Bridget Phillipson’s focus on wellbeing is a breath of fresh air

Last week’s speech by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, was one of the most refreshing I can recall hearing from a leading government figure on education, in 27 years covering schools reform.

There were a host of subtle movements away from the discourse we have seen for the past 14 years, and in some cases from well before that time, too. But one strand of her thoughts stood out.

“A sole focus on achievement is doomed to fail,” Ms Phillipson said, as she set out an approach which would prioritise children’s mental health and wellbeing as at least as important as academic results.

It is perhaps a commentary on the strange formula that policymakers have followed for schools reform over recent decades that I struggle to remember any leading minister having made a similar argument, going back all the way to the days of New Labour and embracing the coalition and exclusively Conservative governments post-2010.

I wrote a book published in 2007 about the data-driven obsessions foisted on schools through results-driven accountability, and the demonstrable side-effects of this for some children in the chase for improving statistics. I remember stories being put out in the 2010s by Gordon Brown as Chancellor and then Prime Minister, on how the government was getting tough on “failing schools,” “driving up standards” and so on. There was in those moments little rhetorical emphasis on wellbeing, amidst what could offer seem like an anxiety-soaked narrative of addressing academic failure.*