A multimillionaire Tory donor and the backer of dozens of academies is switching his support to Labour because he believes they will be better for education.
Lord Harris of Peckham is the founder of Carpetright and the sponsor of the Harris Federation which runs 55 schools, mostly in London.
He is a longtime supporter of the Conservative Party and admirer of Michael Gove, who was education secretary until a decade ago. He has donated £1,120,409 in last 20 years and has been giving money to the party since the 1980s.
Now Harris says he believes the Tories are out of ideas and has described Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, as impressive.
In a letter to The Times, he writes: “Fourteen years ago radical change spearheaded by an ambitious and determined Michael Gove brought new ways of teaching and running schools to our education system. Academies — including those in the Harris Federation — have been a central part of bringing a renewed focus on high standards, on evidence-led practice in teaching, and on the outcomes a school delivers rather than who runs it or how they like to teach it. The results speak for themselves.
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“At this election it is no longer the Conservatives who are the party of high and rising standards, no longer the Conservatives putting our children and their schools front and centre. Despite a merry-go-round of ministers in recent years, they are out of ideas.”
Harris is chairman of the Harris Federation, which he founded because he wanted children to have a better education than he did. He left school in his early teens after the death of his father and has said he was fortunate to have succeeded in business and did not realise the importance of education when he was young.
Gove, who is standing down after Thursday’s election, oversaw an expansion of the academies programme and also allowed groups to set up free schools, outside local authority control. One of the most expensive free schools established was Harris Westminster, a sixth-form that cost £45 million and was supported by the fee-charging Westminster School. It takes pupils from across London and sends dozens of pupils to leading universities each year.
Despite supporting Gove’s education reforms, Harris said: “I have watched with slowly growing admiration as Sir Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s impressive education spokeswoman, have set out Labour’s stall.
“She gets teaching, knows that expanding and improving the teacher workforce and tackling the epidemic of mental ill health among our young people are both vital, and will focus on making schools better, not fiddling with how well run schools are operating.”
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He adds: “At this election the party for people who care about education is, as it was a quarter of a century back, Labour. The torch of change has passed.”
