The Schools Bill: Should we be worried?

“I think they should be watched.”

This was the extraordinary warning this week from a former secretary of state for education, Lord Baker. In the House of Lords, he urged us all to keep a vigilant eye on a place he knows all too well - the Department for Education.

“You must remember that the DfE since 1870 has never run a school. Now they’re going to take complete control over the education system”. The new Schools Bill is, he said, “a real grab for power” by them.

His fellow former ministers from Conservative and Labour governments joined him to express their misgivings about the recently published bill.