Same old, same old: back to school behaviour announcement reads like tired re-tread of Conservative policies
DfE: Churning out over-familiar policy announcements. Image: Alamy.
Continuation of outline of policy and personnel from previous government, including re-appointment of Tom Bennett, disappoints when something much deeper is needed.
I may not be the target audience. As a parent of two children going through secondary school, and with nearly 30 years’ experience in receipt of government education press releases, the embargoed announcement that came my way might have been expected to induce a world-weary sigh.
Still, it did rather take the breath away, in its superficiality and the sense of another school year opening with the same stale ideas and spin emanating from the Department for Education that we have seen through much of my time covering its work, with the government seemingly also keen to continue leaning on advisers ported over from the last administration.
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By Warwick Mansell for EDUCATION UNCOVERED
Published: 31 August 2025
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Depressing stuff, Warwick. The familiar resort to a ‘Czar’, but one who lacks empirical bases for the stuff he pumps out. A time for constructively different approaches is going to be lost.
Hard to comment on this without descending into a string of expletives - all the data indicates that the punitive approaches supported by Bennett et alea have only exacerbated the crises in mental health and school dissatisfaction - Labour continue in this sphere as in so many others to be "continuation Tories".
What a thoroughly depressing move by DfE. How can someone as divisive as Bennett possibly be an effective "ambassador"?
On 24/07/2025 I tweeted re one of your articles about a ‘RC Diocese under a new government’ that traditionally governments have changed but the “DfE direction of travel remains the same”. It’s happened again on behaviour and attendance recently. Andrew John Davies has reflected on X today re T Bennett’s controversial policies and reappointment, I’ve responded briefly, “ Is the problem of ‘zero tolerance’, that it doesn’t start to deal with the underlying causes of unacceptable behaviour. Discovering why an individual misbehaves is expensive on staff time and not usually short-term, or do we think we’re dealing with animals?” hoping to provoke a deeper discussion, but in DfE policy terms it’s too late - the same folk are in the department and politicians a re accepting their guidance without question.
I absolutely agree, so disappointing.