In spite of such difficulties, it is surely time to formulate a children’s and young persons’ policy. This would set out what all children and young people have a right to expect from society and what, in turn, society hopes and expects of them. It would include statements about entitlements to a national curriculum, to impartial educational and careers guidance and to information and advice on personal issues such as sexual behaviour and drugs. How to gain access to cultural, religious, sporting activities as well as to further education and training, would also be included. How to act as a citizen and participant in school, youth or sports club would be spelt out, both in terms of rights and responsibilities.

Student support systems would be covered, including information about where to study outside school or college classes, how to qualify for maintenance grants or a trainee wage after age 16, the availability of hostels for the young homeless and cheap travel for educational purposes. Basic facts about the legal system, particularly where it affects children, young people and parents would also be included.

For such a policy to succeed such departments of state as Education, Social Security, Health, the Home Office, Heritage and Environment would need to work together as would their local equivalents and the voluntary sector. Politicians, and administrators need to resist departmental triumphalism.

Having Jack Straw, Labour’s shadow home secretary, announce a “get-tough” policy on the feckless parents of school truants may or may not be a good idea. But it is as well to link such a policy to what is being proposed on related matters by his colleague, David Blunkett. Whether or not nursery vouchers are to one’s ideological taste, it is as well to understand that to have a lasting and benign effect on children under the age of five, it is necessary to bring together education, social services and health authorities (as well as representatives of the business world) at local level. A significant strategic steer is required at national level from the equivalent departments of state and from Social Security (the benefits system) and the Treasury (taxation system). It would be deeply depressing if departmental boundaries and rivalries prevented the emergence of an integrated strategy when it is so urgently needed.

A children’s and young persons’ policy should start, but not end, with the need to secure yet further school improvement. In Success Against the Odds, the National Commission on Education pointed out that politicians should work to reduce the social and economic odds against which significant numbers of schools struggle. It is also clear that more and more is being demanded of schools generally (with Conservatives and New Labour vying with each other as to which party demands most), and so it is time to build up those community support systems which we know make a positive difference to pupil achievement. An educational support programme aimed at parents, from conception onwards, is hugely important and must involve a range of services and agencies.

Homework clubs and study centres, as well as youth clubs and “extra-curricular” activities are needed if we are serious about raising both aspirations and achievement. These learning support systems may be best located in and managed by schools, but for some children they will be more effective if they are not. Either way, their funding should be separate from school budgets and there are many voluntary groups, often linked to religious and ethnic organisations, as well as statutory agencies and public organisations which have an important contribution to make - for instance, universities, colleges, the police, the probation service, libraries, sports and arts centres.

When politicians invoke terms such as“crusade” and “mission” in calling for school improvements, it should be understood that such visions can only be made real if and when schools are supported. The related call for a cultural shift in attitudes to education has to be made manifest beyond the walls of the school. The National Commission on Education identified the English “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude to education and training as a major problem, often made worse by a deep-seated collusion between many educated and uneducated adults that, for the latter, “education isn’t for the likes of us”.

Further pressure for an integrated attack on low aspirations and an unduly narrow conception of where and when education takes place comes from the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect schools to carry the entire responsibility for higher achievement among all our children. It is also wrong if educationists are overly defensive and believe that only in the UK is educational reform placed centre-stage in government’s response to a range of momentous upheavals occurring in the economy, in demographic and family structures and in the environment.

Running through all those EU and OECD documents which aim to prepare us for the next millennium, are frequent references to the role of education and training in tackling the growing problems of “social exclusion”, unemployment, profound changes in family structure, including the increase in female employment, and the rigours of economic competitiveness. These, it is suggested, need to be ameliorated by “solidarity” - between those with and without jobs, between generations, between richer and poorer regions and between the 40 million people living below the poverty line and those above it.

This larger context needs to be understood by those primarily concerned with school improvement. No education system can, or should try to, confront such challenges without working with and through other services and systems. An EU white paper, The challenges and ways forward into the 21st century, recognises this. On education it stresses the overriding importance of “the fundamental ability to acquire new knowledge and new skills - to learn how to learn throughout one’s life”. For children and young people, schools will be responsible for implementing such a strategy, but it is clear that the local and wider community must share this responsibility.

Lifelong learning is a fine battle cry and it is one which should permeate our society, as well as our schools. However, it won’t move beyond the realms of rhetoric unless the foundations of learning are sound and secure. Such foundations are laid in childhood, through family and school, but neither of these can, or should, be expected to operate effectively without wider support. It does indeed take a whole village to raise a child.