One of many practices that schools have naively adopted from business is the mission statement or vision.

It originated, like other hapless side-effects, when people with no business experience whatsoever in the nascent National College for School Leadership were allowed to cut and paste from the Harvard Business Review for their website training materials unsupervised (similar to GCSE business studies students intent on getting a grade C). 

A mission statement or vision, however much companies try to dress it up in pseudo-philanthropy, is really all about ensuring their employees support and embody their brand.

The best of these don’t embarrass employees, so they genuinely respond to and sometimes even live up to them. But brands are all about sales. So what do schools sell?

In November 2015, there were just under 457,000 teachers working full-time in England’s state schools. I wonder how many actually know what their employer’s vision is? What they are selling?

For all those who don’t know, here is the mission statement itself in all its glory from the Department for Education’s website: ”We work to achieve a highly educated society in which opportunity is equal for all, no matter what their background or family circumstances.”

Compared with some of the mission statements I’ve seen and worked towards, that’s actually a gem. You would have to be either a hermit or a career criminal not to buckle down to work all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after hearing that one.

But it’s how some have responded in the real world that I want to throw a spotlight on, literally - especially those influential agencies operating as intermediaries between the DfE and the teacher.

It’s what they do that perturbs me, not least because they are also so often funded by the taxpayer.

The mission ‘rendered unrecognisable’

Because I think they have got it so dramatically wrong, that by the time it reaches the professional teacher, they have rendered that mission unrecognisable and undeliverable.

Look at the visions or mission statements for any of those intermediate agencies; I’ll leave you to choose, there’s not exactly a famine, and you will find nothing to support that principal, admirable goal of a highly educated society.

You will, in contrast, find a cloyingly indigestible glut of words and ideas that reflect the latter, subordinate ambition of the department’s vision. Everything will be about improving social mobility and addressing socio-economic disadvantage.

Spend too much time in the same room with these organisations and the sanctimonius, metropolitan public-spiritedness will suffocate you, unless, of course, you breathe that kind of special, rarefied atmosphere all the time.

It’s not the kind of air the families they claim to care so much about are familiar with.

It’s not the kind of fresh, knowledgeable air that skilled teachers try to pump into the lungs of children from those very same families every day.

What you will see and hear from all these organisations, without fail, are words such as “equity”, “community”, “values” and “fairness” -  all the well-trodden mush of political blather, not the lexicon we have a right to expect from professional teachers.

Where are the words, never mind the ideas and strategies, we actually need to create ”a highly educated society”, underpinned by words such as “scholarship”, “intellect”, “study”, or that crucially neglected adjective, “learned”?

For far too long, those key influential bodies silting up the communications channels between government and teachers have whipped up the social mobility agenda at the expense of a highly educated society.

Far worse, not only do they display no interest in delivering the first part of the vision, they are structurally and ideologically incapable of doing so.

Led by people without even sufficient perspective to feel embarrassed about those visions, these influential bodies lack the skills, knowledge and experience required to deliver a highly educated society.

That high-pitched, constant squealing in their ears issuing not from a faulty speaker, but from the ballot box, is an alarm they would be wise to heed, because it’s telling them there are skilled, professional teachers far better equipped to deliver than they are.

I tested this out recently in the perfect arena.

It was an event held at the headquarters of one of the major teaching unions, but I could tell from the morning’s contributions that there was a generous sprinkling of skilled, professional teachers in the building to balance things out.

Having quietly endured the predictable calls for “equity” and “community”, plus all the mandatory mawkish, anaemic complaints about government, this particular camel’s back finally snapped when one speaker, visibly drowning in his own intrinsic motivation, used the phrase “biocultural identity” when what he actually meant was “child”.

At the next opportunity, I suggested that we had spent decades as a nation pursuing social mobility at the complete expense of a highly educated society. That if more energy and effort had gone into creating that highly educated society, then logically the media, and other equally cloistered voices, would not now be whining so undemocratically about un-educated voters.

I was cheered and delighted that for once, heads turned in their seats and bobbed above the parapet all around me, as a whole bunch of energised, experienced voices echoed my concern.

There was a tangible sense of relief, as though something long held captive had been set free at last.

The reason people have been led to believe that schools are the principal engines of social change is because professional and phoney politicians alike can find nothing else to crank and because they know that teachers’ intrinsic motivation is easily exploited.

My advice to all those intermediate bodies is to respect the intelligent thinking that lies behind the shape of the education department’s vision.

If they genuinely want to improve social mobility, they should put all their effort and energy, as great teachers always have, into creating a highly educated society, because as schools that deliver that part of the mission already know, it’s never advisable to put the heart before the force.   

Joe Nutt is an educational consultant and author