Right Reverend Host. "I’m afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr. Jones!"

The Curate. "Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!"

 George du Maurier cartoon ‘True Humility’, printed in Punch magazine on 9th November 1895

As if to prove the veracity of our commentary ‘Cummings’ Unintended Legacy’, the Conservative Party conference was consumed with short-term issues, with the one exception of education. The Institute for Government summarised six key takeaways from the conference, none of which would do much to excite the electorate next year:

  • Wide discussion of the post-Sunak future
  • Debates over scaling back the Civil Service
  • Losing touch with business
  • Levelling-up agenda no longer a priority
  • A fair bit of background debate on regulation and de-regulation
  • A new focus on public service productivity. including education and health

Compared to Rishi Sunak's speech, Suella Braverman's was nasty, brutish and short, and particularly insulting for philanthropists who would have been gathered up in her disdain for ‘luxury beliefs’, as if people are not entitled to have a conscience if they are ‘high net worth’ individuals. Perhaps she was also trying to explain why she has refused a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss migration over the past months.

However this commentary, following the theme of Adam Cox’s ‘Transformation’ episode, would rather use his analogy of the Caterpillar — Butterfly transition, showing how to leave behind a difficult past to step forward into a new future of hope and opportunity. Ideally that would embrace a cross-party consensus for Government action on education, as proposed by Sir Adrian Smith in his letter to The Times on Saturday 7th October: but, if this is not forthcoming, we can all be change-makers.

The top priority for Sunak’s education agenda appears to be his ‘Advanced British Standard’ (although it's a bit of a misnomer to describe it as ‘British’, because education is a devolved area of Government). He wants a new focus on English and Maths, and those are indeed the essential prerequisites for meaningful education at both academic and technical levels. However, it's disappointing to note the absence of financial awareness in these plans for life skills education, as almost everyone requires confidence in money matters, every day in adult life.

We continue to believe that the ingredients of The Share Foundation’s Stepladder programme, which embraces all three of these areas with the added inclusion of a clear statement of plans for the future, contains the right mix for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

However, the key ingredient which makes the Stepladder programme so effective is its use of incentivised learning; this achieves an attitudinal transformation for young people who would not otherwise engage with studies. The absence of such encouragement could well be an Achilles’ heel for Sunak’s plan for education up to the age of 18: compulsion provides the stick, but where is the carrot?

Incentivised learning of life skills is a key part of inter-generational rebalancing, therefore it also addresses the levelling-up issue. This commentary often stresses the importance of hypothecating inheritance tax receipts to provide its source of funding.

But, even without Government participation in this process of tax hypothecation, The Share Foundation has made a huge amount of progress during 2023, and its wider context is being explored actively in Share Alliance’s Cambridge research. Here's what's going on at present:

  • The Stepladder Plus programme has received a donation of £413,000 from the British Bankers’ Association, which has enabled the programme to be opened up for all young people in care age 15-17 across the United Kingdom.
  • For those young people who cannot manage studying for life skills in the Stepladder programme, a feasibility study is underway to explore the scope for providing hope and opportunity in the performing arts: this field offers encouragement, relationships and achievement to those whose technical or academic potential is limited.
  • As part of the ‘findCTF’ programme, which has enabled over 37,000 young adults to claim Child Trust Fund accounts worth a total of over £70 million, The Share Foundation has undertaken a research survey (on which we will report in due course). This includes offering an incentivised version of the Open University’s ‘Managing My Money’ course to those who have expressed an interest.
  • Further to our commentary on 21st August, exploratory contacts are being made to investigate the prospects for extending incentivised learning to African countries — these are at a very early stage at present.

Media comment has suggested that Rishi Sunak’s education plan will take many years to implement, but Government could work more closely with The Share Foundation now in order to deliver real benefits for young people from very disadvantaged backgrounds. Let's therefore hope that the determination to bring new opportunities for the future can build on existing experience as well as policy statements.

Gavin Oldham

Share Radio