Labour’s recent election campaign was built around five missions – one of which was Breaking Down the Barriers to Opportunity. At the Fair Education Alliance, a cross-sector coalition of nearly 300 organisations tackling inequality in education, we share that goal, so everyone can “enjoy a good life, with a good job and secure home”, as stated in that mission.
Education must remain central to this. We know that investing in education improves nearly every aspect of a child’s future – their employment and wages, their likelihood of avoiding the criminal justice system, their levels of social and political engagement, and even their health outcomes. It is a huge lever to spreading opportunity equally; as Rishi Sunak, the previous prime minister, said, it is “the closest thing to a silver bullet there is”.
Unfortunately, as we describe in Fair Education in 2024: Priorities for a New Government, a child’s opportunity is increasingly correlated with their socioeconomic background. The gaps between children from low-income households and others are at their highest in a decade in attainment, social and emotional development, skills, post-16 destinations and access to university. At age five, children from low-income households are, on average, 4.8 months behind their peers; by the time they finish secondary school this increases to 19 months – almost two school years of learning. They are then less likely to be employed and more likely to be low-income themselves, carrying the cycle forward to the next generation.
Despite this troubling chasm between the potential of education to transform society and the current state of inequality, education has slipped down the priority list in the 23 years since Tony Blair made ‘education, education, education’ a cornerstone of his premiership. We’ve had seven secretaries of state for education in the last five years, and both school budgets and teacher salaries have lost substantial real-terms value over the last decade. Polling has consistently shown that only about 7 per cent of voters rank education as one of their top three issues.
It is our task to make the case for educational opportunity being crucial to a prosperous society, but also to paint the picture of what that fair education system could look like, and how we could get there.
We must consider the whole system, from the earliest stage. There are four main areas where we’d like to see the Government focus, each requiring patience, considered thought, and a commitment to collaboration.
A strong and supported workforce. We can tackle the underlying issues driving the recruitment and retention crisis in the most challenging schools through making the profession sustainable and inclusive, and reviewing how our accountability system recognises the complex work happening in the most challenged schools.
Secondly, a system that prepares every young person to thrive in work and life. Alongside strong academics, our education system can build essential skills, with a universal framework to monitor progress, and we can collect comprehensive data about the wellbeing of young people to inform our work. It’s essential that, throughout, we listen to young people themselves.
Third, the best early education and care for every child. Whether they spend their early years at home or in a formal setting, every child, including those with special educational needs, deserves the best start in life. We can achieve this through a strategy to strengthen the early years workforce, ensure accessibility and quality everywhere, and build partnerships with families to support their children’s learning and development at home.
Finally, a joined-up system that meets rising needs. Schools cannot achieve access to opportunity alone. We need investment in local collaboration between the services and the organisations supporting families, with shared outcomes and a greater focus on early intervention.
These strategic priorities will take time and investment to develop, and voters, the media, and civil society must not demand fast and results with minimal long-term impact. The barriers keeping the problem in place are big, complex, and will take time to shift. However, the Government will need to demonstrate progress in its direction of travel along the way.
As it approaches the milestone of its first 100 days in office, we’ve seen positive first steps. The announcements of a curriculum review, reforms to Ofsted, and a child poverty strategy offer no immediate sticking-plater solutions but could each shift the underlying problems fixing the disadvantage gap in place. The Children’s Wellbeing Bill will require all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions and SEND inclusion – an important first step toward the system serving local communities.
There have also been policies announced that will address immediate need – such as free breakfast clubs in every school, expanded nursey provision, mental health practitioners in every school, and specialist early language intervention. These should provide fast and demonstrable benefits to children and families.
In other areas, the government will need to dig deeper than the headlines it has given so far. While it has committed to recruiting 6,500 new teachers, it must address why teachers are leaving the profession, especially in schools with the lowest-income student populations. While it has committed to a new child number to link up records across education, social care and wider children’s services, it must help all local services work better together toward shared outcomes for children from their birth, rebuilding trust between institutions and families.
We all have a role to play in ensuring that we build lasting solutions for a fairer education system, including the third sector, business and policy, and we need to involve young people directly to fully understand experiences of those in education now. The Fair Education Alliance exists to connect different parts of the sector and society to work together toward a fairer education system. With the new Government, we all need to commit to tackling educational inequality as if it can be solved – because it can.
The Fair Education Alliance, The New Statesman and Teach First will be hosting a conversation with Stephen Morgan MP on ‘How can Labour put education at the heart of their mission-led Government?’ at Labour Party Conference, 23 September, 2-2:50pm, Room 2D, ACC Liverpool.
