Bridget Phillipson (Image: Getty)
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been slammed as a puppet of the trade unions as the row over Labour’s education reforms grows.
She is overseeing new laws which critics say will undermine academy schools by making them less independent, even though academies were created by a previous Labour government before being embraced by .
And it has emerged that her reforms were first proposed in October by Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, which has almost 500,000 members.
Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott accused Ms Phillipson of being a puppet of the unions. She told the Telegraph: “Labour’s damaging schools policy is copied and pasted from union demands.
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“Their pact on ‘improving education together’ is one based on dumbing down standards, weakening rigour and preventing parents’ freedom of choice.”
Ms Phillipson is seen as a potential future Labour leader and her Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would cut the freedom of academy schools to set their own curriculum and set their own pay, which currently allows them to reward the best teachers with higher salaries.
At the same time the Government has hiked up fees for independent schools by imposing a 20% VAT rate.
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Mr Kebede told the Times Educational Supplement earlier this year: “The supposed freedom of trusts must be curtailed over the course of this Parliament.”
The Government’s legislation, which appears to carry out his demands, was published two months later.
In a partial climbdown last week, ministers said they would amend their proposals so that academies can still offer higher salaries to particular teachers.
Mr Kebede denied unions were driving Government policy, telling the Mail on Sunday: “Were that the case, teachers would certainly not be facing an inadequate 2.8 per cent unfunded pay award that will prolong the recruitment and retention crisis and force schools to make further damaging cuts to provision.”
A Government source said: “We’re unapologetic about stopping strikes in education after the Conservative clown show that ran our schools until last July oversaw mass walkouts and disruption to learning. No vested interests have had or will have any say in our school reforms or get in the way of us delivering high and rising standards in schools.
“The only thing that influences our education policy is the life chances of disadvantaged kids, which the let rot for 14 years.”