Bridget Phillipson accused of having ‘Marxist ideological dislike of academies’ by leading headteacher
Katharine Birbalsingh, who is credited with being one of the best headteachers in the country because of her success with Michaela school in London, has launched a ferocious attack on the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.
In an open letter published on social media, Birbalsingh described Phillipson as having “a Marxist ideological dislike of academies” and claimed she was unable to answer questions about her schools bill when they met on Monday this week.
Birbalsingh also claimed Phillipson showed no interest in learning how Michaela, a non-selective inner city school, has been able to achieve outstanding results.
Two weeks ago Kemi Badenoch quoted Birbalsingh at PMQs when criticising the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which will limit the freedoms enjoyed by academy schools. Birbalsingh, who is widely admired by Tories but who describes herself as a floating voter, published a lengthy criticism of the bill last month. But her latest critique is much stronger.
In the letter she says:
Politicians who truly want to raise standards for our deprived communities would ordinarily be interested in hearing from the people who know best how to do it: the teachers.
Take our own school of Michaela. Last year, pupils at Eton College (fees £60,000 per year) received 53% grade 9s across all their GCSEs. Michaela (a non-selective state school in a converted office block in Wembley) achieved 52%. Anyone who thinks that black and brown kids from the inner are destined to be underachievers are wrong. They should meet our children. And with the right values, the right leadership, the right school freedoms, we prove them wrong every time. One would have thought a secretary of state keen to spread aspiration across the country would want to ask: how is this done? How can we raise the standards everywhere? Yet when we spoke of our successes, you did not probe to find out how we achieve what we do. You are not interested …
We asked you to explain why it is that academies were able to drive up standards. You are removing their freedoms so you clearly don’t believe their freedoms lead to success. So what does? You could not answer that either. We asked you to name any single school that you believed is driving up standards. You talked around the houses as politicians do but, again – no real answers.
Academies tailor their curricula to the communities they serve and are only able to do this because of curriculum freedoms – freedoms that you are now removing. You insisted that some schools were not meeting your ‘floor’ curriculum requirements. We asked you to name one school that does not offer a core curriculum to its pupils. You could not name a single one …
You are passing a law that we must all follow a brand-new curriculum, before you have even told us what it is. Every teacher knows what this means: more money and thousands of hours spent changing resources, on content you haven’t even decided or announced. Time away from children means time away from raising standards. We tried to explain this, but again, no answers.
The full letter is here.
Asked to respond to the letter, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said:
We would not comment on what was a private meeting, held in good faith.
As the education secretary said in her speech at the CSJ, debate around education policy is welcome, and ministers will always meet with a wide range of stakeholders, with a range of different views.
UPDATE: See 5.06pm for a stronger response from a government source familiar with what happened at the meeting.
Key events
Tory MPs will increasingly start calling for pact with Reform UK, George Osborne claims
George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, reckons Katy Balls is onto something. (See 5.20pm.) On his Political Currency podcast, which he co-hosts with Ed Balls, Osborne said a possible pact with Reform UK is the only thing Conservatives are talking about now, and he predicted that more MPs will come out and publicly call for one.
He said:
The only conversation happening inside the Conservative party right now is, should we do a deal with Reform? That is all you’re going to hear from now on. And it’s going to drown out everything else that Kemi Badenoch wants to say, because they’re going to get hammered in the local elections.
Last time the local elections were held was actually a high point for the Boris Johnson government. So the Tories are bound to lose badly. Reform is going to do well. The New MP for Tatton, the person who replaced me, Esther McVey, has today called for that alliance between Reform and the Tories.
The only thing that Reform wants from any alliance with the Tories is that Nigel Farage is the prime minister. So their price is very straightforward. An increasing number of Tories are going to go, ‘Yeah, whatever, Let’s just get into government. Let’s do a pact with Reform.’ And it’s going to be really hard for the Tory leader to be heard on anything else for the next 12 months and beyond.
Government criticised for delaying fully implementing Awaab’s law forcing landlords to remove dangerous hazards until 2027
Awaab’s law to force social landlords to fix dangerous damp and mould will come into force in October, PA Media reports. PA says:
The legislation is named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died as a direct result of exposure to mould in the social home his family rented in Rochdale in 2020.
From October, landlords will have to investigate and fix dangerous damp and mould within a set period of time and repair all emergency hazards within 24 hours.
The law will then be strengthened over time and from 2027 it will require landlords to fix all dangerous hazards.
In a statement about the announcement, Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, said:
We have a moral duty to ensure tragedies like the death of Awaab Ishak never happen again.
