Ed Miliband couldn’t care less about education reform

The editor of The Spectator isn’t the only person thinking about the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming the next Prime Minister. Eighty educationalists have signed a letter in the Daily Mail today warning about the danger of a future Labour government curtailing academy freedoms. They’re concerned about Ed Miliband’s pledge that Labour would reintroduce ‘a proper local authority framework for all schools’ – which sounds a lot like placing all taxpayer-funded schools back under local authority control.

The letter-writers flag up two freedoms they are particularly concerned about: the freedom that academies and free schools have to set their own pay and conditions and the freedom they have over the curriculum.

They’re right to be worried. Labour has already said it will make it illegal for taxpayer-funded schools to employ teachers without Qualified Teacher Status or who are not working towards QTS, a policy that might have been written by the teaching unions who know that enlarging the pool of potential labour has weakened their bargaining power.