There’s a trick that novelists have. (Yes, novelists have tricks. They’re helpful for those days when the muse decides to stay in bed with a hangover.) This particular trick ensures that characters exist beyond the two-dimensional plane of virtuous hero or evil villain, and instead appear fully rounded human beings.
Here it is: make good people do bad things. And make bad people do good things.
So, for example, readers might think that they’ve identified the villain of the novel: the person who will roam through its pages generally making everyone’s lives that bit more miserable. And then, just like that, the villain does something kind for the protagonist and…good heavens, you think, I did not see that coming.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you Jeremy Hunt, chancellor of the exchequer and, as of this week, dispenser of funds to education – and thus apparently now a fully rounded human being.
It is a novelistic twist few people saw coming. Certainly not the group of 30 MPs from Hunt’s own party, who this week sent him a letter telling him that it would be “indefensible” to cut education funding.
The MPs, including Kit Malthouse, whom some of you may recall as the education secretary from the first half of this term, added that “It would not be morally right to cut education at a time when so many children, teachers and staff are still working so hard to rectify the damage caused by Covid-19.”
This is a bit like one of those moments when a man presents an idea at a work meeting to universal praise and acclaim, only for his female colleague to point out that she’s been saying the exact same thing at every meeting for the lastmonth.
A reminder: the National Association of Headteachers is balloting its members over strike action, in response to the fact that the proposed pay rise for teachers is both paltry and unfunded.
This week, the NAHT urged members to vote in favour of strike action. The union’s general secretary, Paul Whiteman, told members that he “cannot envisage circumstances where we instigate action that will call on you to close your school”.
Anyway, back to Jeremy Hunt, who until this week had been admirably playing his designated role of two-dimensional villain in a poorly written novel. And then, all of a sudden, the writing improved.
In his autumn statement, delivered on Thursday, Huntannounced that schools were to receive an extra £2.3 billion in funding over the academic years 2023-24 and 2024-25. This represents a four per cent rise to the core schools budget over each of the next two years, according to Schoolsweek. And it will cover the £1.3 billion costs incurred by the (still paltry) pay increase.
School leaders have responded by chorusing that the devil’s in the detail, which is the verbal equivalent of glancing under the tablecloth to check it isn’t all a big trick.
Of course, it is unlikely that schools will be cracking open the champagne to celebrate: the extra cash will only return real-terms per-pupil funding to where it was in 2010. Besides, champagne needs to be chilled, and schools still aren’t sure whether they will receive any help with energy bills from April next year.
But let us return to the issue that really matters: Christmas is around the corner, and there are pantomimes to be staged. Who will take on the role of the stage villain – mustachios twirling – now that Jeremy Hunt has committed the fiscal equivalent of hiding Jack in the cupboard while the giant sniffs around for the blood of Englishmen?
She’s behind you! Yes, it’s Gillian Keegan. Keegan – now entering her fourth full week as education secretary, making her one of the more successful incumbents this year – has suggested that the government is unlikely to fund next year’s (probably still paltry) teacher pay award.
Writing to the School Teachers’ Review Body, Keegan said that the 2023-24 pay award should recognise the impact that pay rises will have on schools’ overall budgets. Which, school leaders have pointed out, suggests that the government has no intention of providing extra cash to fund next year’s pay rise. (Of course, if they actually want anyone to listen, they may need to ask a group of 30 Tory MPs to repeat the point.)
And there’s more. (Oh, no, there isn’t. Oh, yes, there is.) TheDepartment for Education has said that it is to pay up to £4 million to a contractor to run a website to match schools with local tutors for the National Tutoring Programme. Presumably, the DfE assumed there was only so much cash schools could spend chilling all that champagne, so decided that it had best put some of that money to better use.
However, Keegan does have an understudy for the role of stage villain – an understudy in fact perhaps better suited to this week of shapeshifting hero-villains.
A survey by FFT Education Datalab has shown that there is no clear relationship between a helpful school behaviour policy and levels of teacher stress. Instead, one of the two biggest factors causing teacher stress is the absence of a supportive school leadership team, and school leaders who refuse to offer teachers the chance to participate in decision-making.
School leaders may be upset to hear that they are a significant source of teacher stress. The flip side, however, is that this makes them– en masse – good people doing bad things. And thus they can take comfort from the knowledge that they are, in fact, every bit as human as Jeremy Hunt.
Click here to read Adi Bloom’s This Week In Education column every week.
