Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories hit back at Clegg call for academy changes

The way the Lib Dems have responded to the Trojan Horse revelations must be causing the Conservatives to thank their lucky stars they took Tony Blair’s advice on shaking up the public sector and prioritised school reforms at the start of the Coalition, rather than leaving the reforms until later. Nick Clegg’s comments about academy oversight and curriculum requirements this morning did rather suggest that if they’d had their time again, his party would only have backed legislation with a rather different character.

Naturally, the Conservatives in the Education department aren’t particularly impressed that this morning the Deputy Prime Minister suggested that ‘you need to get the balance right’ on autonomy for academies and that there was a need for a ‘core body of knowledge’ to be taught in all schools. A DfE source is keen to point out that the Lib Dems were, after all, very much in favour of all those early education reforms that the coalition introduced.

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