“Everyone participates in the social contract every day, and we rarely stop to think about it. Yet social contracts shape every aspect of our lives, including how we raise our children and engage in education.” (Minouche Shafik)
We live in difficult and darkening times. The growing gloom is becoming oppressive, encouraging retreat and reducing belonging. The social contract that shapes and guides every aspect of our lives is fracturing. For far too many children and families this is fundamentally altering their relationship with society, authority, and how we value and engage in education.
The “social contract” is a theoretical agreement between individuals and society wherein people relinquish certain freedoms and abide by agreed-upon rules and norms in exchange for social order and mutual benefits.
These are dark ages, characterised by challenging economics and social inequity, that are presenting both a psychological and material challenge. This is infecting and altering the narratives we tell ourselves and each other about what is important and what our contributions to society should be.
“We all … listen for an account of who we are and where we stand.” (George Monbiot)
Increasing numbers of children and adults are opting out from a world that finds multiple ways of challenging their sense of self, place, and agency. Whilst for some the light is not fading, for too many others, often the most vulnerable, the gloom is encouraging retreat from the agreed contract. Schools are at the heart of the maelstrom, open, available, and trusted enough for some families to fight against, because few others are listening, available or there. Schools stretch and respond to the needs that walk into school every day, attempting to fulfil their duty of care, often without the resource or expertise.
For increasing numbers of pupils and families, school is seen as optional, far from being irresistible or a place of opportunity. The prevailing narrative is replacing long held norms around the value of education, driven by a weakening social contract and the entrenched inequities in society. The disadvantage gap, on any measure, is wide and widening, embarrassingly so. Fundamentally, the social contract is built on trust– when the returns from society diminish or disappear, or where we become increasingly priced out of life, we see the contract weakening and the trust we hold erodes.
“Trusting others puts us in an inherently vulnerable position… the proof of the importance of trust is the intense emotional pain that accompanies it being broken.” (Owen Eastwood)
We need a revised and reinforced social contract that seeks greater cohesion, strengthens belonging and places education at the heart of this nation. This needs to secure far greater equity through education and a much stronger architecture of opportunity. An architecture enacted by stronger trust and system leadership, greater connectivity and purposeful collaboration between trusts and schools so that we take collective responsibility and stewardship for our sector. All Trusts working together for all children.
“It is only through building a connected system that we will be able to address the multiple challenges facing our communities” (Leora Cruddas)
Building the effectiveness of our trust, civic and system leadership to build an education system that is able to address the multiple challenges, redistribute esteem and enable many more children to live lives of decency and dignity.
“…we need a redistribution of esteem… to live lives of decency and dignity, winning social esteem. …(to) travel the road to 2045 with purpose, dignity and accomplishment.” (Peter Hennessy)
Seeking together to build strong trusts with great schools that meet need. Enabling more children and families to belong and benefit from a renewed social contract, gaining a greater sense of agency in their lives and contributing towards the common good.
“Agency gives us control over our time, and it encourages us to choose what our contribution looks like.” (Seth Godin)
In the eye of the storm
The lines between school and society have blurred. Schools are trying to respond to the fracturing of the social contract. Where deprivation bites and societal problems leak into schools, colleagues can become overwhelmed. They take increasing amounts of time to support, resolve, and cope with difficult and widening societal issues of children and families, obligated to fulfil their deeply held duty of care for the communities they serve.
The present level of attendance, suspensions and disenfranchisement, particularly of those presently disadvantaged, is a national crisis – a social epidemic. As the narrative falters, individuals are making pragmatic decisions around survival and choosing to opt out, to not conform, to challenge authority, avoid commitment and to escape the perceived risk of failing in class.
If life is a game, too many are deciding not to play.
Fracturing built on entrenched inequity
It is not that the social contract has suddenly fractured, it has been creaking over time and is evident in the inequalities that characterise our society. Just as there are triggers for climate change, where it becomes irreversible and the impact is catastrophic, the same is true of the social contract. Multiple factors have triggered descent to this crisis point with our social contract.