Landlords cannot be allowed to rent out dangerous homes and shamelessly put the lives of their tenants at risk.
Our new laws will force them to fix problems quickly, so that people are safe in their homes and can be proud to live in social housing.
But the housing charity Shelter criticised the decision to delay full implementation until 2027. Its chief executive, Polly Neate, said:
Awaab Ishak’s legacy must be that no other family has to witness poor housing conditions putting their child’s life at risk.
These delays to implementation represent a real risk to the health and safety of tenants, and puts lives at risks.
The government must make good on their promise and fully and swiftly implement Awaab’s law.
In an article in this week’s Spectator Katy Balls says that some figures in the Conservative and Reform UK parties have been involved in informal talks on the prospects for some sort of pact between the two parties. She says:
What would a Tory/Reform pact look like? There are different options depending on each side’s appetite for risk. The first option is the mildest – an unofficial deal similar to the way Labour and the Lib Dems approached the 2024 election. In seats where neither party has a realistic chance of winning, they field a paper candidate to give the other party a better shot. Then they hope for tactical voting in these seats to ‘get Labour out’.
Then there’s the geographical pact. In this scenario, seats in different areas could be divided between Tory and Reform candidates. ‘It would be a north-south pact – provinces vs towns,’ says one insider.
While Team Farage is publicly against all this, some Conservatives believe he could be convinced. After all, he is only starting from five MPs. ‘Even if a non-merger deal, for Farage to have 100 to 150 MPs, that would give him permanent power.’ As for a full merger – which could see Farage fulfil his ambition to do what a different Reform party did in Canada after the 1993 Conservative wipeout – well, a name is already doing the rounds. ‘The Reformed Conservative party has a nice ring to it,’ says a Tory.
In an interview with the Sun, for its Never Mind the Ballots TV programme, Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and runner up in the last leadership contest, dismissed the idea, but did not rule it out.
When Harry Cole, the presenter, put it to him that both parties would benefit from a pact, Jenrick replied:
Reform themselves are saying they don’t want to. Reform has said repeatedly they have no intention of doing this. Kemi [Badenoch] has said she has no intention.
My whole mission is to bring home all the small-c conservatives in this country back to the Conservative party. We should be their natural home. We’re not at the moment, because of the mistakes we made in office. It can be done.
A government source familiar what what happened when Bridget Phillipson met Katharine Birbalsingh has strongly contested the headteacher’s version of what happened. (See 3.27pm.) He said that, although Birbalsingh was invited in good faith, and although Phillipson was keen to hear about her concerns about the schools bill, and about what she was doing at her school, Michaela, the tone of the meeting was “extraordinary”. Phillipson was constantly being interrupted and Birbalsingh would not listen to what she had to say, the source said. He said Birbalsingh twice had to be asked to moderate her tone because she was being “aggressive”. Her manner “was not befitting of a head teacher”, the source said.
He went on:
This is a person who has spoken at Conservative party conference and who was very supportive of the Conservative government’s policies, and who does not like the idea that there’s now a Labour secretary of state whose got a mandate to drive up standards, improve schools and make changes.
Starmer says oil and gas will be ‘big part of future for decades’ in hint Rosebank oilfield won’t be blocked
Keir Starmer has said that oil and gas will be “a big part of the future for decades”, in comments seen as a hint that the government won’t block the development of the Rosebank oilfield.
He also suggested that the ongoing need for oil and gas would be part of the “mindset” influencing the decision.
Last week a court in Scotland said the original decision to approve the Rosebank oilfield development off Shetland was unlawful because it did not take account of the impact of the carbon emissions from the oil subsequently produced.
A fresh application will have to be submitted. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is said to be in favour, but within cabinet, and within the wider Labour party, environmentalists are making the case that approving Rosebank will destroy the government’s credibility on net zero.
At the last election Labour said that it would not approve any fresh licences for oil or gas extraction in the North Sea. But it said that it would not withdraw licences approved by the last government and that it would allow those ongoing developments to go ahead.
In the Commons on Monday Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, was asked if Rosebank would be regarded as an existing licence, or a new one, when ministers take a fresh decision about its future. Miliband sidestepped the question.
But, on a visit to the UK National Nuclear Laboratory in Preston today, Starmer hinted that Rosebank might be considered as an existing project.
Asked whether he was minded to grant development at Rosebank, Starmer told Sky News that the licence has to be considered in the light of a new application. But he added:
What we said at the election was we weren’t going to interfere with existing licences. This process started obviously before the election. But the mindset is we know that oil and gas is going to be a big part of the future for many decades to come.
