At the heart of the report published by the Tony Blair Institute titled "Ending the Big Squeeze on Skills: How to Futureproof Education in England" is a misguided idea of the purpose of education. On the face of it, the author's idea of the purpose of education appears fairly sound: "The role of education is to equip people with the skills and personal qualities they need to succeed in life." However the following paragraph in the text reveals that what they really mean by "succeed in life" is to be "productive" workers in the current economic system: "But these improvements are no longer enough and we face being left behind by a profound set of
changes. As our recent paper on expanding higher education argued, the application of AI and
automation means workers looking to thrive in the labour market of the future will increasingly require a
combination of “hard” and “soft” skills that complement, rather than rival, the new technologies."
On the one hand, the report author's rightly criticise the narrowing of secondary education via the Ebacc but at the same time they promote a view of education having an incredibly narrow purpose: for the young person to become a useful and effective cog in the labour market. By purely following this idea when policymaking you could end up with a system that does that and not much else and end up with a lot more people leaving formal education that most people wouldn't want to share modern Britain with.
In reality, education should be about much more than making young people 'work ready'. In the teacher standards, TS4.2 states "promote a love of learning and children’s intellectual curiosity" this can be a tricky one to evaluate yourself against when reflecting upon your own teaching practise as it's not very concrete. It's important that it's there though because it gives possibly the clearest indication there is in the standards that the education you're involved in delivering as a teacher is about more than transforming the children in front of you into 'productive' members of the workforce. There's an element of the view of education promoted by the TBI report that makes it easier for employers to shirk responsibility for investing in training and professional development for their employees. Education, as much as some might like it to be, is not about schools being factories that produce perfectly trained workers for companies to hire. The purpose of education should be broader than this. It should not simply be about enabling people to thrive economically, but socially too. From being able to form meaningful relationships to being able to empathise with the struggles of others in society and the wider world. Having broader educational objectives also benefits the employer and wider society. Learning to draw may not be directly applicable to a student's future career, but it could be beneficial to their mental health which could mean they don't need to take as many sick days in future. The point is that education can't be reduced to teaching just the things that have relevance to the most in demand workers. The primary purpose of education should be about passing on a broad understanding of the wider world to our students.
Alright, I've taken a broad stab at it, let's take a look at the report's recommendations in detail.
Reform 1: "Scrap the EBacc and retain Progress 8 as a performance measure but make it more
flexible to accommodate other valuable, non-EBacc GCSEs"
As I alluded to earlier I agree with this. Its one small aspect of this report that actually makes solid sense. Sadly, it's rapidly downhill from here and we'll go on to see how the authors demonstrate a lack of understanding of what goes on on schools and therefore an inability to conceive of how the status quo could be improved upon.
Reform 2: "Introduce elements of the “4Cs” (collaboration, communication, critical thinking
and creativity) as an accountability measure for schools, based on OECD tests. In time, further
develop this measure by incorporating a value-added component to it, so that progress is also measured
in context."
Now this is where we discover that the authors haven't been to a school. Or at least, not any school like the ones I've worked in. The report reads as if the so called "4Cs" are absent from education "Rather than be prodded into delivering a
tight and rigid notion of education, teachers need to be empowered to focus more on developing
complex skills like collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity." In reality, I'm not sure I've ever taught a lesson that doesn't include one or more of these skills. Let's take communication as an example: the second school I trained to teach at placed great focus on developing oracy in the classroom. I developed my ability to hold effective classroom discussions there a lot and many of the things I learned how to do well (no opt out, for example) I use pretty much every lesson with the possible exception of when I'm getting a class to do a test. Even then though, they're developing their communication skills in other ways. In my subject, they might be practising expressing algorithms or evaluating the impacts of a new technology on society. The fact of the matter is that this stuff is already done in schools and I'm not convinced of the value of expending a lot of effort measuring it.
Reform 3: "Replace the current system of assessment, including GCSEs and A-levels, with a
new qualification at 18 – this would draw on and refine the principles that underpin the International Baccalaureate and would include multiple, rigorous forms of continuous assessment between 16 and 18.
Retain a series of low-stakes assessments for pupils at the end of secondary schooling (16) to help
inform pupil choice and hold schools to account"
Here's the big one that's been making the headlines so lets examine what they're suggesting. Firstly, right there in the recommendation, "rigorous forms of continuous assessment" jumps out at me. Teacher assessed grades anyone? I worked in two different schools in that academic year and I observed the same situation playing out in both: students paranoid about every piece of work they did that was vaguely presented as an assessment in some way as they thought it may be used to calculate their final grade. Granted in that year there was a lot of uncertainty about how TAGs would work and presumably this wouldn't be the case if these proposals were enacted. However I can't see how it wouldn't just result in exams/assessment stress being spread out over two years and giving those students no breathing space to learn in that time. If you wanted to make mental health in post-16 students worse, I think this would be a pretty good way of going about it. I'm not opposed to rethinking the exams system but I've yet to find a proposal that (a) is more effective and fairer than the correct system and (b) doesn't result in an increase in teacher workload. I can't see this meeting either of those criteria.
