Successive pointless shake-ups have cost UK in the global education league table

Commenting today (Tuesday) on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) international education league table, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said:

“It’s hardly surprising that Britain is not doing better. Successive governments have too often looked like they wanted to win the league table for pointless shake-ups of school structures, while losing the one for valuing and rewarding the skills and professionalism of teachers.

“Nothing typifies this better than Mr Gove’s enthusiasm for increasingly bizarre free schools that do not even need to employ qualified teachers.”

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results is available at www.oecd.org/unitedkingdom/PISA-2012-results-UK.pdf

- The TUC’s campaign plan can be downloaded from www.tuc.org.uk/campaignplan

- All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk

- Follow the TUC on Twitter: @tucnews

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