Strong Trusts, Great Schools, Meeting Need | An architecture of opportunity
“There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children.” (Kofi Annan)
The present architecture of opportunity in our sector, exists within a developing Trust landscape. It is timely, urgent and imperative for Trusts and groups of schools to work together within stronger collaborative structures to build strong trusts capable of supporting more great schools that are well placed to meet need. The sector should grasp the opportunity to create a stronger architecture of opportunity that addresses the societal challenges and particularly the widening disadvantage gap. Trusts and schools need to work much more collaboratively to realise the promise of academisation and to secure greater equity through education.
We are the system
The development of great schools across the sector that enable all children to lead full, flourishing lives is at that heart of the renewal we seek.
“We need a broader and more ambitious vision of what a good life is. Human flourishing and dignity for all, requires us to have a wide set of success measures. Placing greater value on things such as contribution, difference, common values, and the process of learning and work itself.” (Ben Newmark, Tom Rees)
The collaborative structures we need to build within and across the sector are required to secure a greater dividend, one that rises the tide for all children. Schools need to grow good humans through strong culture and inspire young minds through great teaching held within a progressive, sequenced curriculum that liberates agency and meets the needs of children now and for their future. This requires us to develop leaders(hip) that understands how to improve schools within the collaborative structure of Trusts, accelerated by Trusts working closer together. This will demand a move from silos to deliberate collaboration, so that we, together, take greater collective stewardship of our sector.
The deficit narrative in society is reflected within our sector and in our schools. It is no accident that the current recruitment and retention challenges, the catastrophic decline in ITT applications and weakening working conditions are linked to the deficit narrative around schools and the value that our nation places on education. It is not that there isn’t an appetite to meet and reverse the challenges of the failing social contract, it is that it feels progressively more futile given the available funding, resourcing, staffing, and expertise that is required to meet the ever-increasing demand.
Stewardship and Longtermism
The investment in education needs to be long-term and it requires a commitment over generational timescales that inconveniently span timescales longer than political terms of office. We are prone to shortermism and this struggles to keep up with the complex needs of a growing number of children and families.
“We should shift our energies upstream: personally, organisationally, nationally and globally. We can, and should, stop dealing with the symptoms of problems, again and again, and start fixing them.” (Dan Heath)
This is urgent; it is not just about now, it is fundamentally about the future and the future health of our society and the standing, place and importance of education. Great schools are the hope, and increasingly the only hope, but they are exposed and creaking under the weight of the failing social contract. Schools and Trusts need to consider deeply their role in society and the educational offer that will better meet the needs of all children, now and into their adulthood.
The weather is oppressive
The prevailing climate is increasingly oppressive and characterised by profound uncertainty.
“How to live in a world where profound uncertainty is not a bug, but a feature?” (Yuval Noah Harari)
Our response to this uncertainty and the challenges of our time has influenced the national psyche and altered our narratives. So much has shifted in our lived experience…
The global pandemic, Brexit, standards in public life (Nolan Principles), high inflation, high interest rates, energy costs, mortgage rates, loan rates, cost of living, AI, inaccessible first homes, decline in living standards, shifting employment types and longevity, climate change, political turmoil, social media, conflicts across the world (including Europe), long waiting lists, funding crisis, erosion of local services and multi-agency services, mental health challenges, public service strikes, recruitment, retention…
… disconcerting, oppressive, challenging; encouraging retreat and a deafening backdrop to life.
All of which play out unevenly across society. Except that, this is not true for everyone. These oppressive conditions tend to maintain the status quo for those who have means and power.
The shifting locus of control; retreating from the noise
“Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves.” Ben Okri
Our society has always been divided into those who have and those who have not. Typically, the most disadvantaged in society have an external locus of control, one that encourages retreat, and one that negates a sense of agency. The current challenges are pushing more children into believing and acting as if they have an external locus of control. When this happens, they look to the contract that is meant to hold them, meant to say to them that they belong, and they pragmatically choose retreat and make decisions about their contribution to society; becoming more invisible.
Ubuntu: “I am a person through other people; my humanity is tied to yours.” (Zulu proverb)
We must reinforce, redesign and improve the social contract. It is fractured and faltering. We must not stand-by and in doing so collude with this erosion. We need a society and an education system that builds back the social contract for the common good and creates an architecture of opportunity, so that more are invited to dance.
