Long-term thinking…

That education is a long-term endeavour should be obvious to all.  Compulsory education is in place from 5-18, and most children aged 0-4 experience some form of childcare, which is regulated and requires - through the Early Years Foundation Stage - both education as well as care.  In other words, for most children, education is at least an 18 year experience during which many dozens of childminders, nursery workers, teachers, school leaders, specialists, and pastoral staff will play a role in supporting a child’s educational journey.

Moreover, we know that outcomes at 18 are inherently linked to what happens in the early years phase: as the seminal Effective pre-school primary, and secondary education (EPPSE) project showed, going to pre-school leads to better GCSE results (especially if the early years experience was high quality and for children from disadvantaged backgrounds).  So, if you are looking, for example, to improve maths outcomes for 16 year olds in the future, the evidence suggests investments in the early years are the way to go.  

But, rather than think about education as a seamless journey for every child, too often our policy-making is narrowly focused on very specific elements without any real attempt to even ensure consistency across the system.  It is reflected in our school structures, with children moving between different institutions based on the arbitrary fact of age rather than developmental or educational need.  It is represented in our curricula, with learning chopped-up based on phase of schooling.  And it is shown in the way we train our educators to focus on narrow subject knowledge.

At the centre, it is reflected in the systems of funding, governance, and administration.  The Department of Education is chunked-up by policy area so that the vast majority of civil servants have little real sense of what others in the Department are doing, which is partly why policy announcements from the DfE can feel disjointed and conflicting to the schools trying to make sense of them all.

We are weeks away from a new government (of whatever party) taking office and it is more likely than not that a new Secretary of State will walk into Sanctuary Buildings on 5 July.  As well as facing an education structure that makes long-term and coherent policy making extremely difficult, the new Secretary of State will also have to manage a relationship with His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), a department that typically demands a return on any investment within a few years at best.  Against that backdrop, she or he will know that they are likely to have only two or three years in post (if they are lucky) and will want to ensure that they can point to concrete achievements.

In other words, there are significant systemic challenges that discourage long-term thinking about policy, and that is before we even get to the practicalities of policy development and implementation.  To go back to the example of improving maths outcomes, it may be true that the best investment to improve outcomes for 16-18 year olds (in terms of both impact and cost) is in the early years, but it is also true that those benefits won’t be realised for perhaps twenty years.  No politician can easily afford to either think that far ahead, or to wait that long to prove an impact.  So it ends up feeling much better to make a policy announcement promising a quick win, even if it is unlikely to have the desired impact - which is why we have  to settle for announcements making maths compulsory to 18 even though it is unclear what purpose it would serve or how (given the lack of maths teachers) the commitment could be delivered.

Over time we all get used to this approach, the series of initiatives that promise the moon on a stick, and fail to deliver anything like that which was promised.  We all expect it, we become cynical, and we lose faith in policy-makers to be able to have any sort of positive impact.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be like this, and we think there are ways in which the systemic issues discouraging long-term policy-making can be addressed and overcome.  Such approaches are best done alongside the other two key changes we call for from our policy-makers - to be collaborative and to be iterative.  If you are willing to work more substantively with others, and you are able to try ideas, learn from mistakes, and build on evidence, you are in a better position to start to think about policy-making through a longer-term lens.

For a start, by being collaborative and iterative, you give yourself a better chance to build on the past, bringing the knowledge and experience from past efforts to make improvements to bear when considering what might be done in the future.  This requires some humility from policy-makers, taking us away from the idea that small groups of clever people should be locking themselves in rooms to come up with solutions.  We think that is no bad thing.

Policy-making should be deliberately framed around longer-term questions.  The next government would do well to think less about how the system can be improved right now, and more about what a better system could be in ten or twenty years.  This requires working with those across the system, as well as with political opponents, to try to build a degree of consensus that gives those involved in education some confidence for the future.  It also requires restraint.  There may well be demands for specific reforms - for example to undo unpopular curriculum changes recently introduced - but policy-makers should not underplay the costs - both literal and mental - of change.  Tit-for-tat curriculum changes driven by personal views rather than long-term evidence do little to help children but add much to teacher workload.  

Policy-making can also make more effort to think in terms of the system rather than in individual policy silos.  In fact, those at the centre are the only ones who have the complete overview of how all the different elements of the education of a child (as well as the wider structures of social care and support) come together.  That creates both an opportunity to think differently, and also a responsibility to do so.

Thinking longer-term may feel hard, but if it is combined with collaboration and with iteration, it allows politicians to show progress so that they are not just promising a better future, but are showing - clearly and deliberately - the steps required to get there.