Time and time again politicians, policy-makers and practitioners end up operating at the wrong scale.
A policy or service developed with the best intentions, becomes ineffective or even counterproductive when it is implemented either too locally – or not local enough.
Take the current issue of grading school results in the UK. It may well be appropriate to moderate or standardise teacher assessments to be more closely aligned with what the grades would have been if pupils had taken exams.
But that moderation – even using an algorithm – could have been done at many different scales – the UK level, in the four nations, regionally – or at the scale of local government.
It’s a question of scale that has to be decided – and the decision has consequences.
Applying the moderation at the most local scale – individual schools – has belatedly been recognised as palpably unfair to individuals; and has been scrapped[1].
The scale was too local.
At the other extreme, a national “test and trace system” to identify and tackle COVID-19 infections was criticised as under-used and ineffectual. Belatedly, again, it has been recognised as needing to be changed; and a more tailored, localised approach is being implemented[2].
The scale wasn’t local enough.
The cost in money and people’s lives from getting the scale wrong can be massive.
So when politicians, policy-makers and service commissioners think and talk of tackling domestic abuse, this is another issue that affects people across the whole country.
It is vital that those in power make decisions and provide responses at the right scale: recognising what must be national – what local – and understand the serious consequences for getting this right or wrong.