“Evolution, not revolution” - this was former education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s catchphrase.
So far, Lucy Powell, her successor, seems far more set on revolution.
When Phillipson launched the curriculum and assessment review, she was at pains to state that the government would “build on the existing strengths of the system” and “not add unnecessary burdens by seeking to fix things that are not broken”.
Eager to avoid upsetting the balance, she plotted a path through iterative curriculum reform, accompanied by a pivot towards inclusion via ambitious special educational needs and disabilities reforms. Beyond that, a degree of stability prevailed.
The question teachers and school leaders will now be asking is whether Powell will continue to pursue a course of overall stability - but with more pugnacious rhetoric - or whether her plans will amount to something more significant.
Either way, the proposed revolution is unlikely to come as a surprise to seasoned teachers.
The history of education policy is often likened to a series of . Churn seems pervasive.
‘Deep undercurrents’ of education policy
In my recent book, How Policy Happens: understanding the decisions that shape our education systems, I note that we have had 18 secretaries of state for education since 1997 and that there were three times more government acts on education than health between 1979 and 2020. Even the department responsible for education was renamed five times between 1992 and 2010.
Instability of personnel extends beyond the top job. Civil servants move around at rates that would make even the most unstable staffroom look tranquil.
Policymakers described this as an endless source of frustration when I interviewed them for my book.
But there’s another side to the story.
One of the arguments I make in my book, which looks back over 30 years of education policy, is that below “surface-level waves” of change there are “deep undercurrents”, too. In other words, some agendas run constant over several decades. Examples include reducing local authorities’ role in running schools, and specifying more tightly what is taught and how.
The same could perhaps be said of Powell and Burnham’s recent headline-grabbing policy announcements.
Take the decision to devolve post-16 responsibilities and funding to strategic authorities. On one hand, this could be the start of a big shift. But on the other hand, governments have been attempting to solve the so-called (what Laura McInerney has defined as “the question of who should watch over schools to make sure they aren’t rubbish”) for over a decade. Initially via the Conservatives’ regional schools’ commissioners - later renamed regional directors - and then through RISE teams under Phillipson.
Each of these changes responded to the unusually centralised nature of England’s education system, and efforts to tackle that problem will doubtless continue in one form or another.
Similarly, Powell’s technical pathways rest on proposed vocational GCSEs. These would ideally slot into the coalition government’s Progress 8 baskets, providing a pathway through to the V levels announced by Phillipson, which themselves built on the Conservatives’ T levels.
The underlying issue here is that the vocational and technical options available to England’s students aren’t good enough. The government’s latest plan may or may not help, but the direction of travel is not surprising.
This is not to say that the demise of the Keir Starmer government could not still herald a genuine pivot, and such moments do occur.
Dodging the political turbulence
One of the ideas I introduce in How Policy Happens is what’s known as . According to this well-established model, most policy changes are incremental.
However, every now and then policymakers’ attention shifts, old ways of defining a problem break down, new actors or institutions enter the fray, and a big jump occurs. This can sometimes follow a major failure or the accumulation of so many failures that the floodgates burst. It has been tested in many contexts and is remarkably representative of how governments typically behave.
Whether or not Powell’s promised revolution amounts to a punctuation point remains to be seen, but, regardless, those seeking to dodge a bout of turbulence would do well to look below the surface.
Neither the localism agenda nor the push for improved employer links is going to disappear any time soon. The same could be said of the need to better include the marginalised pupils who haven’t yet benefitted from England’s educational success.
Schools stand a better chance of weathering the storm if they keep their minds on these deeper undercurrents. Indeed, doing so might even help them to seize the initiative and pre-empt Whitehall’s decrees.
Loic Menzies is chief research officer at the Centre for Education Systems and the author of How Policy Happens: understanding the decisions that shape our education systems, which is published by Routledge
