Evidence and Policy – Special Educational Needs

The Learning Game, written by Michael Barber in 1995, was both a detailed analysis of educational policy and its implementation, and a prescient analysis of what New Labour would do when in power. There was very little in education policy for the first five years that was not pre-described in The Learning Game.

But what I remember best was a devastating critique of the policy process under what Barber called ‘free market Stalinism’. His cycle went like this:

1. Invent a daft idea: better still, borrow one from the Centre for Policy Studies.

2. Invent a mythical problem that the daft idea is intended to solve.

3. Place some articles in the middle-brow tabloids about how serious the mythical problem is.

4. Propose the daft idea as a solution.

5. Either (a) consult on it, taking care to ignore all the responses to the consultation or (b) pilot it and declare the pilot a success before it is complete,

6. Implement it

7. Start again.
 
Barber gives several examples, including one in which the pilot was declared a success before it had even begun (teacher training in schools).

Now, it is quite possible to analyse some of the wilder excesses of the New Labour administration in this way, there was a mantra, not always popular, but philosophically sound, of “evidence-based policy”.

But the reason all this came to mind has been coverage of Sarah Teather’s proposed changes to special educational needs policy. Item 5 (b) above is instructive.

A green paper was published in March 2011. A draft bill is imminent, and the DfE says reforms will be in place for 2014. At the time, Sarah Teather said that these were the biggest reforms for 30 years and “we need to make sure we get them right”. She said she was “looking forward to seeing how the pathfinders progress over the next few months to test out how we can make our proposed changes a reality”. (my italics).

So far, well and good, but what has happened? Eight months later, many of the pilot projects have yet to introduce the new arrangements or even decide which families will take part. Ipsea has said “even if all the planned number of families were in place by the beginning of June, that would only involve children six weeks in school before the summer holiday to even start considering the effect of a single assessment or plan, or personal budget”. In East Sussex, the pilot has recruited 50 families, but the pilot will not be operating until September.

So the whole new system for 1.7 million children, and costing many millions of pounds, will be designed on the basis of a very few families over a very short period. Remember the draft bill is due to be published in the summer.

This may not be ”free market Stalinism” but it is redolent of the minister and her civil servants trying to do something very important for very many families on the back of a very large fag packet.

And the people who will lose out by this inordinate rush to legislation are the children and families. And who will be blamed? Why, the local authorities will be blamed by central government for not implementing the new arrangements “properly” and by parents for failing to meet their children’s needs.