Criticise the government’s schools white paper all you want, but at its heart is a vision for education that we all recognise – because it is the one we have been asking for. And now, this very rare example of sector-led reform is at stake. Rightly, SEND advocates and others are voicing their concerns about the sufficiency of funding and the risk of over-promising. But this white paper has three big virtues. First, it finally attempts to provide the comprehensive approach the system is desperate for. In it, a single thread runs from early years and family hubs through curriculum, deprivation funding, skills and SEND. When did you last see the Department for Education (DfE) thinking with this level of coherence and consistency about breaking the link between background and outcome? Second, this strategy has been explicitly designed as a decade-long commitment, not a quick political sugar rush. This gives trusts, local authorities and dioceses a safe basis on which to invest in people, systems and estates. After 16 years of permanent policy whiplash, it is refreshing enough to have ministers looking beyond tomorrow’s headlines, let alone to a 10-year horizon. And third, it sets out to deliver exactly what we have asked for. The sector has long wanted a greater focus on earlier intervention, on inclusion as a default and on giving mainstream schools the tools to meet a rising tide of complex need. The road from here to there is long, but the mood music has already changed, and a new collective dance will soon take hold. Now, however, a spectre hangs over it all. The spectre of a Labour leadership election. Exercises in exaggeration Leadership contests are, by design, exercises in exaggeration. Candidates must draw lines, signal differentiation and produce just enough “break with the past” to energise members without terrifying the electorate. That is fine. Necessary even, in most areas of political life. But it is disastrous when the “break with the past” breaks children’s education. If you want a flavour of what is at stake, look at the SEND reforms currently on the table. They promise more funding, more staff and a reshaped system of plans and tribunals. But they also involve significant risk for families who have had to fight for every inch of their current rights. The last thing this agenda needs is a series of half-baked tweaks from a leadership hopeful wanting to sound “tough on bureaucracy” on breakfast television. The same is true of deprivation funding and early years. Re-engineering the system around income data and family hubs is complicated, technical work. It demands dull virtues: persistence, consultation and the humility to admit that the first version of any national formula will need improvement. This does not sit well alongside the performative urgency of a leadership ballot where every interview is a chance to promise another shiny initiative. But a return to the policy merry-go-round is not inevitable if we can get leadership hopefuls to embrace three tenets. First, a public commitment that the broad architecture of the current schools and SEND reforms will stand. Even better: that Bridget Phillipson will remain in post to deliver it. Scorched-earth rebrand That does not mean a blank cheque. It means an adult promise that the profession will not be subjected to another scorched-earth rebrand with a new portrait going up at the DfE. Second, a leadership stance based not on launching new things but on making this set of things work: fully funded, properly evaluated, and transparently adjusted where the evidence demands it. The genuinely radical posture now is not “my plan versus theirs” but “our plan, better implemented”. Third, and perhaps most important, an understanding that children only get one go at this. A year 3 pupil in 2026 will sit GCSEs in 2034. They will live entirely inside whatever we decide to do in the next leadership cycle. They will not care whose name was on the lectern. They will care whether the school system around them was stable enough for adults to do their jobs. The Labour Party is perfectly entitled to debate who should lead it. That is democracy. But the next leadership contest cannot turn into yet another opportunity to yank the steering wheel of education policy for partisan effect. We have the luxury of a plan. The bravest thing any aspiring leader could now say is simply this: I have faith in it, and in the team behind it.