Labour’s accredited networks will spread excellence across our state schools in four key ways

By Ed Balls MP / @EdBallsMP

Every government faces this dilemma: do you fight the election on your record or on your vision of the future? In education, I am clear that the answer is both. Yes we do have a record to be proud of. But we must also set out the further reforms we need to deliver excellence for all in every state school.

The parents I talk to know that our schools have improved beyond recognition. In 1997, over half of all state schools were below what we now consider to be the basic minimum standard. Today that’s down to just one in twelve and on track to reach zero by next year.

Record investment, more great heads and teachers, and intervention where there is under-performance have together delivered this improvement. Our challenge now is to make sure every school is a good school and every child gets a world class education.

That’s why in Parliament we are today debating new guarantees to pupils and parents, including one-to-one and catch-up tuition for children falling behind in the 3Rs and tough home school agreements to enforce strong discipline.

And to drive school improvement further, we now want to see new chains of schools with the best leaders of outstanding schools – whether great state school heads, universities or academy sponsors – spreading their expertise to improve and transform other schools.

That’s why today we will begin to kite-mark the state schools and education providers in the vanguard of this new education revolution so that other schools, parents and local government leaders can be guaranteed these new School Groups are of the highest quality.

Today the Prime Minister and I will set out the four ways we will use these new accredited providers to spread excellence across the schools system.

First, schools are increasingly working together and collaborating and these new chains of schools will help us drive up standards further and be more efficient by sharing leadership, excellent teachers and IT systems.

Second, local authorities will have to consider bringing in an accredited provider and where they fail to take action we will instruct them to do so. Our new School Report Card will help to highlight those schools which coast along year after year. They will give a broader picture of school performance than the current league tables – not just GCSE results, but pupil progress, the views of parents and discipline too.

It’s right too that parents drive change where it is needed. Just as we have changed the law to support the establishment of the first parent promoted schools we are also pioneering a new generation of co-operative trust schools with parents and the local community directly involved in the running of the school.

But we will now go further so, third, where a significant group of parents say they are dissatisfied with their local school leadership, the local authority will have to ballot all parents on whether they want to bring in one of our proven and trusted providers to turn things around.

And where our new survey of Year 6 parents shows dissatisfaction with the choice of schools in a particular area, the local area will have to produce an action plan including bringing in accredited providers to take over existing schools.

So this is our offer to parents: if your child is falling behind in the 3Rs we will guarantee them extra help; and if your local schools are not doing well enough, and if you are dissatisfied with the progress your local school is making, you will be able to demand change and get a new and quality-guaranteed provider.

Compare this to the Conservative offer. They are opposing our guarantees of one-to-one and catch-up tuition for all children. And they are saying to busy working parents that if they are dissatisfied with local state schools, your only option is for you to set up and run your own brand new school in the hope that it succeeds and that pupils eventually transfer from the weaker school.

This is the so called Swedish model championed by David Cameron. But this approach is hugely wasteful and unfair. It’s not just the billions of pounds that would be needed to create thousands of new schools which in difficult times can only come at the expense of cutting funding to existing schools.

It’s also the wasted potential and blighted life chances of those children left behind in existing state schools while the Conservatives siphon off funding to these new Swedish schools and while the market mechanism takes its course.

As for the Swedish experience, both the London Schools of Economics and the head of Sweden’s equivalent of Ofsted have said in recent weeks that this approach has led to higher costs, greater social inequality and not rising standards but a sharp decline.

Parents rightly want a choice of good local schools. But all the evidence shows that this is best delivered by turning round under-performing schools, including through radical changes in leadership when needed; and by schools working together to drive up standards for all, not setting school against school.

So there is a big choice on education. We will fight the election not just on our record and continued investment at the frontline, but through rising school budgets combined with radical reforms which are fair and which work.

The Tories are proposing an expensive experiment that is not just unfair, but unfunded and unworkable too. On education, it’s time to take a long hard look at the Conservatives.