One day this week I woke up to two bits of education news. The first was a BBC report about the extra support that schools provide for children and their families because of financial hardship, housing difficulties and mental health struggles.
The BBC had commissioned a survey from Teacher Tapp in which almost half of senior teachers said their school has provided financial support for families in the past 12 months. Two-thirds said their school provided food for pupils to eat outside of school hours, and approximately one in seven teachers said they have spent their own money to provide food to struggling families.
The other bit of news concerned a government amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill relating to extending the statutory pay framework to academy teachers.
Don’t worry, I am going to spare you the fiendishly complicated detail of this amendment. Suffice to say that it isn’t something that is going to be a topic of discussion around the nation’s breakfast tables.
Education policy priorities
The contrast between these two topics is illustrative of the mess that the government has got itself into in terms of education policy.
On the one hand there are huge and important issues that urgently need solutions, such as the sky-high level of child poverty in the UK, the unsustainable pressures on the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system, the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, and the relentless squeeze on school and college finances.
On the other hand there are a series of measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that focus on extremely technical changes around academy freedoms.
Whatever your view about these changes, and they have certainly generated a great deal of heat in the sector, they are - to put it mildly - hardly the stuff of inspired policymaking that tackles the aforementioned big issues. Instead, ministers, civil servants and MPs are mired in a bout of exceptionally dull managerialism.
I don’t mean that to sound as harsh as it undoubtedly does. I write more out of frustration than anger.
I know the secretary of state for education is determined to get to grips with the crisis in the SEND system. I know the government has set up a child poverty taskforce that will report in the spring. I know the government really means what it says about breaking down the barriers to opportunity. There are a host of good intentions bubbling around Whitehall and Westminster.
But it would have been reassuring to see the government set out a really bold, transformative vision for education that brings together all of these strands, as its first act in charge, before it plunged into a series of measures about academy freedoms of Byzantine complexity.
A clear vision for change
Setting out a transformative vision is not the same thing as endlessly trotting out the same set of slogans - “high and rising standards”, “plan for change”, and, yes, “breaking down the barriers to opportunity” - in every statement and press release.
This sort of wearisome approach was also a hallmark of the previous government. I cannot believe it has the slightest impact.
A vision is something much more substantial - a White paper, for example - that sets out in clear and precise terms not only where we are going but also, most importantly, how we are going to get there.
It is not too late for the government to do this. In fact, I would urge it to make this a priority. There is a great desire in the education sector for positive change. That’s why the theme of the Association of School and College Leaders’ conference in March is a brighter future.
Ministers have a great opportunity to harness that enthusiasm - to find positive solutions to seemingly intractable problems, to do better for disadvantaged and vulnerable children, to bring about the change we all want to see towards a fairer and more equitable society. But they do need to tell us the plan.
Pepe Di’Iasio is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders
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