Sometimes it’s the little issues that matter. An sudden kindness, a burst of late summer time sunshine, a cheerful snippet of stories; issues which are by no means going to vary the world, however elevate the temper a bit. For lecturers braced for the return to highschool this week, the information that Ofsted’s dreaded one-word grades – probably career-ending labels, from “outstanding” to “inadequate”, which ended up being all anybody actually remembered of an typically extra nuanced inspection report – shall be scrapped with fast impact might effectively fall into this class. It’s hardly a revolutionary change, since faculties that might have been judged to be failing beneath the previous regime will nonetheless face fast intervention. But it surely provides lecturers only a bit extra room to breathe.
It’s a small, human method of recognising the pressures they’ve been beneath and the depth of feeling triggered final 12 months by the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry, after her main college was abruptly downgraded to insufficient over errors in its safeguarding paperwork. (An inquest later dominated that the generally “rude and intimidating” inspection had performed a component in Perry’s deteriorating psychological well being.) Higher nonetheless, the announcement by the training secretary, Bridget Phillipson, comes forward of a extra substantial longer-term overview of what lecturers are literally being requested to show, which is anticipated to look at complaints that the Michael Gove-era curriculum had turn out to be impossibly overstuffed (do main schoolchildren actually need to know what a fronted adverbial is?) and badly in want of slightly pleasure injected again into it.
And it’s pleasure, to be blunt, that this younger authorities is presently missing. With the fantastic exception of Angela Rayner – caught raving it up in a DJ sales space in Ibiza on a faculty evening – Labour has marked its landslide victory by having the very reverse of a brat summer time. Weeks of clearing out Whitehall’s closets has produced a string of stern, buzz-killing pronouncements about how issues are most likely solely going to worsen earlier than they get higher – together with from Phillipson, who final week warned that the promised Tory rollout of free childcare locations for toddlers will go forward this autumn however might not ship every little thing mother and father needed.
In different information, a revolt over chancellor Rachel Reeves’ plan to means-test the winter gasoline cost for higher off pensioners is brewing. Some who voted Labour hoping Keir Starmer didn’t actually imply all that austere-sounding stuff are actually worrying they’ve ousted the Conservatives solely to finish up with roughly extra of the identical, whereas others who voted Labour are hoping fervently that he did imply it is going to have been unnerved by weeks of hysterical hypothesis about an autumn finances supposedly stuffed with middle-class tax rises not talked about within the manifesto.
The polls had been all the time going to slim as soon as the nation got here down off its post-election excessive, so Starmer’s tumbling approval scores aren’t any nice trigger for panic but. However there’s a restrict to how lengthy a authorities sitting on an enormous majority can maintain wailing that these aren’t the choices it actually needed to make with out beginning to look faintly helpless. All of which makes this back-to-school week at Westminster an important one, aiming to pierce the gloom by exhibiting Labour starting to ship on a few of its greater guarantees – like legislating to take railways again into nationwide possession, or decrease gasoline payments for the long run by organising the inexperienced funding automobile it calls Nice British Vitality – whereas providing some early causes to be cheerful within the brief time period.
Rayner has the uncommon reward on this cupboard of trying as if she’s really having enjoyable, which might be extra helpful than it sounds (ask Kamala Harris, whose exuberance has introduced the US presidential race alive). However in the long run it’s coverage, not drive of character, that counts. When not out clubbing, Rayner has been touting new rights to request a four-day week in a push in direction of making versatile working the norm. It’s not the novel reduce in nationwide working hours some needed – she’s speaking about compressed working, which is actually becoming 5 days’ price of a job into 4 longer days to realize a free weekday off – and it might not swimsuit mother and father anxious to be dwelling early sufficient for kids’s mattress and bathtub time.
However they’re not the one individuals determined for a bit extra time to themselves, and in contrast to the standard possibility of going part-time, compressed hours is a method of carving out house for a three-day weekend that crucially doesn’t require the type of pay reduce many individuals can’t afford. It makes versatile working look much less like a middle-class skilled luxurious, and it’s probably additionally extra father-friendly, given it’s one of many few types of versatile working that’s extra common with males than ladies.
Like Phillipson’s rethink of Ofsted, increasing concepts about who does and doesn’t get to have a wholesome work-life steadiness is a small coverage that’s probably able to stirring greater feelings. The identical is true of this autumn’s water regulation invoice, if it finally ends up making swimmers and surfers really feel secure to return within the water. The tradition secretary, Lisa Nandy, has additionally promised to examine the miserly Ticketmaster-style surge pricing ways which noticed Oasis reunion tickets double in value whereas followers had been caught within the queue to purchase them – one other much-needed enhance of optimism. All of those search for methods, even in powerful occasions, to make on a regular basis life a fraction simpler, much less hectic; happier, even. In a rustic floor down by what’s generally referred to as a “happiness recession”, that’s not nothing.
British youngsters are actually probably the most depressing in Europe, in response to a brand new evaluation by the Kids’s Society, whereas the measure of nationwide wellbeing revealed by the Workplace for Nationwide Statistics this summer time confirmed adults feeling extra anxious and fewer happy with their lives than in 2019. That official measure, it must be mentioned, solely exists due to David Cameron’s short-lived ardour for utilizing authorities to attempt to enhance nationwide happiness – a mission seen as serving to to ease the gloom of the austerity years that fizzled out moderately awkwardly when it turned apparent how a lot it may cost a little. Although cash can’t purchase happiness, it doesn’t half assist, and Cameron’s half-hearted early experiment serves as a warning that there’s a restrict to what this authorities will be capable to do on a budget.
However he was proper that it isn’t woolly minded or frivolous for politicians to prioritise the pursuit of happiness. This nation faces a protracted, arduous highway again to prosperity, and at occasions it’s evidently going to be a depressing one. Starmer wants to assist us take our fleeting pleasures the place we will.
