Success of School Cuts publicity drive –despite Labour’s general election defeat –shows the value of campaigning

Are there any positives, in terms of the future outlook for schools, to cling to for those who backed the losing parties in last week’s general election result?

Many are likely to be desperate for some sense of optimism, given that there is evidence that the Conservatives were only the third choice of teachers in this election, while age-group voter data carries at least a strong hint that the party was not the most popular among the parents of children currently at school. All this, in a national poll billed as the most important in a generation.

Meanwhile, further data, put out by the National Education Union in advance of the election and backed by statistics from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), shows that the Conservative spending plans for schools are substantially less generous than what would have been implemented under Labour or Liberal Democrat commitments.

So…what is the upside?

Well, my take is that even the Conservative spending projections are much more generous than was suggested two years ago by the party under Theresa May, and that there is at least reason to hypothesise that the “School Cuts” campaign has played a healthy part in that.