Five years ago, there were murmurings of a new virus which could reach global pandemic status. At this point in 2019, most people weren’t overly worried. We mainly got on with our lives in blissful ignorance of what was around the corner.
And then the world changed dramatically, and we spent at least two years in firefighting mode. All our efforts, government and the sector, were focused on the basic issues of access to education and supporting pupils to catch up.
All the while, the impacts of a decade of austerity and a looming cost-of-living crisis meant that the battle to support pupils’ education was made even more difficult.
The point is, a lot can happen in a few weeks, let alone five years, and governments can quickly find themselves in a different situation to the one they were expecting.
With a significant majority and relative stability, the new Labour government has the potential to make real change in their first term. But while there has been a honeymoon period of sorts in these first six months, there needs to be a shift in gear as we head into 2025.
Bridget Phillipson has made some progress in education. Ending overall single-word Ofsted judgements, the appointment of Professor Becky Francis to lead the curriculum and assessment review and the introduction of the children’s wellbeing bill have all been positive steps.
But the government needs to be bolder on education. Whether you agree with Michael Gove’s education reforms or not, he grasped the opportunity, the privilege even, of serving early on in the electoral cycle and he pushed through the things he believed in.
Labour is, in many ways, in a stronger position than Gove was in that they have both a majority and support from the sector for many of their flagship manifesto commitments. They can work in collaboration with the sector, drawing on its vast expertise and appetite for change.
They need to start with tackling child poverty. The child poverty taskforce is due to report in late spring, aligned with the government’s first spending review. That’s sensible; we cannot expect big policies and no reference to the fiscal climate.
Labour cannot afford to fudge this
But Labour cannot afford to fudge this. If they genuinely want to reverse the current rise in child poverty rates, then this needs to be an early spending priority. Last year, UNICEF published a harrowing table which showed that child poverty in the UK had risen at a greater rate than in any other OECD nation.
Let’s park debates about PISA and TIMMS for now; our performance on the poverty league tables is shameful. The child poverty strategy must be genuinely joined up, addressing housing, food poverty and welfare.
A relatively easy win is to increase and better target funding to disadvantaged children. Last month, EPI published new analysis which argued for targeting additional funding to children who have been eligible for free school meals for at least 80 per cent of their school lives, or “persistently disadvantaged”.
At a minimum, this could be funded through the money released from falling pupil numbers. The treasury is likely to want to claw this back on the basis of “efficiencies”, but there is enough evidence to argue that it should be re-invested to benefit the poorest pupils on the basis of equity.
Reducing child poverty can also help to address some of the reasons so many children are missing from school. Our research finds that around 400,000 children are not in school, with around one-quarter of those home-educated.
Fixing the SEND system will be a crucial part of re-integrating many children back into formal schooling. This will require a fundamental rethink about how we identify and support children with additional needs. But other anecdotal reasons for missing school include costs associated with transport and uniform, as well as poor health caused by inadequate and unsafe housing.
Better financial support will help many families in these respects. But it’s not just funding. The government will come up against resistance for a unique pupil identifier in the forthcoming children and wellbeing bill, particularly from advocates of home education.
The government should be unapologetic
While the choice to home educate children should remain for most families, the government should be unapologetic about putting children’s safety and their right to an education above adults’ preferences to stay under the radar.
Reforming accountability is another route to getting children back into school. The current system has resulted in an increase in exclusionary practices and a relatively narrow curriculum. The judgement of schools needs to be about more than just the intake of its pupils.
A new report card which includes more empirical data about schools is the right approach, but Phillipson will need to avoid pressure for it to be overloaded with both data and sentiment. EPI’s own benchmarking tool provides a blueprint for what a simple-yet-effective report card could look like.
The curriculum and assessment review also has the potential to better support disadvantaged children. By offering a broader range of subjects, curriculum reform could help to re-engage pupils with subjects they are genuinely passionate about while also helping to tackle the issue of skills shortages in the country.
Of course, maths and English must remain fundamental and we have supported previous plans for students to study maths to age 18. But the current resits policy does not appear to be serving anyone well and Professor Francis’ review should set out plans for tackling this.
It should also bust the myth that creativity in the curriculum can only be secured by diluting ‘academic’ subjects. It appears to be the accountability system rather than timetabling that has led to curriculum narrowing in England.
While a second term of a Labour government is probable, recent history tells us that anything is possible. All of these necessary reforms will take time to embed, so it is critical that Bridget Phillipson and her team make bold, sometimes tough, decisions now if they want to have a real, positive impact before the next election.
Your thoughts