Assistant Head Rich Atterton says governments risk failing millions of young people unless they can truly define what schools are for and, importantly, what they are not for.

What are schools for?

It’s telling how often the Department for Education changes its name. In the past 30 years it’s been known as the Department of Education and Science, the Department for Education and Employment, and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Each new label signals a change of focus, a shift in purpose. When the coalition government reverted to the simple Department for Education, it was, as Sam Freedman (tinyurl.com/4sz995tw) notes, a deliberate move away from the broader vision of integrated services. A return, in theory, to core business: the education of children. But what does that mean? Educate them for what? To what end? 

This is a question that governments rarely answer directly. Instead, their priorities are smuggled in through the language of 'standards', 'skills', 'employer needs', and *value for money'. The question of purpose is buried beneath performance targets and league tables. But it doesn't go away. It lurks behind every policy pivot, funding shift, and structural reform.

Skills, gaps, and economic demands 

One answer, increasingly dominant, is that schools exist to prepare young people for work. This view is often framed in the language of 'skills gaps' or 'employer expectations', and it crosses party lines. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has consistently called for an education system that's "more responsive" to labour market needs. Labour's current rhetoric leans heavily in this direction too, promising a "curriculum for work and life" positioning skills training as a key lever for growth. 

The logic is straightforward. If education equips people with the right skills, the economy thrives. If not, productivity stalls. But behind this apparent common sense lies a more troubling assumption: that the primary purpose of schools is instrumental, to serve the needs of business. 

This isn't just about vocational pathways or apprenticeships. It shapes how all subjects are valued, how curriculum time is allocated, and how students themselves are framed. Knowledge becomes valuable only when it's marketable. Subjects are assessed not for their depth or cultural contribution, but for their economic utility. The arts, languages, even history and literature, are squeezed to make space for what's 'useful'.

 In the real world of schools, the answer to what we are for is more confusing than ever. We're told, often simultaneously, to raise attainment, close gaps, prioritise wellbeing, build character, tackle extremism, meet employer needs, deliver cultural capital, and support inclusion. Each is framed as essential. Few are resourced. None are reconciled. 

The result isn't rigour, it's incoherence. Leaders are left managing a patchwork of demands that don't align. A child's mental health crisis doesn't pause because this term's focus is attendance. A safeguarding referral can't wait until after the mock data drops. The real moral work of education gets crowded out by short-term imperatives. 

This is the quiet truth of modern education leadership: we're running institutions that are asked to do too much, with too little, under the wrong assumptions. We're expected to be both public servants and private contractors. To deliver measurable outcomes while being infinitely pastoral. To 'close gaps' that begin at birth using spreadsheets and assemblies. 

And when the outcomes are met, when the Progress 8 scores are strong, when the attendance nudges up, there is little space to ask what was sacrificed along the way.

MATs and the rise of the quasi-welfare school 

Recently, governments have equivocated on MATs. But the direction of travel is becoming clear. MATs are not just vehicles for educational reform; they are becoming platforms for integrated delivery. 

Trusts like Oasis Community Learning have already moved decisively in this direction. Their community hubs offer not just education, but food banks, uniform banks, baby-care essentials, youth work, mental health services, and family support. Some MATs now employ educational psychologists in-house, run centralised careers advice, and coordinate wraparound childcare across sites. What used to be fragmented, local authority services are increasingly embedded within the trust infrastructure.

It's not hard to see why. Large MATs can pool resources, scale provision, and reach families faster than external agencies. Some do so out of deep moral conviction. Others do it because no-one else will. 

And for ministers facing mounting social need and limited local authority capacity, the logic is appealing. If schools are already sites of contact, trust, and routine, why not make them nodes of care too? If a trust can offer dental checks and dinner as well as timetables and targets, isn't that more efficient? 

This may be the next evolution of the system: the quasi-welfare MAT, a one-stop shop for education, safeguarding, nutrition, and psychological support. If it works, it could become a blueprint. If it fails, it risks collapsing under the weight of unsustainable expectation.

Schools are left to pick up the slack 

Schools are often expected to provide a laundry service, winter coats, therapy, resilience, relationship advice, and sex education. But at what point do we acknowledge that a school is not a parent? 

Some argue we have already gone too far. That by filling every gap schools risk masking the very inequalities society should confront directly. 

And yet, there is a danger in this framing too. The nostalgic idea that schools once 'just taught' is a myth. As long as schools have existed, they have shaped character, instilled values, enforced hygiene, monitored behaviour, and managed risk.

The real question, then, isn't whether schools should do more or less, but whether they're doing what they are meant to do and are doing it well.

Schools aren't doing all this because they want to; they're doing it because the needs are real, and because those needs walk through the gates every morning. A hungry child finds

it harder to learn. A teenager in a bed-sit struggles to revise. A student navigating trauma can't access school the way others can.

So, schools respond. Not because they believe it's their central purpose, but because not responding prevents them delivering their core service. Schools have become the emergency services of the welfare state, not by design, but by default.

But while schools keep picking up the slack, the government will always feel like it doesn't need to. As long as schools are absorbing the consequences of poverty, neglect, and broken systems, there is less urgency to fix the causes upstream. We become the safety net that masks the hole in the floor. And that brings us back to the original question: what are schools for?

If we don't define that clearly, and loudly, others will. And every time we add another role to the list, without confronting the wider failure behind it, we risk losing sight of the very thing we were meant to do: educate. For now, we will continue standing in the gap when no-one else will. But not in silence. And not forever.

Rich Atterton
ASCL Honorary Secretary and Assistant Head of The Marlborough Science Academy

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