Labour’s disregard for Katherine Birbalsingh shows they care nothing for children’s success
It’s a familiar trope: politicians vying for power claim to revere expertise and evidence more than their opponents. Keir Starmer has done the same. Yet, when it comes to education, Labour’s principles unravel.
Take Michaela Community School, a beacon of academic excellence where disadvantaged children consistently achieve extraordinary results. Its headmistress, Katherine Birbalsingh, recently warned the Education Secretary that Labour’s policies risk undoing years of progress for the poorest pupils. Her concerns are well founded. Slashing funding for initiatives like Latin GCSEs (saving a pittance), dismissing innovative teacher recruitment routes, and centralising control over schools betray a government distrustful of those who know what works.
In the 2010s, bold reforms challenged the status quo, shifting control from bureaucrats to teachers and parents. Academies and free schools flourished, with the freedom to hire, innovate, and pay top talent what they deserve. England rose to 7th in global maths rankings, leaving Wales and Scotland – staunch opponents of similar reforms – floundering in decline.
Disadvantaged students in England now attend schools that rival the best private institutions in terms of university admissions. This renaissance should be celebrated.
Instead, Labour is methodically dismantling these achievements – achievements that defy its ideological mould, expose its low expectations as bigotry, and challenge its simmering class resentment. Labour’s selective embrace of “science” lies at the heart of the issue. Evidence that aligns with their dogma is gospel; evidence that doesn’t is discarded. This pick-and-choose approach fuels mistrust in expertise, creating cynicism that damages every sector, especially education.
At Michaela, traditional teaching methods, high expectations, and strict discipline have transformed outcomes for inner-city pupils. Yet these proven principles are anathema to Labour’s allies in the unions and academia.
Their preference for a nebulous, skills-based curriculum over a knowledge-rich one undermines academic achievement and social mobility alike. This discomfort with Michaela’s success was on full display last December when Bridget Phillipson refused even to acknowledge its achievements in Parliament.
Denying disadvantaged children access to the best education is morally indefensible and socially catastrophic. Labour’s policies feed a culture of dependency, where aspiration is viewed with suspicion and achievement with hostility. Meanwhile, schools like Michaela stand as living proof of what is possible when ideology is set aside in favour of what works.
They expose the lie that disadvantage must equate to underachievement. This is precisely why Labour refuses to embrace them—admitting these successes would mean confronting the failure of their preferred policies: looser discipline, lower expectations, and rigid central control.
Perhaps the most damning evidence of Labour’s priorities is their refusal to celebrate England’s international rise in education rankings. Instead of building on these successes, they’ve introduced measures to strip academies of their freedoms, weaken accountability, and impose a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
These are not policies of fairness but of ideological vengeance, and a recipe for long-lasting mediocrity. If Labour truly cared about expertise and evidence, they would look to schools like Michaela as models to replicate, not as threats to demolish. Their unwillingness to do so is not just short-sighted; it’s a betrayal of the disadvantaged communities they claim to serve.
The question is not whether Labour trusts experts more than its adversaries. It’s whether they can put ideology aside long enough to let expertise – tried methods and hard-won achievements – guide them and stop playing politics with children’s futures.
Until they do, their claims to champion fairness and opportunity will remain as empty as the classrooms their policies threaten to ruin.