Conservative response to Labour's schools re-announcement

Responding, Schools Minister Nick Gibb said:

“Just this week, the PISA assessment has shown England’s schools have risen up international league tables under the Conservatives. 

"Sadly, in Labour-run Wales, schools ranked worst in the UK and under the SNP, Scotland recorded its worst ever performance in reading and maths.

“Conservative education reforms are improving standards in our schools, meaning children can get a better start in life. These results show starkly what a Corbyn Sturgeon alliance would do to our schools and children’s prospects. 

"The Conservatives will get Brexit done so we can move on and focus on continuing to raise school standards whilst increasing funding for every school in the country. Corbyn's Labour would wreck the economy, leaving no money for public services, and would waste the whole of next year on two chaotic referendums.”

ENDS 

Notes to Editors

·         English schools have risen from 26th to 17th in maths in the latest Pisa rankings. England performed significantly above the OECD average across all three subjects (DfE, PISA 2018: national report for England, 3 December 2019, link)

·         Welsh schools recorded the lowest scores for the UK across the three subjects (Wales Online, 3 December 2019, link)

·         Scotland recorded its worst ever performance  in reading and maths (The I, 3 December 2019, link) 

·         We are boosting funding in our primary and secondary schools by £14 billion over the next three years, so that every child can get a good education. Every secondary school will receive a minimum of £5,000 per pupil in 2020-21, and every primary school will receive a minimum of £3,750 per pupil in 2020-21, rising to £4,000 per pupil by 2021-22. This is a real terms rise of 7.4 per cent in per pupil spending by 2022-23 (DfE,Press Release, 11 October 2019, link).
 

·         We are challenging pupils with a new primary curriculum, ensuring everyone has a world-class education. 40 per cent of pupils are now entering the five core academic subjects: English, Maths, Sciences, a humanities and a foreign language. This is an increase of 83 per cent since 2010, when just 21.8 per cent of pupils were entering all the subjects (DfE, Key stage 4 performance, 2019, 17 October 2019, link).

·         We are reforming phonics so that children have the literacy skills they need. We have risen to 8th place in the international PIRLS assessment, up from the historic low of 19th under Labour. 82 per cent of pupils are meeting the expected phonics standard, up from 58 per cent in 2012 (DfE, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, 5 December 2017, link; DfE, Press Release, 26 September 2019, link).

Labour would reduce opportunity in schools

·         Under Labour, we plummeted down the international league tables for school performance. Between 2000 and 2009, England fell from 7th to 25th in reading, 8th to 28th in maths, and 4th to 16th in science in the PISA league tables. We had been overtaken by countries such as Poland, despite spending far more on education than comparable nations such as Germany (DfE, Press Release, 7 December 2010, link).

·         Labour have said they ‘will scrap Ofsted’, a source overwhelmingly viewed as a force for good and improvement for schools by parents, teachers and headteachers. Instead under Labour ‘all schools and education providers will be subject to regular “health checks” led by local government’. Such a move would create a conflict of interest, with local councils responsible for inspecting their own services, and put children in danger, lowering standards and reducing safeguards (Labour Press, 22 September 2019, link; YouGov, Parents Annual Survey 2018, 29 April 2019, link; YouGov, Teachers’ Awareness and Perceptions of Ofsted, 19 August 2019, link; NAO, Ofsted’s Inspection of Schools, 21 May 2018, link).

·         Labour want to retain free movement, which would add an extra 263,000 children into the school system over the next decade. By remaining in the EU – the taxpayer would have to pay an additional £8.6 billion over the next decade to educate the extra 263,000 children of school age that would come from the EU into our schools (Conservatives, Jeremy Corbyn’s Plan for Uncontrolled and Unlimited Immigration, 14 November 2019, link).

·         Labour would scrap the free school  programme depriving thousands of children of good or outstanding school place. Since 2010 the free schools programme has created over 133,000 school places, but Labour want to scrap the programme (Labour Press, 10 September 2019, link; DfE, Press Release, 9 September 2019, link). 

·         Labour want to end the successful academy programme, which educates 4.2 million pupils across primary, secondary and special schools. Only 12 per cent of sponsored academies were rated good or outstanding before converting, now 71 per cent are, meaning 380,000 more pupils are in good or outstanding schools (DfE, Analysis of Ofsted Good and Outstanding Schools, 11 July 2019, link; Labour Press, 24 September 2018, link).