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When, he argued that four decades of neoliberalism had failed the communities that built the Labour movement and called for a new economic path. Whether this rhetorical shift translates into economic reform remains to be seen, but the acknowledgement that structural conditions – not simply individual choices – shape people’s capacity to flourish creates an important challenge for educators. If government is prepared to reclaim responsibility for inequality and institutional failure, our educational paradigms must follow. Character education in England has too often operated as a shock absorber for structural shortcomings. Nowhere is this more evident than in our reliance on resilience.

‘Character education in England has too often operated as a shock absorber for structural shortcomings. Nowhere is this more evident than in our reliance on resilience.’

England’s character education identifies resilience and self-regulation among the capacities schools may seek to cultivate. Yet resilience is neither politically nor morally neutral. has been associated with neoliberal governance through its individualising tendencies, its transfer of responsibility onto individuals and communities, and its emphasis on adaptability and reflexive self-management. The pursuit of – understood partly through resilience – is not inherently moral. When character education elevates such traits without attending to the external conditions required for flourishing, it risks becoming depoliticised.

Nowhere is this more starkly exposed than in mainstream SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) provision. describes a fragmented, underresourced system in which unmet SEND needs may be misunderstood and treated as bad behaviour. suggests that when a child with complex needs is placed in an environment without adequate specialist support, the setting may be inherently dysregulating. Yet the child’s resulting distress may be interpreted not as evidence of structural failure, but as a lack of personal adaptability. and school staff demonstrates this mismatch: pupils described uncertainty, anxiety and unsafe environments, while staff were more likely to interpret their difficulties through avoidance, resilience and engagement. We ask the pupil to self-regulate to endure an inflexible system, rather than resourcing the system to include the pupil. The demand for resilience weaponises character education. It shifts the burden of austerity onto the shoulders of those least able to carry it, rebranding the state’s failure to provide as the child’s failure to cope.

‘The demand for resilience weaponises character education. It shifts the burden of austerity onto the shoulders of those least able to carry it, rebranding the state’s failure to provide as the child’s failure to cope.’

If we abandon this individualised survival model, what should replace it? As government signals a renewed willingness to accept state responsibility, the temptation may be to revive a model of civic compliance: producing ‘good’, obedient subjects for a strengthened public realm. But replacing conformity to the market with conformity to the state is not progress; it merely swaps one inflexible set of rules for another.

A genuinely democratic, post-neoliberal character education must move beyond measuring character as a set of individual attributes and instead cultivate inclusive, collective practical wisdom. offers a route towards this: by making practical judgment explicit and accessible rather than assuming neurotypical social intuition, it reframes phronesis as something that can be deliberately supported rather than tacitly expected. In a post-neoliberal context, this must extend further: practical wisdom should be understood not only as accessible to individuals but as something communities develop and exercise together.

Character should not be defined by a pupil’s solitary capacity to endure a fractured system, but by how communities deliberate, negotiate and make ethical choices together. Phronesis is not a private possession exercised by an idealised autonomous individual. It is a shared and participatory practice, developed through relationships, disagreement and mutual responsibility. This requires more than inviting every pupil to speak. highlights the importance of creating spaces in which different perspectives can genuinely inform changes to practice. It requires educational environments in which different forms of communication, regulation and participation genuinely shape collective judgment, and in which before their contributions are treated as valuable.

As the political landscape shifts, education must seize the opportunity to redefine what it means for a pupil to flourish. If we are genuinely moving beyond the neoliberal consensus, we can no longer settle for a pedagogy of endurance. Rather than teaching our most vulnerable children quietly to survive an inequitable society, we must create the conditions in which all pupils can develop and exercise the collective practical wisdom needed to transform it. An inclusive, democratic character education does not demand that children continually reshape themselves to fit a broken mould; it gives the next generation the shared tools and agency to cast a new one.

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