Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (2025)

Over the past 30 years we have had something that is quite unusual in politics: a degree of cross-party consensus about education in England. Schools in England have been improved by the magic formula of freedom plus accountability. It started in the late ’80s, was accelerated after 1997 by Labour and was accelerated further under the Lib Dem-Conservative Government in 2010. And it worked: England improved not just compared with the rest of the world, but compared with Scotland and Wales, where the opposite agenda was followed—academies were banned, league tables were abandoned and a progressive curriculum was installed.

Between 2009 and 2022, England went from 21st to 7th in the PISA league table on maths, while Wales went from 29th to 27th. On science, England went from 11th to 9th, while Wales slumped from 21st to 29th. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out in a searing report titled “Major challenges for education in Wales”, amazingly, disadvantaged children in England are now doing better than the average child in Wales. Earlier, the Secretary of State talked about what the Bill would do for the working class. We have seen what Labour’s agenda has done for the working class in Wales.

It was a similar story in Scotland, which collapsed from 15th to 25th in maths and from 11th to 26th in science. Other comparisons tell us the same. The trends in international mathematics and science study found that from 2011 to 2023, England’s rankings were all maintained or improved to become among the best in the western world. Meanwhile, what happened in Scotland and Wales? We do not know, because they withdrew from the test after bad results in 2007.

Yet despite all that evidence, the Bill in front of us today takes us backwards. Never mind the things we did—the Government are undoing the best things that the last Labour Government did. As educators have pointed out, it is totally unclear what problem Ministers think they are trying to fix, but it is clear that it will cause problems, because it takes away academy freedoms and starts rolling back the academy programme.

One important freedom that the Bill takes away is the freedom to pay more on top of the national salary scale to retain more good teachers. The biggest school trust in the country, United Learning, uses those freedoms to pay 5.6% above the figures set out in the Government’s national terms. The leader of that trust, the former DFE official Sir Jon Coles, has warned that what the Government are planning will be damaging and will make it harder to retain good teachers.

Schools employing at least 20,000 teachers will be hit by the end of this freedom. Even the Government have sort of recognised the problem, saying:

“We recognise the good practice that academy trusts have developed over the years, but good practice shouldn’t be limited by administrative structures.”

This is bizarre. If it is good practice, why are the Government not extending those freedoms to all schools, rather than taking them away from academies? The DFE is trying to say that their new law will not affect teachers’ pay. Why then are the Government passing it? What is the point of it? If it is so good, why have they told Schools Week that it will not apply to senior staff?

Ministers are compounding the problem by taking away freedoms over QTS. About 13,600 teachers do not have QTS at the moment, and a lot of those who enter state education without QTS—about 600 a year—go on to get it. However, the fact that teachers can join state schools without having it up front reduces the barriers to entry and makes it easier to recruit to state schools. The Treasury estimates that this policy will cost schools up to £127 million for the existing stock of teachers and £43 million for the flow of new teachers each year, but there will be no compensation for this cost.

The bill also ends academies’ freedom to vary from the national curriculum. This freedom promotes genuine diversity in our schools; not all children learn in the same way, and parents can currently choose what is right for their child. It also protects educators from endless meddling by well-meaning politicians and interest groups. In Scotland, the imposition of the ironically named but disastrous “Curriculum for Excellence” has been one of the main reasons why Scotland’s schools have plummeted down the international league tables. Many schools will now have to spend a lot of time churning through Labour’s brand-new curriculum to work out whether they comply. It is another move away from a culture of teacher empowerment and towards a tick-box compliance culture, and a backwards move. What problem are Ministers trying to fix here? They have admitted in a written answer that they do not even know how many schools will be affected by this policy. It is bizarre. They are leaping without even bothering to look. As well as cutting back all those other freedoms, the Bill also gives the Secretary of State a terrifying, sweeping new power to boss academies about on any subject of her choosing where she thinks a school is behaving unreasonably.

As well as taking away school freedoms and leaving us with academies in name only, the Bill also hacks back the academies programme; in doing so, it hacks back accountability, which has always been the flipside of school freedoms. In 1997, one of Labour’s first moves was to publish a list of failing schools and start intervening in them. After trying other things, it became apparent that the best way to intervene was to make the schools academies and put them under new management. This Bill, of course, abolishes the academy order, under which failing local authority schools are turned into academies. Dame Siobhain McDonagh, in her superb speech, gave a great explanation of why abandoning this central Blair-era reform is such a mistake. Of course, the very best way to turn around a struggling school is to make it part of a strong trust. However, the Government have abolished the academy grant and the trust capacity grant that support this process. They hope instead that a bit of advice from some DFE officials will do the trick of turning around failing schools—but that centralist approach has been tried, and it failed.

The Bill takes us back to local authorities setting up new schools, which, at best, sets up a messy situation. However, I am particularly nervous about it in the context of the other measures in the Bill, which reverse the reforms of the late 1980s. Those reforms, for the first time, enabled the best schools to grow, unshackling them from local authorities, and ushered in the era of parental choice, which is itself a powerful motor for school improvement. Clause 50 gives a local authority the ability to object if good schools want to grow, or even if the academy is proposing to keep its published admission number the same. In the context of falling pupil numbers, it will be tempting for local authorities to prop up unpopular schools—particularly local authority-run ones—by sharing out the pupils from more successful schools. Rather than the normal split between a regulator and a provider, local authorities will be both. Politicians in some local authorities have never liked school freedom, and it will be very tempting for them to push down numbers in academies to protect the schools they run. Earlier, we heard the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, welcoming the Bill for exactly that reason—the same reasons he welcomes it are the reasons parents are right to fear it.

The Bill is a massive step backwards. There are huge, real issues that need tackling in schools, but the Bill does not help with them and, in lots of cases, hinders them. Our reasoned amendment today makes this clear.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (2025)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Dr. Pierre Goyette

Last Updated:

Views: 5896

Rating: 5 / 5 (70 voted)

Reviews: 85% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Dr. Pierre Goyette

Birthday: 1998-01-29

Address: Apt. 611 3357 Yong Plain, West Audra, IL 70053

Phone: +5819954278378

Job: Construction Director

Hobby: Embroidery, Creative writing, Shopping, Driving, Stand-up comedy, Coffee roasting, Scrapbooking

Introduction: My name is Dr. Pierre Goyette, I am a enchanting, powerful, jolly, rich, graceful, colorful, zany person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.