The education secretary should withdraw “flawed” and “disgraceful” statistics used to back the government’s drive towards academisation, teachers’ leaders have warned today.
In the joint general secretary speech to the NEU teaching union conference today, Kevin Courtney said the union had complained to the UK Statistics Authority about data underpinning the Department for Education’s Schools White Paper plans for all schools to either have joined, or be in the process of joining, a multi-academy trust (MAT) by 2030.
Mr Courtney called the White Paper a “statistics scandal”, and said there had been a “deliberate suppression” of relevant data.
He said the DfE’s claim that if all schools achieved the performance of the strongest MATs, then “national performance at key stage 2 would be 14 percentage points higher, and 19 percentage points higher for disadvantaged pupils”, was “flawed” because the top 10 per cent of MATs it referred to were “the ones with the lowest number of children on pupil premium and the highest number of children in grammar schools”.
He added: ”Nadhim [Zahawi], you say you want to be evidence-led - so we are calling on you today to withdraw your flawed statistics and for your statisticians to sit down with our statisticians to agree a fair, common set of data that the public can use to assess your policies.”
Mr Courtney said that, in the meantime, the union would be writing to “every councillor, every headteacher and every chair of governors” to outline its concerns over the statistics.
The NEU previously criticised some of the statistics in the White Paper, only for the DfE to hit back and say the union’s own claims were “based upon selective data”.
Teacher applications in ‘freefall’
As part of his speech to the union’s conference in Bournemouth today, delivered alongside fellow joint general secretary Mary Bousted, Mr Courtney said the biggest hole in the government’s White Paper was that “we simply do not have enough teachers”.
He said the education system was “haemorrhaging teachers” and added: “It’s not just leavers who are increasing the teacher shortage problem. The applications for teacher training this year are in freefall, below even the levels in 2019. Not only in traditional shortage subjects but also in subjects that have traditionally recruited strongly, like English.”
Creating an education system that graduates wanted to work in was the “single biggest thing” the education secretary could do, said Mr Courtney.
Recent data from TeacherVac, revealed by Tes, showed that secondary school teacher vacancies are at a five-year high, with a 12 per cent increase since the last comparable year (2020).
End the ‘tyranny’ of Ofsted
Dr Bousted also attacked Ofsted in the joint speech, claiming the inspectorate had “major problems” with quality control of its inspectors.
And she added: “None of us here is against accountability. But we are against tyranny. It’s time to end the tyranny of Ofsted.”
The president of the union Daniel Kebede called Ofsted a “failed project” in a speech delivered to the conference earlier this week, and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson was heckled after she made comments about being “supportive of inspection”.
Catch-up funding attacked
Dr Bousted also used her speech to question the low funding of education recovery after the pandemic, despite the government saying it was a priority.
She pointed out that prime minister Boris Johnson had said that education recovery was a key “priority” after the pandemic, and added: ”Sir Kevan Collins, the man Boris Johnson appointed as his education recovery tsar, said that £15 billion was needed by schools over three years to support children and young people in education recovery. But schools are getting only a third of that.”
And attacking the White Paper, she added: ”Nadhim Zahawi introduced a White Paper that dealt with none of the issues facing our schools.”
The speech was the final event of the union’s four-day conference.
The Department for Education and Ofsted have been contacted for comment.
