More focus and fight: what Labour needs to do on education

During a session at the Association of School and College Leaders’ (ASCL) annual conference on Saturday, I was asked what I thought of the government’s direction of travel on education, to which I could only reply: “What direction?”

I went on to add that I did have a lot of sympathy for ministers, advisers and officials. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson was right to highlight, in her speech, the enormous array of problems left by the previous government, and to say that the fiscal context is genuinely exceptionally difficult.

Like many of the ASCL members I spoke to, I want this government to succeed and I can see that Phillipson, unlike some of her predecessors, is well-intentioned and genuine in her desire to leave behind a better system.

No clarity in Labour education policy

This only makes it more frustrating that after eight months there is still no clarity about her department’s overall objectives. Instead we have a series of tangential but highly distracting policy rows that are entirely unnecessary.

Take the bill going through Parliament at the moment. Much of the criticism - like shadow minister Laura Trott calling it “an unmitigated disaster” - has been absurdly overblown. I don’t agree with everything in the bill but the impact of its schools section will be marginal.

This is, though, the problem. Why fiddle around with something that’s going to change very little, while giving ammunition to your political opponents? There’s still been no adequate explanation of why the legislation was introduced in the first place.

It’s the same with the proposed Ofsted changes. Yes, there was a pre-election promise to scrap single-word judgements, which I always thought was misconceived. But there was absolutely no need to rush into a set of changes that have ended up pleasing almost nobody.

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The proposals make the system more complex without any obvious compensating benefits. As Tim Leunig, former chief scientific adviser at the Department for Education, put it: “It’s a matter of psychometric certainty” that the changes will make inspection less reliable.

Again, it’s hardly the end of the world. Schools will no doubt adapt to the new system - adept, as they are, at managing the capricious inspectorate - but it’s another energy and time suck to no obvious end.

Focus on the real problems

While ministers are managing the fallout from these policies they have less time to develop a broader narrative around the real problems that schools are facing: an increasingly large group of pupils, often from low-income families, who are becoming ever more disconnected from education - whether as a result of poverty, loss of parental engagement or unmet additional needs.

The pastoral pressure this puts on teachers contributes to the other big challenge of staff shortages.

Ministers do mention these things but have not yet offered that overarching case for how they are connected or what changes they would like to see.

This is partly because of their inability to fund new policies, but also because they are bogged down dealing with distractions.

We are, though, still only eight months in and there is still time to refocus. It has been reported that the department is now working on a White Paper on special educational needs and disabilities that will set out reforms to a system that no one disputes is broken.

We know the broad outlines of what will be proposed - a shift away from education, health and care plan (EHCP) funding in mainstream schools and towards additional school-level funding to provide better support and early intervention.

There’s a clear logic to this but it is a fiendishly difficult policy transition to get right - and with catastrophic implications in getting it wrong.

Talk and engage

One advantage, though, is it provides a platform for that wider agenda. Especially as there is also a child poverty review due to report and ongoing work on attendance.

I’d like to see the White Paper broadened to be about building a system that works for all children - showing how a wide variety of needs will be met differently in future.

That would be a worthy objective for any government. But it would need ministers’ undivided attention.

As well as focus, they also need to show more fight. The temptation when under attack is to retreat to the bunker. It feels relentless, exhausting and often unfair given that you’re working all hours trying to do the right thing.

But the only way to deal with it is to push back, to make an argument for what you’re trying to do, to engage more with critics and talk to as many people as possible.

Sam Freedman is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and a former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education

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