Natasha Porter OBE

Should schools stop focusing on reading for pleasure? The widely held belief that the strategy improves attainment has been called into question by research, finds @jon_severs tes.com/magazine/teach…

A passage from the Phillipson profile is extremely misleading. She claims England's improvement in PISA scores isn't impressive because recent scores are not much higher than in 2009. She also claims that @michaelgove's reforms failed to close the attainment gap between rich and poor. Both are misleading. Here's some context she 'forgot' to add: - England's Maths Ranking: 27th (2009)➡️11th (2022) - England's Reading Ranking: 25th (2009)➡️13th (2022) - Scores fell during the pandemic everywhere, but England's scores fell by less. - Wales (under Labour) didn't implement Gove's reforms. Their scores are lower than England's and haven't improved. - In fact, the average Welsh pupil now performs at the same level as the most disadvantaged pupils in England. - Scotland is a similar story. They had better scores than England 20 years ago. England's are now higher in all three categories. (Scotland also withdrew from other international metrics.) - Phillipson claims our average scores might be up, but we've done little on equity/fairness. - The problem for her is that England's attainment gap between rich and poor is very low by international standards. - England's 86 point gap is below France's (113), Germany's (111), OECD average (93). The gap is marginally larger than Finland's (83), but our gap is stable while theirs is widening. I agree with the New Statesman article that Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson isn't a Marxist. But let's be clear, she is undermining successful reforms and abusing statistics in the process. Not a Marxist, not good either.

Yesterday, @DavidLammy and I launched the beginning of the biggest transformation in Youth Justice for a generation. Our youth services already do fantastic work, but to ensure we protect the public and reduce reoffending, we need the system to evolve.