It was an inauspicious start to an election campaign as Rishi Sunak battled against the rain and Things Can Only Get Better blared out of a protester’s boombox.

That’s a song associated with Labour’s 1997 general election landslide, of course, and this isn’t a column about party politics but about education. And I don’t know that things necessarily “can only get better” - as that will take an act of political will.

But what I do know is that schools and colleges, children and young people, desperately need this to happen because at the moment things are pretty wretched.

Staff shortages, parental complaints, challenges over attendance and behaviour, a special educational needs and disability system on the brink of collapse and exhausting workloads are taking a terrible toll.

And looming large behind all this is the pincer-like grip of rising costs and inadequate funding. Across the country, at this very moment, schools are setting deficit budgets and planning cost-cutting programmes - on top of the costs they’ve already cut.

A profession running on fumes

It is not uncommon for school leaders to confide that this is their bleakest moment in education, even taking into account some very dark times in recent years.

This is a profession that is running on fumes.

Then there is the misery of child poverty. The statistics make terrible reading: 4.3 million children in relative poverty; 3.6 million children in absolute poverty.

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These are children who often lack the basic essentials of decent food and clothing and live in homes riddled with damp and mould and without space to study or play. They have so many barriers to overcome before they even get to school that it is no wonder that they struggle academically.

It often feels as though people in the Westminster bubble, and certain sections of the media, just do not understand how poor parts of our country have become.

A fresh start

This general election provides the opportunity for a fresh start - for all political parties and candidates to commit to doing better for children and young people.

This is not easy. Public finances are under great strain and investment means making tough decisions because the money has to come from somewhere. And it would be naive to think that we’ll get detailed spending pledges in the middle of an election campaign.

But, at the very least, we would expect candidates to do three things:

1. Recognise that there is a very real crisis in our education system.
2. Pledge to make it a priority to fix that crisis - with investment rather than hot air.
3. Undertake to end child poverty.

This isn’t just morally the right thing, but it is also a necessity in the hard world of economics. In order to make the UK globally competitive, the country must have a future workforce that is equipped with the right skills and knowledge, and that is happy and confident. It is the key to securing the economic growth that has proved so elusive.

Plans to deliver real change

Indeed, education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet. It is the best economic policy, the best social policy, the best moral policy. It the best way to spread opportunity and to create a more prosperous society.

You may recognise that last paragraph. They’re not my words but those of Rishi Sunak in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference last October.

The problem with those words is that his government simply did not back them up with the investment that was needed to offset the financial crisis in schools and colleges. In fact, it did not even recognise that there was a crisis and instead continued to insist that schools have never had it so good. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Now there’s no hiding place. It is the public’s turn to have their say at the ballot box. It is up to the political parties to convince us - the voters - that they really do have a firm plan that delivers the change the education system needs and the country needs.

They must show us that things really will get better.

Pepe Di’Iasio is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders

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