Zero hours contracts, disappearing insects, rising obesity, opioids, bleached coral and saying “f**k” on TV.
They are all normal now.
Creeping normalcy. It's how we fail to respond to slow-moving issues and crises. Individual changes seem small (acceptable even) so a new state of affairs gets absorbed as “normal.”
One school closes - it happens!
Two schools merge - that’s life!
Three go - what’s new?
Nothing to see here. As the baseline shifts no single moment feels like a crisis. We hear about “boiling a frog” to describe changes we don’t notice. But frogs aren’t stupid. They know how to jump and get themselves out of hot water.
Schools can’t jump and they don’t have instincts.
As the cost for independent school fees rises and the numbers of pupils exiting the sector grows, we risk accepting the decline as normal. We will just see fewer, more expensive schools. The ever-warmer water is comfortable for some. They can scoop up some of the smaller, failing schools, gather their pupils and even sell off their assets if they need to. But still the sector will weaken.
Creeping normalcy is a documented cognitive phenomenon. It won’t be long before we don’t see news items about schools closing because we won’t see it as news. There may be a few posts here and in other media. There will be the wringing of hands at conferences and meetings, but we will have normalised the decline.
Scaremongering? A lot is normal now that was unknown before - who bats an eye about AI slop, extreme rhetoric, ubiquitous porn, doom scrolling and the shrinking of attention spans. There were no triggering moments, each step was small enough to be absorbed, so the drift was not confronted. If the alarm was sound not enough people were really listening.
We are seeing the decline in the size of independent school sector different to cyclical ups and downs. Despite this it looks like old solutions are being used to try to solve a new problem. Meetings, posts, lobbying and strongly worded concerns from school leaders and their associations are not going to reverse the trend and the government won’t step in and help.
So what will help? Individually schools must prioritise themselves and their communities, yet the biggest and most influential resource remains unused. This is the body of families that now and in the past invested in these schools. Theirs is the demonstration of demand, theirs are the millions invested in the sector and theirs is the energy that keeps these schools going. With over half a million children in independent schools and nine million alumni, the families are a powerful bloc.
The independent sector has benefitted so many, and its pupils have contributed disproportionately to our society. It is something to be treasured and defended. If coordinated and organised the families that keep it going have the potential to make the changes necessary to stop the creeping decline.
