With Richi firing the starting pistol of the next General Election on 4th July, the party for the Tories, literally and metaphorically, looks to be over.

If it was a house party, the last revellers would be bringing the night to a chaotic close.

Gillian Keegan and Esther McVey would be draining the last of the Prosecco bottles and banging on ‘It’s raining men’ over Alexa. Michael Gove would come barrelling in, arms aloft to add to the make-shift kitchen dance floor, whilst Liz Truss and Suella would be smoking in the back garden and trying to look edgy.

Richi would be desparately trying to ensure coasters were used and nobody damaged the 17th century marble flooring.

Fourteen years of Tory rule will end on 4th July. Of that, everyone, (including Richi – who now wants to send all 18 year olds off to the army) is certain.

I have been a Headteacher throughout all of those 14 years, as well as a couple of years during in the dying days of the Gordon Brown Labour government.

It would be easy to conclude that everything that the Tories have done with education in the last 14 years has been wrong. But that would also be lazy.

I am a lifelong Labour voter and no fan of the Tories. However, we need a more nuanced debate over the last 14 years which goes beyond ‘picking a team’.

So as the first bars of ‘Come on Eileen’ ring out in Richi’s kitchen, here is what I think they got right and what they got wrong…

1. The phonics and reading focus was right.

Few can argue that focusing on reading and phonics has been a success of this government.

More children can read well now at the end of primary school than they could in 2010. Schools have invested heavily in high quality texts and trained staff how to help children move from early decoders to fluent and enthusiastic readers.

All the data points at this being a success.

2. Pupil Premium was a sensible way to direct money towards disadvantaged pupils.

Whilst many will have forgotten that this was actually a Liberal Democrat idea, the notion that schools should provide additional resources to level the playing field for those with less financial resources is, again, correct.

Indeed, whilst overly beaucratic and lacking clarity, the expectation that schools publish strategies to show how this money is to be spent is the only way to ensure that it is a high priority.

3. Covid catch up was pitiful.

Having invested billions in Pupil Premium over the course of a decade, the government squandered nearly all these gains by refusing to accept that locking children out of school for months on end during Covid might just impact their education.

Moreover, the lack of any real national strategy to address the mountain of social and emotional problems which pupils experienced post-Covid (in my view the most profound impact) is nothing short of a national scandal.

4. The 2014 curriculum was probably more right than wrong.

Whilst I was never a massive fan of the 2014 curriculum, I do think that, on balance, more children ‘know and remember more’ than they did in 2010.

The curriculum is still too overloaded and the government’s ‘market economics’ approach to allowing every shade of curriculum design has led to numerous false starts. But, a decade on, the wider curriculum is far better taught than it was in 2010 (although I suspect OFSTED’s pivot towards curriculum has done more for that than central government policy).

The curriculum is overdue another overhaul and I hope Labour undertake this sensibly.

5. Changing from Levels to Standards has probably improved outcomes.

Whilst we all complained about the death of National Curriculum levels (remember them?), and the introduction of new ‘tougher’ SATs, I have seen teaching improve to meet this challenge.

As was always the case, teachers found a way to help children master this harder content, allowing more children to start secondary school with a greater grasp of the basics.

That said, I worry that those children who don’t achieve the ‘Age Related Expectation’ at the end of KS2 are placed on a Secondary flight path which bakes in under-achievement.

6. The introduction of the Multiplication Check is probably a good idea.

This is a personal view, but I do think knowing times tables helps children’s cognative load in maths. The schools I lead have both prioritised mathematical fluency and have seen the impact, not just on outcomes, but also on children’s enjoyment of the subject.

7. Going to war with the profession has been a disaster.

From their first day in office, the government have seemed determined to be at war with the teaching profession, who they are convinced are all woke lefties who are corrupting the nation’s youth with dangerous communist ideologies.

Gove’s attack on ‘the blob’ was shameful and has been followed by successive ministers trying to sound tough in the Daily Mail.

And as well as being unkind and unnecessary, it also has real-world outcomes. In the past fortnight I have learned of three incidents where parents have expressed openly homophobic views having seen statements from the government which suggest that primary school’s are a hotbed of disputed gender ideology (they’re not).

The result?

After 14 years of attacking the profession in the press, it is hardly a surprise that young graduates are choosing other, easier/ better paid, work instead of teaching, resulting in a recruitment crisis.

This is a crisis entirely of the government’s own making.

8. Starving Sure Start, and other early family support, has been a disaster.

All the evidence now points to good quality, early support for young families, having a huge and long-lasting impact on children’s futures.

And yet the government has starved Sure Start and other preventative services, resulting in worsening health and educational outcomes for some of the most vulnerable in our society.

9. Shelving SEND reforms has been a disaster.

The national system for supporting children with SEND is completely broken.

Schools and councils are facing huge cuts to funding whilst need continues to rise.

The government, distracted by infighting and ‘getting Brexit done’ decided to put this in the ‘too difficult’ tray.

This will need to be an urgent priority for Labour.

10. Austerity has been a disaster for families.

Few governments manage to leave office having reduced living standards for a generation of the electorate.

But that is what this government has succeeded in doing.

When the Tories came to office in 2010, Food Banks were virtually unheard of.

Yet, in the 6th largest economy in the World, they are now a part of everyday life for too many families who simply can’t make the sums add up.

In short, children are poorer after 14 years of Tory rule.

The verdict?

Some things which the Tory government has done have been a success, as I’ve outlined above.

We need to be able to recognise these and give them credit whatever our political leanings.

However, these are dwarfed by the damage that, in my view, many of their policies have done to families.

In addition, our profession is more partisan and divided that at any point I can remember in my 27 years in education, egged on by a government which seeks to stoke division and reward patronage.

And, despite some successes in education, those are things which I cannot forgive this government for.