More than 25 years ago, when I was setting up the Sutton Trust, the leader of the opposition, a fresh-faced Tony Blair, was touring the TV studios with a simple message, ‘Education, Education, Education’. And sure enough, during the 1997 election, Labour promised to cut class sizes on their famous pledge card.
Fast forward quarter of a century, and we’re about to go into an election which many are comparing to 1997. But what has happened to education? It’s almost disappeared from the political agenda. Indeed, it has fallen off a cliff in terms of its political saliency.
Keir Starmer’s opportunity mission includes education, but the policy substance and funding for it is underwhelming to say the least
Rishi Sunak had his five pledges last year and not one was about education. And when you examine what the government has focused on in recent years, education has hardly had a look in.
Keir Starmer’s opportunity mission includes education, but the policy substance and funding for it is underwhelming to say the least. One of Starmer’s six key priorities is a commitment to recruit 6,500 teachers. That’s a drop in the ocean, and barely touches the surface of what’s wrong with the education system. His promise to shatter the class ceiling rings fairly hollow.
Education, I would argue, should always be a top priority for our political parties. Only through education will we build the skills we need to improve our economy; only through education will we open opportunities for all young people; and only through education can we compete globally in a world increasingly driven by new technologies. We should be striving to be not just good, but among the best in the world at education.
So why has it dropped off the agenda? First and foremost, there is a lack of leadership and vision in government, not helped by the revolving door of education secretaries. There have been 16 since I founded the Sutton Trust 26 years ago, and only David Blunkett and Michael Gove lasted longer than a year or two. Unsurprisingly these two were probably the best education secretaries we had in this time. How can a new minister get to grips with one of the most important and complex jobs in government if they’re either fired or moved out of the job within a year? You wouldn’t run a company like that; but we try and run a country like that. It’s a disgrace.
Policies such as the one revealed by the Conservatives last week to cut the number of ‘underperforming university courses’ in favour of apprenticeships exemplify the lack of vision and prioritisation. Apprenticeships are of course essential, but what has the government been doing for the last several years while the number of apprenticeships available to 16- to 21-year-olds has declined dramatically? It should also be remembered that less selective universities have been doing most of the heavy lifting to promote social mobility over that same period.
Today’s politicians might argue that there have been more pressing challenges in recent years – Brexit, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and of course a good dose of party infighting on both sides of the house. This is a poor excuse for not focusing on educating our young people. If education had been a higher priority, we might not have closed schools for so long during Covid, we might have invested more in the National Tutoring Programme to aid catchup after the lockdowns, and we might be doing more now to blunt the impact of cost-of-living issues on learning – to mention just a few recent missed opportunities.
Political leaders may point to the polls, which don’t feature education in most people’s top-three concerns. Over many years we have seen education fall further and further in voters’ list of priorities – and last year was an all-time low. This is perhaps unsurprising at a time when so much else in the country is going to pot.
I would counter by saying that the best politicians lead not follow. If ever there was a time the country needed inspirational leadership on education, then that time is now. In nurseries across the country, the government is disregarding the poorest young children by treating early years education solely as childcare for working parents. We would not accept a situation where better off kids get more time in school than those who are disadvantaged. Why is this acceptable in the early years, where the attainment gap first opens up?
Then there is the problem of persistent absence from school – the biggest issue we face – which is damaging the learning of a whole generation, as well as widening the attainment between rich and poor children.
Universities are a UK success story, and yet student finance is a mess and disadvantaged children are still under-represented at the best institutions. Any incoming government should feel obliged to sort out the mess that is student finance – and prioritise the return of maintenance grants, so disgracefully abolished by George Osborne.
Indeed, I would argue that closing the attainment gap should be one of our top concerns.
Polling commissioned from More in Common by the Sutton Trust, and published last week, demonstrates that the public passionately agrees that access to opportunity is currently unequal. Some 83 per cent say the gap between social classes is either quite big or very big, with 44 per cent believing it is bigger now than 50 years ago. The majority say that children from well-off families get better opportunities in school (62 per cent), in pre-school education (59 per cent) at universities (62 per cent) and in jobs (54 per cent), especially professions such as accountancy, law or medicine (61 per cent).
The voters of Britain are not wrong. Isn’t it a national disgrace that the attainment gap is still so great and that we can’t get our children to go to school?
Blair put education firmly at the heart of the agenda 25 years ago. Who’s going to step up and do the same as this general election campaign unfolds?
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