Architecture of Opportunity | an invitation to dance
1. We need to renew the invitation to dance, so that individuals contribute and benefit from the social contract. We need a new national and educational narrative around schools that places education at the heart of social renewal. This should seek to create a greater sense of belonging, status and esteem, a more just society and communities where children and families flourish.
“Those who imagine the ground beneath their feet is solid are probably managing the present, not leading into the future.” (Tracey Camilleri, et al.)
2. We are the system. As educators we have an opportunity and responsibility to make a difference, to tell a stronger narrative and to influence the national position of education. We need to review the present paradigm and ensure that we are keeping our side of the contract. We need to ensure that Trusts and schools develop organisational leadership to build a sector that rises the tide. Strong Trusts with Great Schools that Meet Need.
“You cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one. Whether the systems that emerge from this rupture are better or worse than the current dispensation depends on our ability to tell a new story.” (George Monbiot)
3. We need to invest more in education; an investment that yields a long-term dividend to our society and nation. The pay off will not just boost the economy, but it will improve well-being, mental health, community cohesion and deliver social justice. This investment will support schools to fulfil their duty of care and create an architecture of opportunity where the power of education will secure greater equity. Not for us, for them.
4. We need to take a longer-term view on the role of education in society, as the moral priority of our time. Taking greater stewardship of the future, building collaborative structures where all educationalist can share responsibility for all children. It is what we owe their future.
“Longtermism is about taking seriously just how big the future could be and how high the stakes are in shaping it. We need to act wisely.” (William Macaskill)
5. We need to invest more in the first 1001 days from conception and in readying children for school. This lights the fire, sets the stage and reinforces, at the earliest possible moment, that education and investing in human potential is part of the fabric of our social contract. This includes educating and influencing parenting and the nations understanding of key developmental stages. We need to follow through on that investment into early years to give the best possible start in life, to secure the importance of school, where children belong and where we genuinely work upstream to prevent downstream problems.
“We have the opportunity to help people become significant… build a culture of affiliation and status.” (Seth Godin)
6. We need more great schools that meet the needs of all children. Schools that secure strong culture and great teaching to build great humans and bestow the very best curriculum, for our children in these times. Trusts need to work together to develop system leadership and purposeful collaboration that accelerates our impact on the everyday experience of every child. So that together we realise and enhance the collective Trust Dividend on children and society. We should seek to secure greater attainment mobility, to close gaps for those presently disadvantaged, and meet the needs of those with SEND.
“There should be a national strategy to close the attainment gaps that have opened since the pandemic. Addressing these gaps should be a national priority, with a long-term plan in place, based on evidence.” (Sutton Trust)
7. We need to urgently address the attendance crisis in this country. Seeking to tackle the entrenched challenges of our time, to strengthen our narrative around the importance of education and build back the social contract. Improving attendance is urgent; the damage and implications for this generation will play out across society and over decades.
“Culture can change. And it is schools and school systems that have the power to change it.” (Lucy Crehan)
8. We need to invest in ‘place’, work in strong partnerships and fulfil our civic responsibilities. We need Trusts and schools to collaborate and develop civic leadership to take greater stewardship for the places that we educate. Without these collaborative structures in place, we will not create the architecture of opportunity and the multi-agency working required to serve the communities where children grow up.
“Civic leadership is about the protection and promotion of public values and addressing issues of place …creat(ing) the conditions for collective impact by addressing complex issues affecting children … that require different actors to work together.” (Leora Cruddas)
9. We need to invest in wider services, and find ways to effectively work in closer partnerships with others, including social care that sit in and around schools – renewing and reinforcing the broken contract, as an expression of care and duty. Taking greater opportunity to understand and meet the needs of all children and adults. Funding and supporting schools to realise their civic duty, with enough resource and expertise to meet demand and fulfil our duty of care.
10. We need to be clear on where the boundaries of the social contract sit between schools and society. This clarity is required to understand where responsibilities sit and to reduce the flow of societal issues into schools. We need to either rebuild the agencies, services and expertise in our communities or significantly invest in schools as community hubs to meet the needs of society.
Through joint enterprise and shared responsibility we can build a society and an education system that renews the social contract for the common good and create an architecture of opportunity so that more are invited to dance.
“It is a matter of shared purpose and sustained application.” (Peter Hennessy)
Dan Nicholls | July 2023
Dan Nicholls 