“The greatest mission any government can have,” Bridget Phillipson told her new team of civil servants a day after becoming education secretary, is to “break down the barriers to opportunity”.
But she admitted: “I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge ahead of us, the mountain we must climb to build the better Britain our young people deserve.”
So what can Phillipson, and her team, learn from the trials, tribulations – and the odd triumph – of the last 10 years? John Dickens and Loic Menzies write …
1. Prioritise implementation over policy…
The previous government’s slide towards governing-by-newspaper-headline incentivised the pulling of policy rabbits out of the hat, no matter how unrealistic they may be (grammar schools, Advanced British Standard, etc).
But as Sir Jon Coles says: “The big lesson – but one the government keeps failing to learn – is that implementation is more important than policy.”
We’ve seen implementation go astray across the years: academies, regional schools commissioners, the national tutoring programme.
As one ex-government adviser cautions: “Government would be better by just doing a few things, really, really well.”
2. …but connect the cogs
Time and again it’s been a failure to get the teeth of the cogs to mesh together that’s scuppered reforms of the past 10 years.
Failures of the SEND reforms can’t be separated from the evisceration of local authority services. Inspection issues are intertwined with government intervention.
Even Michael Gove – who tore down the rainbows representing the ‘Every Child Matters’ programme from the DfE’s atrium – admits it was “too sharp a turning” away from wider support services for children.
The collapse in such support services is now holding back many of his own school-focused reforms.
If Labour want to summit their mountain, they will need to stay true to the philosophy of ‘missions’ that they have signed up to.
3. Have a unifying theory of change (and know the ‘end state’)
Another issue for implementation has been the conflict with differing government philosophies. The promise of autonomy for academies has repeatedly clashed with a more prescriptive approaches to interventions.
But policies deemed the most successful by those involved – the early career framework, phonics and maths mastery – have been based on a “government knows best” approach, as opposed to building informed professionalism.
Without a clear theory about how you make change happen, policies can rapidly become incoherent. Academies went from the idea of just letting ‘flowers bloom’ to all schools being run by sometimes heavily centralised multi-academy trusts.
Many contributors said this shows the need for ministers to also plan for an “end state” of their policies. Academies had a clear purpose, but no one ever thought about where they wanted the sector to end up.
The National Tutoring Programme did have an endpoint – that tutoring would be embedded in the state school system.
But ministers neglected to set out the steps to get there because the short-term was always prioritised – showing you can’t just talk a good (end) game. You have to plan for it, too.
4. Bring people with you (or at least don’t alienate so many)…
Gove might have been hugely ‘successful’ by the measure of translating his will into policy, but he was eventually sacked because he’d become so unpopular he’d turned into an election liability.
He admits some of his more bombastic rhetoric “became a point of vulnerability… I probably did do stuff that at times needlessly alienated people who either could have been allies, or at the very least would have been open minded about what we were trying to do.”
Introducing compulsory sex education guidance was a really sensitive policy. But its success was anchored upon building a broad coalition of support, and listening. It’s the combative culture wars rhetoric that is now endangering that progress.
Phillipson already seems wise to this. She said on day one “we want to end ‘governing by picking fights’”.
5. …but don’t be afraid to upset the applecart
This should not be confused with challenging the status quo. Sector leaders were clear that ambitious thinking is needed to meet the challenges ahead.
There are some big, thorny problems – and solutions will upset some.
But sometimes you can also bring people on board by delivering tangible results.
As ex-schools minister Nick Gibb recalls: “The key to changing things is to demonstrate the effectiveness of your ideas… [Labour] will be judged on how effective the policies are, not on whether 70 per cent of the people it consulted were in favour of it. If you compromise too much away from what you think will work, guess what? It won’t work.”
6. Build on what came before
The idea that education policy is always a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other is an over-simplification.
Despite constant surface-level change, there are often stable currents which run on for many years below that – for instance, academies and fairer funding.
Quickly burning things down often leads to messy rebuilds down the line.
It’s easier for politicians to say everything is wrong and blame other people
The politics of this can be difficult: it’s easier for politicians to say everything is wrong and blame other people.
But Labour is deftly navigating this. The new government will stick with the early career framework but will look to “update it”. Their curriculum review will lead to “evolution, not revolution”.
They’ve also planted their own flagpole for phonics – one of the previous government’s biggest successes – by laying claim to it as their own invention.
7. Do the hard yards in opposition
Previous Conservative ministers all said politicians must act with urgency. They are incentivised to do so, given they may only have five years in office.
The best way to be prepared for this is to do the hard yards in opposition first.
Nick Gibb and Michael Gove spent years in education opposition listening, thinking and planning. They were ready to go.
“We had identified what Britain’s decline in its education system was caused by. And we had what we thought were the solutions,” recalls Gibb.
It might be a bit late to give Philipson’s team that advice, but it raises an important question for the future. How do politicians maintain freshness and crispness of thinking years after the elation of election victory has worn off?
8. It’s obvious, but try to stick around
A desire to bring in fresh thinking is one of the reasons secretaries of state and ministers get reshuffled so often – even if that means bringing in novices without the same background knowledge.
But since Schools Week’s launch a decade ago, there have been 10 education secretaries. The SEND reforms have been impacted by a merry-go-round of children’s ministers.
Gove is one of only three of the 41 education secretaries since the end of the Second World War to serve at least four years. And it is still his reforms that we are all talking about.
Others also credit the stickability of Gibb for the past government being able to enact so many reforms.
9. Sector leader outriders can help drive reforms
Another source of freshness in the face of stagnation and ministerial churn is sector expertise.
Early on in their time at Sanctuary Buildings, Gove and Gibb identified a set of vocal teacher-bloggers such as Daisy Christodoulou, Robert Peal and John Blake. Not all of them agreed with the government’s politics, but they championed many of the reforms.
By bringing those people in and giving them a platform, the government watered a seed that grew into an ecosystem of new ‘thought leaders’ and advisors.
This can be helpful in winning the argument for reform, but some believe it just led to a ‘new blob’ and policy by clique.
Many governments have used a cast of sector luminaries who forge a path up the mountain. It remains to be seen who Labour will populate that cast with, and whether they can navigate those tensions.
10. Find out how to work the machine
The idea that secretaries of state are ‘in charge’ of education is a myth. Amongst other obstacles they have to manoeuvre around Number 10, their parliamentary party and perhaps worst of all, the Treasury.
Every politician wants a legacy, but Sir Gavin Williamson’s is now indelibly linked to the damp squib of inadequate recovery funding. But that was the Treasury’s decision.
Perhaps the most memorable education policy during the final throes of the Conservative government was the since-abandoned Advanced British Standard. Yet only a handful of people in the DfE had even heard of it before former PM Rishi Sunak announced it.
But finding the right argument, in the right circumstances, can cut through. By making a strong case about wastage, the DfE was able to secure a surprisingly large sum from the Treasury for the early career framework.
Experience matters, too. Justine Greening knew how things worked to push back on the controversial plan to open new grammar schools.
Others have relationships and political capital. Gove was a core member of the so-called “Notting Hill set” of senior politicians that included PM David Cameron.
No secretary of state can leave a mark without support from a wider government team.
This piece previews some of the themes that will appear in Loic’s new book, ‘How Policy Happens: Understanding the decisions that shape our education system’. You can find out more here
