Labour’s plans to rewrite the National Curriculum

Michael Gove’s decision to stand down in this election was a reminder that the one really bright spot in the past 14 years was the education reforms he steered through between 2010 and 2014. These policies were vindicated in the most recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey, which showed England climbing the OECD’s international league table and outperforming Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In maths, England rose from 17th place in 2018 to 11th in 2022, whereas Scotland, significantly above England in 2010, fell below the OECD average.

I was involved in the most successful of these reforms, the free schools programme. Many of these schools are now topping the performance tables: the Michaela Community School got the best Progress 8 score in England last year (this measures how much progress pupils make between the ages of 11 and 16 relative to children with the same prior attainment) and the King’s Maths School got the best A-level results in the country. Of the four free schools I co-founded, the three primaries are all ranked ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted and the secondary’s GCSE results last year placed it in the top 2 per cent of English comprehensives.

Labour is going to rewrite the national curriculum, reverting to the failed skills-based approach

It is disappointing, therefore, that the Labour party wants to dismantle many of these reforms. Take the curriculum. One of my reasons for helping to set up those schools is that the national curriculum Labour devised in 1999 was so poor, with its emphasis on skills over knowledge. Broadly speaking, this is the curriculum still being taught in Wales, which is so far below England that, according to PISA, the average pupil there performs at the same level as the most disadvantaged pupil in England.