In 1984, US academic John Kingdon proposed the so-called “garbage can” model of policymaking. He argued that policy problems, solutions and politics are all thrown into a proverbial bin and that government policy is what emerges from this chaos.

The set of solutions in the Department for Education’s “garbage can” is painfully constrained.

Mentoring schemes, “tsars” and “hubs” are particular favourites. In the past few years we have had a “behaviour tsar”, a “social mobility tsar” and even a “recovery tsar” (whose proposals were quickly set aside). Meanwhile, we’ve had £65 million for 81 teaching school hubs, £10 million for 22 behaviour hubs and £11 million for 32 maths hubs.

Each initiative involves a tiny sum of money, comparatively speaking, but because the public struggles to gauge the scale of large numbers, these figures provide an illusion that “something is being done”. That’s invaluable to a stressed-out secretary of state negotiating a round of morning media interviews.

The Schools White Paper: little to get excited about

We’ve just been through an epic week in education policy, and at times it seemed to epitomise Kingdon’s model. First off, in response to a crisis in persistent school absence, the run-up to the White Paper brought a glitzy new £5 million mentoring scheme. There seems to be an unwritten law in the education universe whereby, no matter what the problem, someone will suggest mentoring is the solution.

Next, came a gimmick that initially had an air of novelty - a “Parent Pledge”. However, commentator Laura McInerney soon spotted a striking resemblance to the “Parent Guarantee” in the 2009 White Paper. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help noticing parallels with John Major’s “Citizen’s Charters” from the late 1990s. Perhaps the garbage can spits this particular policy out on a once-a-decade timer.

None of these “solutions” actually tackles the crux of the issue. That’s why Kingdon’s model is sometimes called the “multiple stream” model: problems, solutions and politics all constitute separate “streams” that exist in isolation.

Policy influencers like think tanks propose ideas and the government selects from these with little consideration for the problem at hand. We see that with the mentoring initiative, which originated with the Centre for Social Justice and which will target 500 to 1,000 pupils. Never mind that FFT Education Datalab estimates that over 1 million pupils are persistently absent and that research by the Centre for Education and Youth (CfEY) shows that mentoring schemes for vulnerable pupils often do more harm than good.

Similarly, as the DfE’s own data shows, school absence is closely linked to poverty, and deprivation makes it harder for parents to engage with their child’s education.

Action on poverty sorely lacking

A meaningful solution would, therefore, have had to respond to social deprivation, but the politics of that wouldn’t work. Instead, the White Paper came hot on the heels of the chancellor’s Spring Statement, which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests will drag an additional 600,000 people into poverty, a quarter of whom will be children.

If the Parent Pledge and mentor schemes were the first step towards having a properly resourced and skilled team of paraprofessionals (like family workers and mental health specialists) in every school, perhaps we’d be on our way towards a genuine solution.

However, if you look closely, the tell-tale signs of a grander vision are hiding just below the surface. The section of the White Paper on early years has been widely criticised for lacking ambition, but it contains the phrase “we will continue to explore what more can be done to help families access childcare which suits their lives in the round”.

Similarly, a pointless plan for a minimum 32.5-hour school week comes alongside a pitiful plea to make more space for “learning, socialisation with peers and enrichment” by “going further than 32.5 hours if possible”.

It’s clear the White Paper couldn’t help butting up against the awkward “third stream” of politics. The DfE might have harboured big dreams of an ambitious post-pandemic future, but Rishi Sunak and the “fiscal conservative” wing of the Tory party were having none of it. Instead, we were left with some much-needed “tidying up”, particularly around academy regulations, alongside assorted headline-grabbers from the garbage can.

A ray of hope 

On Tuesday, the SEND Green Paper revealed an edu-policy week of two-halves. Here we saw policymaking based on careful analysis and sensible - at times bold - responses. It was cautiously welcomed by heads and third-sector organisations, although parents have raised questions about the underlying assumptions around choice and funding.

The Green Paper highlights vicious cycles that serve to undermine the quality of support that pupils receive. In response, it promises to formalise the relationship between SEND and alternative provision, and draws careful links between inclusion and proposed multi-academy trust regulations.

There were valiant attempts to untangle a thorny mess of local authority responsibilities (though conflicts of interest remain) and the DfE even looked beyond the walls of its Sanctuary Buildings HQ, with education secretary Nadhim Zahawi penning a joint foreword alongside health secretary Sajid Javid. Perhaps, as critics of the garbage-can model argue, policymaking needn’t be so chaotic after all.

There are plenty of gaps in the Green Paper, including limited discussion of the workforce and the role of teaching assistants. There is also still a mountain to climb to go from consultation to legislation, not to mention implementation.

However, if the DfE can pull these off, then we may get a rare glimpse of what can be achieved when the government tailors solutions to problems and drags the politics into line.

Loic Menzies is a former chief executive of The Centre for Education and Youth and a visiting fellow at Sheffield Institute of Education. He is currently writing a book on education policymaking for Routledge. He tweets @LoicMnzs