John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.
If Shakespeare were a political commentator, he might have observed that the bad things governments do live after them, and that the good is oft interred with their bones.
So has it been with the Conservative Party. A new government deflects criticism by rubbishing our record, while infighting over the future tends to favour blame over celebration. Yet this week, one of the most transformative aspects of our time in power received a further vindication.
The PISA rankings, measuring educational attainment across the OECD, were released. England achieved one of the best results in Europe, making the global top ten. Scores in maths and reading had stayed stable since 2022, and science performance improved. This contrasted with falls in other nations, attributed in part to the impact of COVID and the growing prominence of AI.
For the Conservatives, this should be a moment to celebrate.
The results, measured last year, reflect children who spent almost all their education under Tory governments. They also show a marked upward trend since we came to power in 2010. Back then, the UK languished in the mid-20s overall and sat behind European countries like Germany and Finland. We have now surpassed countries we once looked up to as exemplars.
The results do not mean perfection.
The scores tending downwards after 2022 suggest a real challenge for the next few years of the education system. Abilities in skills like “deep reading” appear to be in decline, especially among young people who frequently use AI. Too many children, around a third, are still reaching the end of GCSEs without an adequate pass in both English and Maths. The ones who are missing out are then likely to become NEETs, a growing category straining the benefits system. But overall, from 2010-2024, the comparative outcomes of our education system improved markedly.
This rise reflects the Conservatives’ policy choices in education. Education was a major focus of ours from 2010 onwards, spearheaded by Michael Gove.
His department targeted PISA improvement as the key benchmark and worked hard towards it. The results indicate success but stand for so much more. Driving up education standards across core subjects will make a real difference to students – giving more students the chance of a better education, and the life chances that come with it.
The results of the other Home Nations attest to this. The pattern of devolution has created a natural experiment in education. Westminster remained responsible for England, while Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland’s schools were run by national governments. While the former has surged, the rest have failed to keep up. The post-COVID decline has been steeper in the devolved nations, and all rank lower than England. Wales is even performing below the OECD averages.
England’s stand-out performance proves what effective policymaking can achieve. Setting clear targets, measuring what matters, and committing to what moves the dial produces results. The Govian education was clear about this and was willing to push through against its detractors. A decade and a half on, it has clearly worked and made a real difference to the education of millions. The party should be proud of its record and keep celebrating it, while resisting the new government’s moves that could reverse the progress.
Our achievements here should remind us, and the public, of what we can do when we wield the power of government. It also gives us a story to take to sections of the electorate where we are struggling. One reason for the party’s decline in popularity has been our fall among voters in their 30s and 40s. These are the ones most likely to be concerned with the state of schools. We already have a message for them, but we haven’t pushed it. Delivering this success should give us an edge when Labour threatens to wreck the legacy, and Reform’s comments on education seem to stop at irrelevancies about singing hymns and the national anthem.
It should also guide what else we could do with power. Education stood out in the last government because it was our most effective bit of policymaking. It had a clear objective and the means to get there, all underpinned by Conservative principles and driven through by a minister determined to make things happen. It stands in contrast to our failures, where we often opted to rule by press release rather than follow-up, lacking a clear sense of where we were going or how we got there.
Most of all, it made a case that connected with the public. Education is not one of the issues that we naturally own or are inherently trusted with. A good plan overcame this, linking our ideas and our principles with what people overwhelmingly want – a good school system. It bridged the gap between sound policy and retail politics, making it something marginal voters could care about and something that appealed across our usual demographics. In a world of spin and statements, it is easy to forget that the best way to win elections is to promise something people feel matters to them, then deliver it.
The party’s electoral decline was the result of many factors, but a big part of it was the failure of our policies to perform and not appeal to a broad enough spectrum of voters. Even in current polling, we look marginalised among the sorts of people who are thinking about education standards. The PISA results should remind us that we can use the powers of government to do good and do it in ways that broaden our electoral coalition.
The political position makes it difficult to rely on our record.
Not only do the left attack it whenever they can, but we have new rivals on the right that want to dig the knife in too. And we need to be honest: we got some things wrong in government, and the public punished us for it. Our legacy of raising school standards, however, should be one we are proud of, and one which shows the good we can do when we get things right.