Ever since last month’s budget, criticism of the Tories’ plans to force all schools to become academies has been unrelenting, with a wide and sometimes unlikely array of forces coming together to oppose the plans, from Labour critics and trade unions to Conservative councillors. The Labour party’s response that suggested the entire scheme could put a £1bn black hole in the education budget was a good hit. This shortcoming, along with (more importantly) opposition from chair of the Conservatives’ 1922 committee, Graham Brady, is likely to scupper the plans altogether.

Education should not be an area where Labour has trouble exploiting Tory splits. It is a policy sector that Labour used to dominate. It was the centrepiece of Tony Blair’s 1996 conference speech, and he then proceeded to deliver huge improvements to schools while in government. It is often overlooked that it was a Labour government that introduced academies in the first place, as a way of assisting schools that had been failed by their local authority. In 2008 the Sutton Trust released a review of the Labour academies plan, which revealed that the schools had achieved mixed results, but most reports had been positive. This demonstrates the major flaw with forced academisation for all schools: it was designed by the Blair government as a last resort for ‘problem schools’ so that no pupils – normally the poorest – were failed by the system.

As former education secretary Estelle Morris pointed out in 2013, one of the great success stories of Labour education policy was the transformation of schools in Tower Hamlets, which was achieved by schools in the area maintaining a working relationship with their local authority and excellent local partnerships. This should demonstrate that there is no place for a ‘one size fits all’ policy regarding school administration, that schools should be able to choose whether it is of benefit to them as to whether they become academies. Given the Conservative party allows variety in education by protecting grammar schools and through the continued existence of private education, why does it want to shut down any opportunity for schools to vary in the public sector?

Labour needs to re-establish itself as a forward-thinking party when it comes to education policy. Under Ed Miliband education was a neglected area: opposition was largely confined to stating that ‘Tory policies are bad, this will make schools worse’ and then sitting back without offering much alternative. As Liz Kendall said last year, ‘that a Labour party that isn’t talking about education and social mobility has forgotten what it exists for’. This is still an issue: if Labour wants to rebut this policy it needs to offer an alternative, otherwise it looks as if it is accepting the status quo, bogged down in old ideas, and not trying to do the best for English pupils.

This fightback could start by actually defending Labour’s record on education (no matter how much the current leadership might have been opposed to defending Labour’s past success) and emphasising the excellent work that some local authorities do in supporting schools. Labour could be pointing to the rapid improvement of London’s schools under London Challenge, demonstrating precisely what happens when schools work cohesively with their local authority and are allowed to do what they believe to be best for pupils. We could also be seeing criticism of some of the significant failings of the Gove academies, such as the scandal over the financial mismanagement of the Perry Beeches Academy Trust, where the system of multi-academy trusts was abused.

Alongside this there surely must also be space for new ideas, new thinking, when it comes to improving schools in England. We often hear the education systems of Scandinavian countries, particularly Finland, being praised and we are told that English schools should seek to emulate such success. Yet Finland only has state schools, and testing is far more class-based than exam-based. Additionally, all teachers in Finland have to take a far more rigorous qualification than British teachers, graduating with a master’s degree in either a subject specialism (for secondary teachers) or education (for primary) and the two-year course also has a heavy focus on pedagogical elements.

If the Labour party really wants to position itself as the innovative, forward-thinking, party when it comes to education perhaps it should take the step of looking at how we can make the people doing the teaching even better, helping pupils’ attainment – which, in the end, is what matters.

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Frazer Loveman tweets @FSGLoveman

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Photo: Pete