Ask me my three main priorities for government, cried Tony Blair in 1996, and I tell you…well, you can probably fill in the rest of the quote yourself. But, ever since then, it’s reasonable to say that education hasn’t been a political dividing line in England.
This isn’t to say that there hasn’t been a whole heap of frenetic activity in education. But look back at the least three election campaigns, and you’ll struggle to see schools or education really making the top few issues that the leaders fought on.
Indeed, the sense that the Gove reforms were politically unpopular was one of the reasons that their author was unceremoniously reshuffled out of the DfE in 2014. Since then, his successors have all been chosen with an eye on neutralising politics more than with a reforming agenda in mind.
Starting to change
But there are signs things may be starting to change. The 2019 local elections, although not consciously fought on education, were impacted quite significantly by the brilliant grassroots campaign highlighting school spending cuts. Conservative candidates up and down the country reported being confronted with the issue on the doorstep and at local meetings, and complained that the national party had no effective counterarguments. Academic research suggests that as many as 750,000 people may have switched their votes away from the Conservatives on this issue.
Since then, monthly tracking of issues affecting the country shows education in a solid fourth place, behind Brexit, the NHS and law and order. And the Tories, though polling better on education as a party than many people reading this article might hypothesise, are consistently three to five points behind Labour as the party best trusted to improve state education.
All of this is by way of giving context to the announcement made on Friday that the full three-year spending review settlement for schools had been agreed - with a substantial increase in funding over the period from 2020-2022.
Although not quite the £14 billion that the government press release blared out, it is, according to Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, enough to effectively reverse the 8 per cent cuts in funding that schools have been affected by since 2010.
Teachers’ pay
Friday’s announcement also contained dedicated money for special educational needs and disabilities, which has also been under financial pressure. This announcement is also likely to be followed over the next few days and weeks by a funding uplift for FE, and for detailed announcements on how teacher pay will rise quite significantly.
There’s good educational reasons for this settlement. Schools are rightly making the case that it’s hard to deal with a tighter overall funding envelope if they don’t know what their budgets are likely to be beyond next summer. SEND and high needs have been under unquestioned financial pressure, and the most vulnerable children have been most affected by it.
And, although not the only reason, the relative decline of teacher pay is also a factor in lower recruitment and retention figures. Giving greater focus on these issues - and unquestionably increasing overall resources - ought to help improve standards and address social mobility.
Strong political reasons
But let’s be clear, there are also very strong political reasons for having done this. The overall plan from government is to have a relatively small Spending Review next week, only covering one year. The intention with this flurry of bigger announcements on education is overwhelmingly to make progress on an issue which is causing the Conservative Party political pain.
It fits with a wider pattern. In the past few weeks and months, the Conservatives have made concrete announcements on the four biggest political issues in the UK. The fifth issue is the environment, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if an announcement on that comes in the next couple of weeks.
Five announcements, designed to fit on a pledge card perhaps. It really is like 1996 all over again.
Jonathan Simons is a former government adviser
