England’s school system needs “constant attention and constant pressure” from government to “drive it forward”, the education secretary has said.
In a message to underperforming schools and academy trusts, Kit Malthouse warned there was “nothing quite as persistent as people hanging on to mediocrity”.
The new education secretary did not announce any new policies. Instead, he used his address to the Conservative Party conference this evening to promise his team would be “much more assertive about intervention and standards” in schools.
It further demonstrates ministers’ desire to take a more interventionist position on school standards, reversing the freedoms that the original expansion of the academies programme was supposed to achieve.
