The general election manifestos have only confirmed what was already becoming abundantly clear - our political parties have run out of ideas on school reform.

Schools policy may have been prominent in the campaign. But the vast majority of debate has focused on just two areas.

First, there is money, as the parties compete on how well they can protect schools in a new era of squeezed budgets. And then there are grammar schools.

An enormous amount of energy has been spent discussing an academically discredited 20th-century approach to selection apparently dredged up on the whim of an unelected old grammar boy, who appears to hold more power over education policy than the secretary of state herself.

But where are the new ideas? A thorough search of all three of the main party manifestos offers scant reward for anyone looking for genuinely novel and radical approaches to school reform.

It has got to the stage where the parties are attempting to make a virtue of what they will not do. Labour proudly states that it “will not waste money on inefficient free schools and the Conservatives’ grammar schools vanity project”.

“We will also oppose any attempt to force schools to become academies,” it adds, seemingly missing the point that if Labour won power, no one would be able to force schools to do this anyway.

The Lib Dems list “opposing any new selective schools”, with only funding appearing as a bigger education priority for the party.  And the Conservatives “do not believe that giving school lunches to all children free of charge...is a sensible use of public money”.

Endless revolution

Decades of politicians competing to come up with fresh ways to improve schools have come to a grinding halt. This marks a big change. If there was one thing that teachers in England had become used to it was endless revolution.

The Conservatives began more than three decades of sweeping reforms in the late 1980s with the national curriculum, testing and tables, Ofsted and CTCs - the schools that inspired academies.

New Labour picked up the baton with a drive to improve primary numeracy and literacy and a plethora of failed attempts to close the gap for disadvantaged pupils - Education Action Zones, Fresh Start, Excellence in Cities etc - before it settled on academies.

The short-lived Brown government focused on ensuring that the schools focused on all aspects of a child’s life, before Gove brought a narrower focus on education and yet more dramatic change with free schools, new qualifications, a new curriculum and a massive extension of the academies programme that effectively killed off many local education authorities.

You might not agree with these policies. In fact, there is a lot that can be said against all of them. But what they did have in common was that they stemmed from politicians trying out big new ideas in an attempt to make the whole schools system better.

Careful what you wish for

And since then? Well…very little. Nicky Morgan made character education her big thing, with little impact. Meanwhile, Downing Street’s big idea for schools during the later Cameron years was a gimmicky extension of the existing academies programme that had to be rapidly retreated from as soon as Tory backbenchers expressed their displeasure. 

And today we have grammar schools. The plan for more selection may make a big splash, but it is hardly new and, more importantly, when all children are considered, it has been shown not to work.

Of course, as far teachers are concerned, a lack of new education policy wheezes could be seen as a good thing. How many times have they begged for politicians to stop meddling and leave schools alone, as they suffered at the rough end of the endless attempts to “drive up standards”?

But be careful what you wish for. Endless politically driven change in schools can feel unhelpful or even unhealthy. But it is a double-edged sword. With big change comes new energy, new possibilities and most importantly new money.

Today, new cash is conspicuous by its absence in schools, as all the party manifestos explicitly or tacitly acknowledge. Is the corresponding lack of new ideas really just coincidence?     

Policy outsourced

Fierce debate still rages about new thinking in schools. But it has shifted from the national political conversation to micro-level discussions among teachers on Twitter.

Power has also been on the move. Successive education secretaries have gradually ceded control over what happens in schools as academisation takes hold. That might help explain why we are where we are today. Why bother dreaming up big ideas for schools when you have cast off all means of implementing them? 

Schools policy has effectively been outsourced and none of the manifestos contains a serious proposal to change that. Important decisions about schools will still be made. But increasingly they won’t be taking place in Parliament, council committee rooms or even the DfE. They will be being hammered out in largely unaccountable academy chain boardrooms.

Big changes in your school could well be afoot and your vote on 8 June will make no difference at all.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook