The pandemic has imposed immense costs in lives, living standards and public health. The most enduring burdens will be borne by young people, whose education has been disrupted and whose life chances may suffer in consequence. Repairing the damage is urgent. Yet, while the crisis has aggravated inequalities in educational provision and outcomes, it did not create these problems. Tackling them requires a longer-term assessment of where the education system is failing. The crisis ought to provide the impetus for change.
The Times established an independent commission last year to consider ways to reform education and make it more suitable for the digital age. We publish the commission’s interim findings today. They point to an existing curriculum that is outdated and remote from the world of work. In its final report, to be published in the summer, the commission will make recommendations on how to narrow that chasm and ensure that education encourages individuality. Survey evidence suggests there are big potential rewards in business success as well as enhanced social mobility.
The commission was originally proposed by Sir Anthony Seldon, the educationist. It is chaired by Rachel Sylvester, the Times writer, and its members are drawn from various fields encompassing education, politics, commerce, science, technology and the arts. Their expertise is diverse but all are convinced that education needs to be reformed for a generation, comparable to RA Butler’s Education Act of 1944, rather than be subordinated to the shorter-term cycle of electoral politics and Treasury spending rounds.
In the past seven months the commission has taken evidence from more than 300 witnesses, including 11 former education secretaries and two ex-prime ministers. The consensus view, not least among parents and pupils, is that what is being taught is only tangentially connected to the requirements of success in later life. In particular, technology is not as central to education as it ought to be. A salutary counter-example is Estonia, whose pioneering educational system ensures that technology is integrated into every subject rather than being a separate discipline.
Education in England in particular has long been hampered by an artificial distinction between knowledge and skills. The philosophy of Victorian reformers, such as Thomas Arnold, was that training young minds in critical disciplines would best equip them for life. Certainly a breadth of expertise is essential to solve the problems of our own era. Yet the existing curriculum neither adequately incorporates advances in knowledge nor teaches skills in sufficient depth to prepare children for productive working lives.
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As well as the questions of how and what children are taught, the commission has considered how they are assessed. The cancellation of exams because of the pandemic for two successive years has underlined that the system of assessment is bureaucratic and unwieldy. It focuses on what children have failed to learn rather than on what they know and could exploit in adulthood. The commission has heard from many sources that about a third of young people are needlessly written off as failures by the assessment system, whereas top-achieving pupils are not stretched enough. Yet new technologies give schools the tools to tailor their tuition more efficiently, and thereby draw out ambition rather than stultify it.
Our commission has much work still to do. We encourage our readers to contribute to its deliberations. One conclusion we can firmly state is that teaching is not only a vital task but a noble vocation. Those who embark on it deserve respect and admiration for their efforts. They need support in the work of conveying enthusiasm for learning. Helping them to accomplish this would put students and the nation still more in their debt.
