I first suggested education be taken out of the political circus as far back as 2013, urging the idea of embedding this need in teacher training. Three years later, I made some key suggestions as to how we could go about encouraging politicians themselves to issue visas to this brave new world.

It seems that suggestion has built up steam. In a recent article, Ed Dorrell remarked that “it is near impossible to travel anywhere in education without stumbling across a teacher demanding the ‘depoliticisation of schools’”.

Tide waits for no woman. So here is what I think should happen to take schools in the UK to a stronger, better place in the next two years, where they can seriously start to talk about themselves as world class.

Change needs to happen where change has most effect - in the case of schools, that is where they butt directly up against government oversight and strategy. There is unlikely to be much of the latter in the next two years, but all other points of contact are unavoidable and, indeed, necessary. Royal commissions and the like are just expensive and expansive distractions.

For decades, schools have danced to other people’s tunes whenever they have been forced to draft a new policy document. Skim through the policy documents listed on your own school’s website and ask yourself who really required this to be drawn up and why.

I’ve just looked at the 34 policy documents listed by the school just down the road from where I’m sitting, for fun as much as anything else. About 10 of them actually matter educationally.

I’m not going for some bureaucratic jugular and advocating schools bin superfluous policies: quite the opposite. I’m suggesting schools draft a single new, over-arching educational policy as a priority, which determines how they will communicate their educational aims, achievements and challenges with all government agencies.

No more, no less. This is about clarity and precision of purpose. This is about professionals taking back control of what they do best.  

Team power

The reasoning behind this is simple. Genuinely world-class schools are unique. They serve specific communities in specific ways and the best do it superbly.

I had the privilege recently of teaching Shakespeare to a Year 7 class in a world-class school. The children in it were three years ahead of what might be expected of them at that age. They read fluently and expressively, knew exactly what augmentation of the Indies meant, the difference between pedant and pendant and could invent oxymorons on the spot.

That school knows its community inside out and its community knows what is expected of them. They represent the pinnacle of what can be achieved when a school’s entire community - governors, staff, parents and pupils - understand their roles and play them to perfection.

Few schools can ever be as impressive as this because their communities are far less focused and single-minded. But - and this is the essential point - they can be every bit as world-class in delivering what is locally educationally possible, as long as everyone plays their role.

The purpose of this overarching educational policy would be to ensure the school has a complete grasp of what it is trying, realistically, to achieve for its community, so that it can communicate that externally to the governmental agencies that would otherwise demand they dance to a different, externally determined, data-driven tune.

Schools need to take back control but you cannot effectively do that unless you are honest about yourself, what you’re good and bad at, and are then equally honest in how you communicate that externally. I stress this is a school-level change because the moment you step outside - to trust level, local authority level or somewhere else - you abdicate your responsibility and stop playing your role as a professional. The entire school suffers.

‘Strip things back to what is achievable’

It doesn’t need me to provide examples of the appalling damage caused when professionals abdicate their responsibility. A recent TES piece by a classroom assistant spelled that out in the most powerful and painful way.

I have only one other serious suggestion to offer: that when it comes to the complex professional business of drafting the educational policy, everyone involved defines education as narrowly as possible. It is largely because schools have been the targets of an entire horde of politically motivated external agencies, determined to expand that definition, that the desire to depoliticise things has gained such traction.

For most teachers, education is purely about those 40-minute slots they spend in the classroom with different groups of children. It’s about moving those children steadily and successfully, step-by-step, forwards to the next stage. For senior managers, it is about how they support all classroom teachers in being able to do that - nothing else.

If you really feel the need to inflate and embellish your personal sense of leadership, to extend your responsibilities to embrace other skills and other professions, I would urge you to reconsider and to strip things straight back to what is educationally achievable in your school. Far too many senior leaders think politicians are appropriate role models, like Makka Pakka emulating Machiavelli.

Get this policy right and every single time you butt up against government oversight, every single conversation will be properly informed, realistic and educationally meaningful. If you get it wrong or don’t bother, be prepared to carry on running around the big top in circles, wearing huge, floppy shoes and a silly hat, throwing custard pies at your colleagues.

Joe Nutt is an educational consultant and author

To read more columns by Joe, view his back catalogue

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