Reform 4: "Change Ofsted’s strategy and approach to staffing to focus on safeguarding
(including safe classrooms free from bullying and other forms of harm) and quality of school
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management instead of pedagogy and the curriculum. Replace the grading system – where already 86
per cent of schools are now good or outstanding – with a more detailed one-page summary of strengths
and weaknesses, identifying what they are so that parents can see a more effective analysis of school
performance. Retain a pass/fail assessment for schools which require urgent remedial measures."
I've less of a problem with this in general as Ofsted does need, at the very least, some kind of reform. The problem I do have with how this has been worded is that it sounds as if the authors have never read an Ofsted report. It's not like schools just get a grade and that's it. In some inspections they don't get a grade! The report for the school I work at, published earlier this year, has a section titled "What does the school do well and what does it need to do better?" which funnily enough is about a page long. I also think it's a bit insulting to Ofsted inspectors to imply that they're incapable of adequately assessing safeguarding and curriculum at the same time.
Reform 5: "Establish a national digital infrastructure for education, starting with a student owned learner ID and digital profile. Nominate a designated data body for the school sector and
develop a peer benchmarking data tool for schools to contextualise performance."
This one is almost laughable in how much it sounds like Blair has a mate in Edtech who'd like to sell the government their shiny new platform. A platform which no doubt will come with a hefty price tag but will do little to improve educational outcomes for students. I can see it essentially being a really expensive positive press release for whoever happens to be education secretary at the time. Also the notion that it would "revolutionise parental choice"(!) most parents choice of school comes down to the state school that they live in the catchment area for. The idea that a parent is going to look at this and think "oh this school is slightly better at creativity than the one we were going to send our Bobby to. Better up sticks and move then!" is just for the birds.
Reform 6: "Empower Ofsted to play the “critical friend” role by using data to contextualise
and target interventions. Establish peer-to-peer expert groups to help resolve intractable issues."
The question that springs to my mind here is why would Ofsted be best placed to play this role? To some extent "peer-to-peer" expert groups already exist on the form of the experience within larger MATs. I know that there have been successful peer reviews done within our MAT of computing departments. Why not just "empower" MATs to do what some of them are already doing well?
Reform 7: "Establish an expert commission to reform the national curriculum and base it on
minimum proficiencies for numeracy, literacy, science and, with time, digital skills, building on
international best practice."
Firstly this makes it sound like we know nothing about what digital skills should be taught in schools which is to erase the work of a great many individuals on CS and IT education up to now. Yes, the research is not as developed as for a subject like maths but it isn't nothing. This so called "expert commission" I think risks duplicating the work of organisations like the NCCE in the field of CS education. I imagine there are similar equivalents in maths, English and Science too but I don't have the same experience in those subjects.
In the report section relating to this recommendation, it mentions the fact that the NC is linear and doesn't give teachers the flexibility to adapt to the needs of pupils. This just isn't true as the ability of a teacher to adapt to their pupils learning needs has very little to do with what they're teaching.
There's a disturbing lack of evidence for the assertion that this reform is required. I'm not arguing that it is or isn't here, but I'd like to see a bit more than two newspaper articles: one an opinion piece and another reporting on the views of a single academic. The other gov.uk link in the report appears to be broken.
Reform 8: "Introduce a statutory requirement for all schools including academies to follow
the core (numeracy, literacy, science and digital skills) of a newly reformed national curriculum."
I'm not necessarily opposed to this but it does seem a bit odd that they'd place so much importance on this in making it a key reform/recommendation when the report itself acknowledges that academies by and large follow the national curriculum anyway. Additionally, why, when arguing against the narrowing of the curriculum in other parts of the report, is this suggesting that schools should only be made to follow a narrow core of their proposed new NC?
Reform 9: "While education is an issue of high political salience, we need to find a way of
introducing more stability into the curriculum to prevent it lurching between ideological idiosyncrasies.
Design of the national curriculum should therefore be charged to a non-political and statutorily
independent body to evolve and update it as new evidence of best practice emerges."
An amazingly bizarre final recommendation here. It's not only impossible - education will always be something that politicians with no actual expertise want to argue about simply because they've all been to school - it's also not, in my view, desirable. I don't think it's a bad thing that people have debates about what should be taught in schools. In fact, if you entirely trust decisions of this nature to an independent body I think you'd risk undermining trust in education. People need to feel like they have a stake in it. And yes, I'm aware they've mentioned "meaningful consultation" but I'm always a bit sceptical when people in politics say that kind of thing.
Wrapping up
The report claims to be a guide on "How to Futureproof Education in England" but it's recommendations won't do that. The single most important thing any government could do to futureproof education is restore per pupil funding to 2010 levels plus additional to cope with rising costs. I've little hope that the current duo of potential prime ministers will be willing to consider this as their primary concern (when their not busy attacking the rights of minorities) seems to be finding the best way to offer tax breaks to the richest in society. It is the only way to do it though. Without proper investment the prospects for education in England will only worsen despite the best efforts of teachers and support staff because any change, even if better thought out than the contents of this report, wouldn't have the support or resources to get it off the ground.