New year, same old.

The family and I popped out to “Dunny Mills” to change the soft furnishings and brighten up the front room.  Ms May shuffled the pack. 

None of it makes much difference in the end. 

Justine Greening reluctantly walked away as secretary of state for education and suddenly the hand-wringing began. Some writers and educational leaders sagely told us that we should all be disappointed. Ms Greening was, after all, comprehensively educated, competent and very polite. Hooray! 

Have they not noticed the appalling long-term failure in areas such as funding, teacher supply, social mobility, student loans and university access, to name but a few minor items?  

The Social Mobility Commission has resigned en masse, stating that there is “a mind-blowing inconsistency of practice” when it comes to a provision that positively influences outcomes for disadvantaged students and residents. 

Education charity the Sutton Trust confirmed recently that 30 per cent of headteachers said that “the funding their school receives for poorer pupils was being used to plug gaps in their overall budget”. In truth, the figure is probably far higher. 

Little wonder then that 18 of the top 20 local authority performers for social mobility/educational outcomes are in London. This area is, at least, adequately funded. In places such as Somerset West, Barnsley and Crawley, social mobility is at an all-time low. Funnily enough, so are their levels of school funding. 

From a distance, it seems clear that Justine Greening had grasped the fact that free schools and grammar schools do little by way of helping the vast majority, particularly where widespread opportunity for all is concerned. It is clear, too, that she recognised that funding for many schools is abysmal. Under the new national funding formula proposed by her department, a secondary school in Bury can be funded at 50 per cent less than the same size counterpart in Hackney or Tower Hamlets. This is before any pupil premium monies are factored in.

The fundamentals of great education ‘neglected’

No wonder she begged the Treasury for more money. The truth is, however, that, like with successive ministers before her, the fundamentals that underpin a great educational system were being left to wither on the vine. 

Ask anyone who actually works in schools and they’ll tell you the obvious. All children, and especially those who are disadvantaged by income or disability, require a great teacher in front of them. Sadly, such provision is in short supply. Recently, the Department for Education announced that teacher-training targets had been missed for the fifth year in a row. 

At the same time, many schools continue to be held to ransom by teaching agencies who are signing up the few graduate teachers that there are and then selling them on at exorbitant costs to desperate schools.  

Parents are being “requested” to support our beleaguered budgets via thinly veiled requests for parental donations. At the last count, £146 million was received by schools last year under this guise. 

Under successive secretaries of state, our profession has been choked by dogma and narrow-minded thinking. The Department for Education deals in half-truths and partial information.

We are, therefore, reliably informed that never before has so much been spent on our education system. They don’t mention the half a million pupils who have swelled school rolls since 2010. Never before has there been so many teachers in our schools. They don’t mention the rates of departure, attrition and early retirement that are so prevalent, too. 

There have been some bright spots along the way. The outcomes for disadvantaged pupils are now firmly in the public domain.  chools are rightly under scrutiny to perform better on their behalf. The turnaround in the fortunes of educational provision in London is superb. There is evidence, too, that students are being equipped with improved writing and grammar skills.  This is partly due to the tenacity of the Department for Education. 

These bright spots offer, however, only a flickering cause for hope. The fundamentals are yet to be tackled. 

Where’s the White Paper? Where’s the joined up and achievable plan for social mobility? And please could we have a few teachers along the way?   

How about broadening the pool of where fully trained teachers can be resourced from? Could we challenge the perceived wisdom that a degree is an absolute prerequisite underpinning any brilliant potential trainee teacher?

Go to anyone’s home and you’ll soon find that a bit of bright soft furnishing won’t do any long-term good if you fail to fix a leaky roof. Whatever the party, whoever the secretary of state, will someone please attend to the factors that matter most? 

Jules White is the coordinator of Worth Less?, a fair funding campaign, and headteacher of Tanbridge House School in West Sussex

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