I'd love to take @LucyMPowell on a schools tour. One week. Sevenish secondaries. Good ones, bad ones, I'd pick. Coastal, rural, urban. A good mix. We turn up in the morning with DBS's, we tell the schools there are no cameras, no inspections, nothing, we're just here to get a vibe. Go see some lessons. Hit the corridors. Spend time with teachers on duty. Chat to heads of department. Maybe have lunch with some students. Ask the admin team for a flavour of their day and the stuff they are having to deal with. Evenings is drinks. But not swanky things with MAT CEOs and folk with the letters after their names. They're important, but they already have a seat at the table. Instead, we invite front-line teachers and middle leaders. We want to know what life is like on the ground. What are their bosses telling them to do? Do they agree? Do they think there are other things they should be prioritising? What do they think would really help the children they teach? I think Powell would maybe change her mind about some things. About where schools do well, and where they don't. About just how stuck some of our schools are, and how routes to improvement are ordinarily based not in widespread reform, but in the concrete day to day of efficient and effective schools. Rather than grand narratives, simple things like improving behaviour and classroom standards. Getting students out of the corridors and into classrooms, and getting every teacher a working laptop and a board that doesn't keep glitching. Clear escalatory processes, and the manpower and capacity to enforce them. Bandwidth for teachers to deal with the increasing pressures from a broken SEND system and an increasingly demanding parent body. Physical, concrete things. Not educational reform, but direct school actions and strategies. I'd love to do that. I think she'd enjoy it, and I reckon it would be time well spent.