If one wanted evidence that Whitehall was being steadily politicised, one need look no further than today’s exclusive story on Boris Johnson’s plans for “a series of staged announcements” on English schools. The leaked memo from civil servants to the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, shows a concern about spinning for power rather than speaking truth to it. The advice reads like a blueprint for an election campaign, one in which the government is solely concerned with renewing its contract with the electorate.
That makes the document no less revealing about Mr Johnson’s policies. There are the promises of extra money for schools to counter the charge, effective in 2017, that the choice in education is between Labour investment and Conservative austerity and neglect. There is a love-bombing of public sector workers, in this case teachers, with a promise – easily made but hard to make good on – of raising their starting pay to £30,000 a year. This is an audacious raid on Labour territory with the cash benefiting “young, female and non-white” state employees who, after years of cuts, disdain the Tories.
While the extra cash – £2bn – is to be welcomed and is what Mr Johnson promised on the stump, it only reverses cuts of 4% in schools’ per pupil funding since 2015. Double that sum is needed to reverse the effects of austerity inflicted since 2009. The cash, the memo makes clear, is contingent on “efficiency” gains in schools – driven, if history is any guide, by a misguided ideological dislike of local authority influence, and a blind faith in a form of failed, lightly regulated marketisation. When there is new money it is not enough: the £800m for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) won’t fill the £1.2bn hole left by cuts.
Instead of coming up with a policy for further education, essential given the OECD’s warning that England is the only rich country where the literacy and numeracy levels of 16- to 24-year-olds are no greater than those of 55- to 65-year-olds, officials tout a cash sum that falls short of the amount asked for by colleges and suggest an aspiration of “besting Germany at technical education”. This is a declaration that is unlikely to send a shiver down the backbone of the world’s fourth-largest economy.
As well as blasts on the foghorn, there are the toots on dog whistles too. The talk of using “reasonable force” to promote good behaviour is chilling. But officials say “many will welcome a harder narrative on discipline” in schools, noting drily that police and crime commissioners say the inevitable school exclusions will drive up knife crime and social workers will raise the disproportionate impact this will have on African-Caribbean children. To deal with the downsides, civil servants suggest with a straight face that ministers “consider stakeholder handling more fully”. The same PR advice is offered on how to deal with the “rising number of teaching assistants”, who are popular with “parents, teachers, heads and the SEND lobby” but not with the Treasury and No 10.
Britain is an increasingly divided society, one split by politics, wealth and geography. Mr Johnson is the very embodiment of these divisions. His cabinet is the most privately educated for a generation. Yet as the country teeters on the cliff-edge of a hard Brexit, Mr Johnson is aware that his political base is energised by a grievance and contempt for the elite he is part of. To defuse this anger in an election that feels very close, Mr Johnson aims to sell the idea that his education policies have the potential for any child to achieve success regardless of their background. Yet the failure to think imaginatively about how education policy can address the most important issues in public life means Mr Johnson’s campaign pledges cannot be redeemed. In drawing back the curtain Mr Johnson’s government is exposed as one focused narrowly on tomorrow’s headlines rather than today’s problems – to the detriment of the country.
