Hold on — we’ve spent forty years reforming education. Remind me again: did any of it actually help?
Because if you listen to ministers, each reform was a bold fresh start. A revolution. A transformation. A new dawn of excellence.
And yet here we are, in 2025:
- Children learning in buildings described as “unsafe”.
- A £13.8 billion repair backlog.
- Teachers leaving faster than we can train them.
- Multi-Academy Trust CEOs earning packages that would make a FTSE director blush.
- A school system that looks suspiciously like the old one… only with more logos.
So let’s walk through what we actually did. What we achieved. What we broke. And — carefully — who benefitted.
This matters, because before we talk about funding every child at private-school levels, we need to reckon with the system we already have.
1. A Quick Tour of Forty Years of “Reform”
The 1980s–1990s: The Great Marketisation Era
We introduced:
- Grant-maintained schools
- League tables
- Formula funding
- Parental choice
- Local management of schools
- A National Curriculum (to keep all this “freedom” suitably tidy)
The theory: competition → excellence.
The reality: paperwork → bureaucracy → uneven capacity.
2000s: Specialist Schools, Federations, Early Academies
Now we added:
- Specialist Sports Colleges, Language Colleges, Technology Colleges
- The first wave of sponsored academies
- Federations and collaborations
- A heavy lean toward private-sector involvement
Some early academies did turn around failing schools — often because they came with new buildings and strong leaders, not because of the governance label.
2010s: Mass Academisation, Free Schools, MATs
2010 was when education reform discovered caffeine.
We rolled out:
- Converter academies
- Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs)
- Free schools
- Regional Schools Commissioners
- A new supervisory architecture
- A parallel executive class
Every school was converting, considering converting, or being nudged into a MAT.
2020s: Consolidation and Panic
Recent years have brought:
- Bigger MATs
- Tighter budgets
- Failing buildings
- Teacher shortages
- Private-sector salaries for MAT executives
We reengineered the wiring diagram. But did we ever improve the wiring?
The School Estate: A £13.8bn Problem We Built Ourselves
Government surveys show a repair backlog of £13.8 billion. Not “luxury extras”. Basic safety.
- 700,000+ pupils in schools needing major repair
- RAAC beams failing
- 1960s/70s blocks past their intended lifespan
- Rising emergency repair bills
Meanwhile, what were governments doing? Reorganising the system.
Money for structure? Always available.
Money for ceilings? Apparently optional.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF): What It Was Supposed to Be
Let’s explain BSF properly, because most people today only remember it as “that thing Michael Gove scrapped”.
Launched in 2004 by the Labour Government, BSF was the largest school capital programme in British history.
The aim: rebuild or refurbish every single secondary school in England over 15–20 years.
BSF was a national, long-term, scheduled plan — the only coherent estate strategy we’ve ever had.
It included:
- Full rebuilds and major refurbishments
- Modern science labs, libraries, sports facilities
- ICT and digital infrastructure upgrades
- Energy efficiency improvements
- Accessibility upgrades
- Economies of scale via long-term procurement
Total cost: £52–55bn over two decades.
Or in simpler terms: the price of doing the job properly.
Who scrapped it?
In 2010, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition cancelled BSF (Education Secretary: Michael Gove). The programme was dismissed as “bureaucratic” and “wasteful”.
It was replaced with:
- A smaller Priority Schools Building Programme
- Short-term pots
- Capital budgets 25–50% lower than mid-2000s levels
Heads warned at the time: “Cut capital now and you’ll pay double later.”
They were right.
Academies, MATs and Free Schools: What They Did, What They Cost
What we spent (that we can actually see)
- Early sponsored academies: £3.2bn
- Programme grants: £288m
- Conversion costs 2010–17: £745m
- Additional early costs (2010–12): £1bn
- Uncounted LA, legal, branding, HR, consultancy and IT migration costs (easily billions)
- Free-school capital — including schools built with no local need
- New oversight architecture (ESFA, RSCs, MAT boards)
- MAT executive pay packages reaching £200k–£450k+
A conservative total: £4–6bn.
A realistic estimate: £8–10bn+.
The evidence (EPI, Sutton Trust, NFER, House of Lords Library) is remarkably consistent:
There is no structural magic.
Leadership, staff and resources matter.
The logo does not.
Donors, Consultants and Executive Pay — The “Unintended” Beneficiaries
Here we tread carefully, but honestly.
- Some major donors to governing parties were linked to academy trusts, consultancy firms, or sectors benefiting from academisation.
- A new consultancy ecosystem flourished — conversion services, procurement, branding, finance, governance.
- MAT executive pay surged to corporate levels.
All legal. All public record. All very British.
The pattern is unmistakable:
Reform created plenty of winners — just not the ones in classrooms.
What the Unions Were Saying (For Two Decades)
In the short, sharp lines you’d expect:
NEU: “You can’t improve schools by redrawing the wiring diagram.”
NASUWT: “Pay erosion means losing good teachers faster than you can train new ones.”
ASCL: “Capital funding is dangerously inadequate.”
NAHT: “Staffing shortages are structural, not temporary.”
HMC (independent heads): “No serious country allows its state estate to crumble.”
The experts told us what would happen. We just preferred listening to the consultants with better PowerPoints.
The Net Result: Three Massive Deficits
- A capital deficit — £13.8bn of repairs
- A workforce deficit — a teacher supply crisis caused by pay cuts & workload
- A governance deficit — complexity without added value
It is the exact opposite of what we need for an education system that aspires to be world-class.
The Punchline
After forty years of reform, we have:
- bigger MAT CEO salaries
- smaller teacher pay packets
- bigger consultancy invoices
- smaller capital budgets
So yes — we reformed education. We just didn’t improve the thing the reforms were supposed to fix.
And now, before we can build a universal, private-level state education system, we first have to undo the damage of the last four decades.
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