opt the language of progressive meritocracy to conceal an effective watering down of standards.
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