Insiders say she’s drunk on power and ideological zeal. But I can reveal that Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is preparing to get tough with the teaching unions – after a damning poll showed what parents REALLY think of schools, writes DAN HODGES

It was quite the image. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s merciless assault on the school system was deemed so destructive Tory shadow minister Laura Trott branded her ‘our very own Miley Cyrus, swinging her wrecking ball’.

Warming to her theme, Trott declared Phillipson was ‘undermining the consensus built over two decades – between successive governments of all parties – that has driven improvements in our schools’.

It’s an argument that has been gaining some traction over the last few weeks.

Phillipson – reportedly drunk on power and ideological zeal – is accused of trashing a golden decade of transformative change within Britain’s academic institutions.

‘A robust curriculum, robust exams, more freedoms for schools to know what is best for their students and a thriving education system in which English children have soared up the

PISA education rankings,’ is Trott’s rose-tinted perspective of our educational hinterland.

The problem is this view is a complacent, self-indulgent, self-serving fantasy. And the working parents of Britain know it.

At the end of September, ministers were presented with the findings of a survey conducted by pollsters Ipsos Mori. It found that at the start of the millennium, 76 per cent of those using their local nursery school were satisfied with the service it provided. Today that figure has collapsed to 52 per cent.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s merciless assault on the school system was deemed so destructive that Tory shadow minister Laura Trott branded her ‘our very own Miley Cyrus, swinging her wrecking ball’

A decade ago, 89 per cent declared themselves satisfied with their local primary school. Last year it was 58 per cent.

In 2002, 78 per cent of respondents claimed they were satisfied with the quality of their local secondary. By the end of 2024, less than half – 44 per cent – were prepared to say the same.

Even allowing for changes in research methodology over the years, these are damning statistics. And they show the belief Britain has a thriving education system is a conceit on a par with the fatuous claim our NHS is the ‘envy of the world’.

Yes, some of the responses partly reflect a broader perception public services have gradually been eroded under the less than tender ministrations of both main political parties. But it’s a perception still grounded in reality.

According to the Department of Education’s own statistics, only 12 primary school children in every class of 30 leave with a firm foundation in reading, writing and maths skills. A third of Year 11 students fail to achieve a Grade 4 in English and Maths. Twenty per cent of pupils are persistently absent from class, with 10 per cent missing at least half of lessons every month. And those are just national averages. In areas such as Knowsley and Blackpool, the English and Maths failure rates are as high as 60 per cent.

Imagine these statistics being extended to any other area of the state. If 60 per cent of soldiers finished their basic training unable to fire a rifle. Or 60 per cent of hip operations ended with the patient being infected with sepsis.

No one would seriously claim this represents a source of national pride. Instead, they would rightly say they were a national disgrace.

This myth of the robust health of Britain’s education system is – as in so many areas of our public life – a product of sophistry and spin. People on the liberal Left still lovingly recite Tony Blair’s pledge to make his three priorities ‘education, education and education’.

But they conveniently forget how his first Education Secretary resigned after just over a year, stating she wasn’t up to the job, his most radical education reforms had to be watered down after a mass rebellion within his own party, and his real priority turned out to be Iraq, Iraq and Iraq.

Similar can be said about the 14 years of Tory rule. It’s true that Michael Gove launched a brave and uncompromising effort to wrest education from the clutches of the all-consuming Whitehall ‘blob’. And for his troubles, he was unceremoniously sacked, as David Cameron decided he had to ‘get the barnacles off the boat’.

Ms Phillipson – reportedly drunk on power and ideological zeal – is accused of trashing a golden decade of transformative change within Britain’s academic institutions

Ms Phillipson – reportedly drunk on power and ideological zeal – is accused of trashing a golden decade of transformative change within Britain’s academic institutions

Theresa May’s major education reform was a manifesto pledge to impose VAT on private schools, after she claimed they had become ‘divorced from public life’. A policy that was promptly dumped following her election debacle.

Boris Johnson pledged to build 500 new schools by 2030. And ended up constructing 23 as he burnt through four education secretaries in three years, including one who was in post for precisely 35 hours.

The truth is that the quality of education in this country remains a lottery. One in which if you come from a working-class background you are frequently banned from buying a ticket.

Primary schools persistently fail to provide children of working families with the basic foundation necessary to excel academically. Secondary education remains a two – or even three – tier structure, in which middle-class and wealthy parents continue to game the system to give their children a discreet escape route out of educational mediocrity.

And the university sector is teetering on the edge of financial collapse, struggling to safeguard the most basic principles of intellectual integrity and freedom, while subsisting on an annual handout from the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s true that since taking office Bridget Phillipson has made some mistakes. In particular, she has suffered from the affliction shared by a number of her colleagues of fighting on too many fronts simultaneously, and trying to fix things that aren’t broken.

But to her credit she appears to be learning from them. Last week, she conceded she’d garbled her messaging on academy schools, and confirmed they would retain freedom to set teachers’ pay.

She has also moved to revive laws to protect free speech on university campuses. And I understand that in the next couple of weeks she will defy the unions by announcing a new set of proposals to beef up the despised Ofsted inspection regime, deploying ‘hit squads’ to drive up teaching standards in persistently failing schools.

All of these moves will no doubt see criticism of her mount, from both her supposed political allies and opponents. But people can’t have it both ways. You cannot demand radical reform in education, then expect the Education Secretary to simply maintain the status quo.

Because the harsh truth is the status quo has not been working. No golden national consensus has delivered excellence to British education. What has actually transpired is another self-satisfied attempt by the political class to slap itself on the back and claim all is well, when working-class families know the opposite.

So someone does indeed need to take a wrecking ball to an educational establishment that bovinely remains happy to accept standards of literacy and numeracy for the children of Knowsley and Blackpool that they would never dream of accepting for their own.

Bridget Phillipson should at least be given a chance to swing it.

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