Twenty years after I joined the education select committee, it’s clear: England’s schools are in a far better place. Standards are up, more schools are ‘Good’ or better, and teachers are now leading the national conversation on what and how we teach.
This progress wasn’t accidental. It began with the reform programme Michael Gove and I drove from opposition into government – a bold agenda that changed our schools for the better.
From these years and beyond, I have distilled ten key lessons about how to implement a successful reform programme that I hope can be applied more broadly. They may even, perhaps, prove instructive for the Labour government as they contemplate their second white paper.
1. Immerse yourself in the sector
Ministers (or, better still, shadow ministers) need to immerse themselves in their sector over a period of years to learn about its institutions, its challenges and its strengths. This is their opportunity to meet and learn from practitioners and leading thinkers, in particular those who challenge received wisdom.
We were lucky. I had five years as a shadow schools minister, and Michael Gove had three as shadow education secretary. When we came into government in 2010, David Cameron was fully committed to the reform agenda that Michael and I had developed, and he shared our determination to drive through change.
2. Question received wisdom
It is important to invest time to understand the problems you are trying to solve rather than waste time responding to politically driven issues of the day. In education, the problem was falling academic standards, as evidenced by precipitous drops in our position in international league tables.
The key issues were not school funding or inequality (important though both issues are), or too much or too little sex education or financial education, or the need for more or less discussion about climate change or the cost of school uniforms.
The overwhelming issue was the progressivist ideology, particularly when it came to the content of the curriculum and the approach to teaching.
3. Challenge ideology
From 45 years of active political engagement, I have come to believe that ideology is at the root of most problems in public service delivery.
By ideology, I don’t just mean grand intellectual philosophies such as ‘socialism’. Instead, I mean guiding principles which become orthodoxies and about which it becomes unthinkable to ask questions or challenge.
Michael Gove and I had spent our time before gaining office reading, speaking to teachers and visiting schools. We gained confidence in our diagnosis that a Rousseauian ideology of progressive education was the fundamental problem in English schools.
From the teaching of reading and maths to the content of the wider curriculum to pedagogy in the classroom, not to mention classroom configuration and behaviour policy, ideological progressivism was driving practice. And it was failing.
4. Prescribe policy based on coherent analysis
Only once a minister has a genuine understanding of the problems in a sector should they turn their minds to the potential solutions, lest the focus is diverted to important but less fundamental prescriptions.
In education, our understanding that falling academic standards was the key issue drove a research-led move to understand why.
5. Test and test again
It is obviously important that policy prescriptions succeed in remedying the identified problems. Consultation with trusted experts and roundtable discussions with a wider range of opinion will help the emerging policy succeed and reveal the level of controversy it is likely to generate.
You can then begin to make the case for the policy to key stakeholders or interest groups so that it will not come as a surprise in the sector when it is announced.
6. Identify your allies and involve them
Finding allies within the sector is crucial for any reforming minister. They may not be your political friends (and may even vote for your political opponents), but if they share your analysis and passion, they will become your allies.
7. Don’t let implementation go off course
Policy can easily go off the rails if the details of implementation are not right. On even the smallest changes, ministers have to get into the weeds; never underestimate the importance of getting the drafting right.
It is not unheard of for civil servants to use ambiguous language in a deliberate attempt to nudge a policy with which they disagree off course.
Ministers are given a red box of policy submissions to read each evening and over weekends. Reading everything in the box is hugely important, as is challenging anything you don’t understand.
8. Never stop making your case
The battle of ideas is never won, so as well as preparing the ground for a policy’s announcement, it is essential to keep making the case for its rationale.
As a minister, you should never assume that once you have explained something on the prestigious 8.10am slot on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, everyone will have heard about your policy and understood the reasons for its implementation.
9. Keep the focus on your own agenda
If you have developed a proper understanding of the problems you are trying to solve and have devised a full programme of policy prescriptions, it is important to be wary of policy proposals which will push your agenda off course.
These will emanate from other ministers, including the prime minister and the chancellor, the civil service, the sector, lobbyists and vested interests, and will be considerable in volume.
10. Compromise judiciously
I hated compromising. If you believe you have the right answers to, say, closing the educational attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers, why would you dilute that policy so that it is less effective?
However, democracy inevitably requires compromise, and you have to take at least part of the sector with you if a policy is going to succeed. As painful as I would find it, I learned to accept 7 out of 10 if the alternative was a thumping zero.
‘Reforming Lessons: Why English Schools Have Improved Since 2010 and How This Was Achieved‘ is published today by Routledge
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