Groundhog Day again.
I am heading off to a conference centre tucked away in the light-starved basement of a city centre hotel. My job? To chair another conference for headteachers about Ofsted inspections. It was interesting the first time, and maybe even the second but (I think understandably) my enthusiasm is starting to wane.
However, while listening to the Ofsted presentation for the sixth time, what struck me was the clarity and consistency of the message – I knew exactly what was coming next. ‘We are interested in two things’, said the inspector, ‘raising attainment and closing gaps’. The message was identical to the one delivered by the five inspectors at previous events who had spoken before her. All had stressed that for schools, there was no either/or here. It must be both. What is more, this message was cutting through, sits comfortably with the values of the profession and is changing behaviour.
Following the challenges of party conference season there are two things I think we can learn from this. The first is about the balance between the political equivalents of ‘raising attainment’ and ‘closing gaps’ – ‘increasing prosperity’ and ‘social justice’. While I fully support action on the minimum wage, zero-hours contracts and rip off energy companies, these policies, and the majority of the narrative around them, speaks almost exclusively to social justice.
A school that closed gaps at the expense of raising attainment across the board would be rightly slammed by the inspectorate. Over the coming months the public will continue to slam the Labour party if it does not reconnect with this important balance. And quite rightly too, Ofsted and voters are spot on here – there is no either/or, the two are interdependent and we ignore this at our peril. Take out the offensive proposals around ‘food stamps’ and you see a Tory party that’s starting to get this – particularly if you listen to Nicky Morgan.
The second point is about clarity of message. Organisation within the party is getting better and better. In the north-west the team led from regional office are the best I have ever seen (and without them Heywood and Middleton would likely have been lost to Ukip). That said, they are lacking the clarity of message so ably demonstrated by our clipboard-wielding school inspector friends. We need this message fast – only then can we line up our troops and hammer it home on every door, every day.
If we can strike this balance and clarify our message we will begin to tap into the public’s natural balance of altruism and self-interest and they might just start experiencing a Groundhog Day of their own and, with a bit of luck, begin to change their behaviour too.
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Matthew Hood is a director of a national education charity and assistant head at a secondary school in Morecambe
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