An End To Gove’s Ban On Opening New Schools

Bridget Phillipson, UK education secretary, is looking at letting local councils open new schools for the first time in more than a decade, as she vowed to emulate the reforming “energy and purpose” of her Tory predecessor Michael Gove.

Phillipson is exploring ending the in effect 2011 ban on local councils opening new schools in England implemented by Gove, who favoured academies and free schools.

But the Labour minister, in an interview with the Financial Times, said of Gove: “Agree or disagree there was a sense of energy and purpose and a clear sense of what he wanted to achieve. It’s hard not to admire that.”

Phillipson, a self-professed “shy girl” from a working class Wearside background who went on to Oxford university, says she wants to reform the education system to foster social mobility from early years to university.

Part of that strategy is to develop schools that children will actually attend. She says the country has an “absenteeism crisis” with one-in-five students persistently missing classes.

In a speech in Birmingham this week, she said she wanted to increase the provision of music, drama and sport alongside demanding academic excellence. She insists this is possible, even without extending the school day.

Lifting the de facto ban would enable more flexibility in the system and ensure school places could be set up swiftly in the places they were most needed, the officials said.

Phillipson, speaking during a visit to a Birmingham academy primary school where students tended to goats and chickens, said her reforms would focus on three areas: children’s social care and special needs, higher education and early years.

A recurring issue raised during Phillipson’s Birmingham visit is what she calls the “crisis” in the way children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are treated. “The system is broken, it’s increasingly dysfunctional and parents have lost confidence,” she said.

She said she was determined to integrate more specialist provision into mainstream schools, in part by adding SEND inclusivity into Ofsted evaluations of schools, but also by using her capital budget to invest in the creation of more special education units in local schools.

The department received £6.7bn in Rachel Reeves’ Budget last month to spend on capital, a 19 per cent increase on this year.