The dishonesty of the schools white paper, and why it should be called out

Where to start with an article which attempts to fact-check claims in this week’s schools white paper and its associated documents?

To read the paper itself, and also the Department for Education document “The case for a fully trust-led system,” is to get a deflating sense of an alternate reality. In this other world, claims which are made can seem diametrically opposed to the everyday experience of the system, on which I try to report.

At a time when truth-telling in our public discourse may never have seemed more important, it is vital to try to call this out.

England: “A bastion of education evidence”. Really.

Probably the most jaw-dropping statement in the white paper was on page 40, where the DfE asserted that: “England is now an international bastion of education evidence, with English schools now some of the most evidence informed in the world.”

Now, to be perhaps charitable to the DfE, there is some context around this. The paper offers up this extraordinary claim after a sentence about the Education Endowment Fund, the government-funded body which organises and publishes research, and which it describes elsewhere as “world class”.