Author: Colin Diamond, Professor of Educational Leadership, University of Birmingham

The UK government is making a radical departure from its predecessor’s education policy, with plans for big changes in the national curriculum, home education and safeguarding, and the relationship between schools and local authorities. The new children’s wellbeing and schools bill introduced to parliament on December 17, alongside other proposed reforms, suggests the Labour government is working on a much broader front than the previous Conservative administration. It ends a 14-year focus on trying to raise attainment in England’s schools by turning them into academies free of local authority control. Instead, the bill shifts power back towards local authorities, giving…