Grounds for cautious optimism: Labour laying down some principles and policy detail which might make academy controversies less likely under a future government

Plans for education under a Labour government hold out the potential of taking the wind out of the sails of on-the-ground controversies which have featured heavily on this website.

Ideas set out in a speech yesterday by Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, seem to set up the possibility of a radically different approach to disputes between central management of schools and communities including parents, pupils and teachers.

Wider media coverage yesterday of the speech, which has homed in on individual aspects such as Labour’s proposed approach for tackling low attendance, or Ms Phillipson having praised the energy of the former education secretary Michael Gove, appears to have missed the fundamental shift in approach, from that of this government, that it signalled.

Several aspects of Ms Phillipson’s speech, at the Centre for Social Justice thinktank in central London, set up a contrast with controversies featuring on Education Uncovered.

Schools working in partnership with communities

 

At several points during the speech, Ms Phillipson mentioned the need for schools to work in partnership with parents, and to be seen as part of their communities.

This was in the context that the focus of the talk was improving school attendance, with the clear implication that in some cases school relationships with families had broken down. However, the points being made also seemed to be at a more fundamental level.