Response

From the General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders has come this response:

I have read much of the paper, but I cannot say it fills me with enthusiasm, although there is plenty in it with which I agree.  There is indeed far too much political interference in education, but we cannot escape the political dimension.  But there is much that is right in the present system – which is why we need evolution, not revolution with all its attendant upheaval, usually on the basis of political theory or with no, or very flimsy, evidence.

To which I replied:

I agree with you far more than you realise.  While education is inevitably a political activity, I fear the way in which it has become so overtly party political.  The whole reason for writing Overschooled but Undereducated, and now for the Parliamentary Briefing Paper is to help the people of England – especially the parents – to see through the posturing of politicians to what are the real issues in bringing up children.

But, infuriating as can be the ambitions of politicians, they are not the basic root of the problem.  The total environment in which we live, and children grow, is changing, and that undermines the traditional structure of schooling as we know it.  Time and tide wait for no man.

The story is told of Mercedes Benz whose management, having produced 1,400 cars in 1927, called for a consultants’ report on how many cars the company could be producing in fifty years time.  When the report came back it said this should be 40,000.  The management were shocked at the naivety of the consultants for this was self-obviously ridiculous – there was no way the schools could train 40,000 chauffeurs a year.  We laugh, but we can be equally blind to change.

As long as we educationalists simply fight our separate corners (in the case I think you are making, namely that of secondary education) we are failing the children of England by not publicly admitting that the issue is about how children are helped to learn and grow up, not simply the structure of formal schooling.

This article is tagged: briefing paper.