Slowly, it seems, some of the government’s key schools reforms are unravelling in front of their eyes.

First, ministers had to backtrack on their plans to deliver baseline tests for four-year-olds within six weeks of them starting primary school. The government had planned to use the results of these assessments to measure how much progress the school had made with pupils by comparing the results to those of national-curriculum tests taken by 11-year-olds.

However, research told them that the three alternative tests heads could choose from were “insufficiently comparable” for them to draw any conclusions about how much children had progressed.

Room to manoeuvre

In a way, it is a pyrrhic victory, because all they have to do next year is ensure there is just one test for all four-year-olds and then the plan can go ahead.

However, the Department for Education deserves some credit for backing down this year, instead of just trying to soldier on despite the warnings.

The breathing space also gives teachers opposing baseline time to manoeuvre, and the tests could be caught up in a boycott of primary-school testing to be considered by the NUT teaching union next year.

With friends like these...

Meanwhile, opposition to chancellor George Osborne’s surprise budget announcement that all schools would be forced to become academies by 2022 is growing apace.

I remember sitting at this year’s NUT conference - where they had just passed a motion calling for a ballot on national strike action over the issue - to take place before the end of the summer term. A day’s strike, I thought, won’t make a scintilla of difference to the government’s plans.

Then an email suddenly came through from the right-of-centre thinktank the Bow Group, opposing the measure - arguing that it cut across Conservative values of choice and would create a bureaucratic nightmare as schools became ruled by the faceless bureaucrats of the multi-academy trusts. I thought to myself: with the government facing enemies like this, who needs a one-day strike to scupper the plan?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

Sure enough, it was followed by howls of protest from Conservatives in local government and, more significantly, backbench Conservative MPs. The argument seemed to be this: if a school’s got an outstanding Ofsted report and is generally thought to be doing well for its pupils, why go through the rigmarole of insisting that it completely reorganises the way that it is run? In other words: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I think the force of the opposition within the party has taken both Downing Street and the Department for Education by surprise. There is already talk of compromise - like the idea of scrapping legislation that insists every school governing body has an elected parent representative on it - and being flexible with small, rural primary schools, so that they can band together and run their own affairs without having to go down the multi-academy-trust route.

Whether this will be enough to appease opponents, I don’t know. But I would doubt it.

It would only take about half a dozen backbench MPs to revolt against the government for the measure to be defeated, if the rest of the House of Commons is lined up against it.

Controversially, the NUT is already beginning to sound out Scottish Nationalist Party MPs to see if they will vote against it. Watch this space.

More controversy

Meanwhile, I expect a third area of controversy soon. The government is already consulting about its plans to set a target of getting 90 per cent of pupils to take subjects demanded by the English Baccalaureate at GCSE. At the same time, education secretary Nicky Morgan is talking of legislation to ensure all parents and pupils are told about the option to pursue the highly skilled vocational route offered by the network of university technical colleges pioneered by former education secretary Lord Baker. Quite right, too. It is insane that some schools are barring representatives of UTCs from addressing parents on what they have to offer.

However, it is one thing to complain that ministers are being too prescriptive about how schools and colleges run their affairs. It is quite another to demand that they comply with two mutually incompatible directives at the same time. If the government did reach its target of 90 per cent participation in EBac subjects, it would leave only 10 per cent pursuing the vocational route. That’s one way to ensure that vocational education remains the Cinderella of the education service.

Richard Garner was education editor of The Independent for 12 years, and has been writing about education for more than three decades

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