During the half-term holiday many families will participate in what seems to have become the nation’s number one hobby: shopping. Yet, with an increasing amount being bought on the internet, there are more shop premises vacant than ever before.

In a short article, Labour MP Andy Burnham highlighted the number of empty units and charity shops in the towns around Manchester. He asks why the focus for regeneration in small towns is so often the building of new shopping centres, when what is needed is more houses: “We should think about clearing poor quality retail units and office blocks, and replacing them with new council houses and green spaces,” Andy Burnham suggests. “This would make towns much more attractive and pleasant places to live, and breathe new life into them.”

The more I thought about Mr Burnham’s proposal, the more I wondered why it is not already policy, nationally and locally. It seems to be such a statement of the bleedin’ obvious - a SOTBO, of which John Cleese’s Ministry of the Bleedin’ Obvious would be proud.

Perhaps we could hope that the Department for Education (DfE) might consider basing its policies on some of the following SOTBOs:

1. Every child needs a good education, wherever they go to school.
2. All schools should be supported to be as good as each other.
3. Schools should be fairly funded across the country.
4. Children’s education should be equitably funded - that means spending more on the education of disadvantaged children.
5. Children should be safe in school.
6. All children and young people should study a broad and balanced curriculum, at least until the age of 16.
7. Although extra emphasis will be put on literacy and numeracy, especially for younger children, a broad and balanced curriculum means that sciences, humanities, languages, the arts and sport should all be accorded a high value.
8. Accountability measures should incentivise all schools to give every learner the best possible education.
9. Headteachers who make long-term sustainable change in schools should be rewarded better than the quick turnaround specialists.

SOTBO number 3 is being pursued by the government, albeit at a glacial pace. Safeguarding policy and the pupil premium suggest that the DfE recognises SOTBO numbers 4 and 5. Alas, the EBacc makes numbers 6 and 7 difficult for schools, especially at key stage 4. Accountability measures have some way to go in order to put number 8 into practice.

But it is numbers 1 and 2 that seem to cause governments the greatest difficulty. I recall the story of a family moving from the UK to Denmark and, on arrival, inquiring which was the best school in their locality. The Danes did not understand the question, as it was policy that, if one school in a town was less good than the others, the local district put additional resources and expertise into that school to bring it up to the level of the others - surely a policy based on a SOTBO.

Although governments in the UK have begun to put in place systems that encourage successful schools to support less successful ones, this policy is not universally applied across the country. There is no national ambition, at government level, that every child should have the same opportunity or that every school should be as good as the best.

There is still too much focus on individual schools flourishing, instead of the health of the system as a whole and every child in it.

For over thirty years, governments have, to a greater or lesser extent, pursued policies that promote choice and diversity, which was the title of a 1992 white paper in those far-off days when John Patten was secretary of state. In England, diversity soon turns into hierarchy, with schools competing for the best students in an admissions free-for-all.

If policy were based on SOTBOs, admissions would be re-thought, accountability measures would be different and architect heads would be paid more than surgeon heads. But, above all, every child and every school would be given a fair chance of success.  

John Dunford is chair of Whole Education, a former secondary head, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and national pupil premium champion. He tweets as @johndunford

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