As the general election next year looms slightly closer into view, it is clear education is shaping up to be a key battleground for the main parties, as witnessed by Labour recently unveiling more of its proposals for the sector if it comes to power.
Unsurprisingly, this focus on education by politicians has got us at the Headteachers’ Roundtable thinking about what we want from them to help education thrive in the years ahead.
In keeping with Labour’s “5 Missions” and prime minister Rishi Sunak’s “5 priorities”, we at the Headteachers’ Roundtable have outlined five policy areas of our own that need to be addressed:
- Providing a good teacher in every classroom.
- Taking the politics out of pedagogy.
- Improving provision for children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and in alternative provision (AP).
- Developing joined-up services to meet the needs of children.
- Designing a better accountability system.
As such, it was with great interest that I read the recent Labour Party missions paper, Breaking Down the Barriers to Opportunity, to understand its overarching visions for education and how its proposals matched up against our own.
Welcome areas of focus
Overall, it’s hard to argue with the three elements listed in the mission’s introduction to break down barriers to opportunity: improving early years education; improving school outcomes; improving high-quality education training routes.
All three are areas where improvements can and should be made and the paper sets this out in a manner that seems to recognise that improving “opportunity” within these areas is not just in the domain of schools, but something that wider society has to help achieve.
Furthermore, the paper does not shy away from promoting lifelong learning skills, but careful emphasis is placed both on the “knowledge” and “skills” children need as part of a broad curriculum.
It is welcome to read this and those writing the paper have clearly recognised that the profession is mightily tired of the knowledge versus skills false dichotomy.
What, though, did the paper have to say about our five areas of focus?
1. Providing a good teacher in every classroom
A commitment is made to recruit 6,500 new teachers and to re-establish teaching as a profession that is respected and valued as a skilled job.
What is less clear is how this will be achieved without a review of workload, an injection of significant funding and a direct challenge to sections of the media hellbent on demonising teachers.
2. Taking the politics out of pedagogy
The review of curriculum will be based on lessons learned from international best practice and expert research.
The curriculum will be “rich in knowledge and skills”. Many teachers would welcome a reduction in content and a rebalancing of the breadth of the curriculum.
What is less clear is how radical this review will be and how this may impact teacher workload.
3. Improving provision for children with SEND and in AP
By joining-up services and improving data use, Labour will work to identify needs earlier so that intervention meets needs. Labour will work to improve the inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools and introduce one-to-one mentors in pupil referral units.
This sounds positive, however, the desire to tackle a lack of inclusivity is so related to the way in which schools are funded for SEND and the perverse incentives of performance measures that this will be a thorny issue to address.
4. Developing joined-up services to meet the needs of children
This is a major theme of the document: starting with childcare provision, then looking at policing, the NHS, mental health support and introducing a “children’s number” because information about children is disconnected.
Labour will improve coordination between education, social care and the wider services that support families.
This is a great and simple idea but improving services around children will also require funding for those services so that once again Every Child Matters.
5. Designing a better accountability system
A reform of Ofsted is detailed. Labour will replace headline Ofsted grades with a new system of report cards that identify good practice and what needs to improve.
This could be an important step in the right direction depending on what contextual factors appear on the report card and how language is used.
A chance for change?
Overall, the document is 23 pages long, including a few pages of fancy graphs. It took me less than an hour to read it and I did find myself in agreement with much of what I read.
The biggest challenge back to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson is that the “what” and the “when” are specified more clearly than the “how”. At present, it seems the £1 billion expected to be raised through ending private schools’ tax breaks needs to do some heavy lifting.
I hope, though, the lack of operational detail is a strength. The “how” is surely something that needs to be co-constructed with school leaders, teachers and expert educationalists.
It has been a while since we have been given that “opportunity”, hasn’t it?
Caroline Derbyshire is chair of the headteachers’ roundtable and executive headteacher and chief executive of Saffron Academy Trust