We do need to transition to clean power, but in relation to this particular licence it was granted in the first place, it’s going back through that process.
I can’t pre-empt the decision but you know we did say that where licences have already been granted we wouldn’t interfere with them.
On her LBC phone-in this morning, Nick Ferrari asked Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, about Keir Starmer’s voice coach and whether, in the light of how wooden his performances are in the Commons, he should ask for his money back. Cooper sounded as if she was not sure what he was on about. Ferrari had to explain that the parliamentary sketchwriters were not very complimentary about Starmer’s speaking style. Cooper said she had to confess that she never read them.
So she won’t want to read John Crace on her LBC performance this morning. But you might. It’s here.
Labour launches ads in Reform-style branding to boast about deportations
Labour has launched a series of adverts with Reform-style branding and messaging as the party seeks to combat the rise of the rightwing party, Kiran Stacey reports.
Bridget Phillipson accused of having ‘Marxist ideological dislike of academies’ by leading headteacher
Katharine Birbalsingh, who is credited with being one of the best headteachers in the country because of her success with Michaela school in London, has launched a ferocious attack on the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.
In an open letter published on social media, Birbalsingh described Phillipson as having “a Marxist ideological dislike of academies” and claimed she was unable to answer questions about her schools bill when they met on Monday this week.
Birbalsingh also claimed Phillipson showed no interest in learning how Michaela, a non-selective inner city school, has been able to achieve outstanding results.
Two weeks ago Kemi Badenoch quoted Birbalsingh at PMQs when criticising the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, which will limit the freedoms enjoyed by academy schools. Birbalsingh, who is widely admired by Tories but who describes herself as a floating voter, published a lengthy criticism of the bill last month. But her latest critique is much stronger.
In the letter she says:
Politicians who truly want to raise standards for our deprived communities would ordinarily be interested in hearing from the people who know best how to do it: the teachers.
Take our own school of Michaela. Last year, pupils at Eton College (fees £60,000 per year) received 53% grade 9s across all their GCSEs. Michaela (a non-selective state school in a converted office block in Wembley) achieved 52%. Anyone who thinks that black and brown kids from the inner are destined to be underachievers are wrong. They should meet our children. And with the right values, the right leadership, the right school freedoms, we prove them wrong every time. One would have thought a secretary of state keen to spread aspiration across the country would want to ask: how is this done? How can we raise the standards everywhere? Yet when we spoke of our successes, you did not probe to find out how we achieve what we do. You are not interested …
We asked you to explain why it is that academies were able to drive up standards. You are removing their freedoms so you clearly don’t believe their freedoms lead to success. So what does? You could not answer that either. We asked you to name any single school that you believed is driving up standards. You talked around the houses as politicians do but, again – no real answers.
Academies tailor their curricula to the communities they serve and are only able to do this because of curriculum freedoms – freedoms that you are now removing. You insisted that some schools were not meeting your ‘floor’ curriculum requirements. We asked you to name one school that does not offer a core curriculum to its pupils. You could not name a single one …
You are passing a law that we must all follow a brand-new curriculum, before you have even told us what it is. Every teacher knows what this means: more money and thousands of hours spent changing resources, on content you haven’t even decided or announced. Time away from children means time away from raising standards. We tried to explain this, but again, no answers.
The full letter is here.
Asked to respond to the letter, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said:
We would not comment on what was a private meeting, held in good faith.
As the education secretary said in her speech at the CSJ, debate around education policy is welcome, and ministers will always meet with a wide range of stakeholders, with a range of different views.
UPDATE: See 5.06pm for a stronger response from a government source familiar with what happened at the meeting.
Anas Sarwar urges Scottish government to end its ‘ideological block’ on nuclear power
Libby Brooks
At first minister’s question at Holyrood this lunchtime, the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar challenged John Swinney to end his government’s “ideological block” on nuclear power following Keir Starmer’s announcement of plans to make it easier to build mini reactors in England and Wales.
Sarwar argued the SNP’s veto on nuclear energy projects has allowed “jobs, growth and skills to go elsewhere”, including the EU and China, whilst a similar approach in Scotland could “end the reliance on dictators like Putin”.
But Swinney said there would be no “green light” forthcoming from the Scottish government and that the development of green renewables was already “delivering formidably” for the country.
Meanwhile he attacked the UK government for its failure to decide on a carbon capture and storage project at Grangemouth, after workers at the oil refinery received their redundancy letters yesterday.
Swinney says he was becoming “increasingly impatient” and called on the UK government to authorise the proposed transition project to give “certainty” to the workers.