Why we need a new vision for education
I take benefited hugely from selective instruction. My parents were the archetypal middle grade couple—female parent a instructor, begetter an auditor working in the City—and nosotros lived in the south-east London suburbs. My parents paid for my older blood brother and sister to exist educated privately, only by the time my turn came they had run out of money. I was rescued, though, by Bourgeois pedagogy policy of the 1970s; having passed the 11-plus, I was eligible for a local-authority-funded place at Dulwich College, a prestigious public school (at the time third in the league tables). In my sixth-form scientific discipline form of 14, xiii of us went to Oxford or Cambridge. (The one who didn't was called Dudman; we thought it was an example of nominative determinism.) In my twelvemonth, the school sent 73 to Oxbridge, more half with scholarships; our primary question was selecting from the teachers' alma maters which of the Oxbridge colleges we should apply to. When I arrived at St John's, Oxford, I was one of v from my school that year.
There is no doubt that selection benefits those who are selected. Merely the real question, for the education system every bit a whole, is the issue it has on the whole cohort. Had nosotros connected to alive in Poole, Dorset, nosotros would have tried to ship our children to the local grammar schools, since we knew they would be in a social and intellectual environment that would accommodate them and enable them to thrive. When nosotros moved to Nottingham, we had a dilemma: the option was between a comprehensive Church school, with a neat Christian ethos, simply a very diverse social mix, or paying for individual education which would offering bang-up resources, but felt a bit like a spiritual desert. We opted for the erstwhile, but it was a difficult decision. Our children had fewer people at the same level every bit them academically, and access to fewer resources than they would have had. There is no uncertainty they learned some fundamental life skills, and the Christian context was important. Just i of my nagging questions has remained: what does information technology do for those at the lower bookish end to exist with such a broad mixture, rather than among a group of their peers?
Having been a governor now at three secondary schools, I am conscious of the unrealistic and contradictory pressures being applied to secondary teaching in contemporary political and cultural discourse. The first is a kind of industrialisation of the educational process, where widget-children come in at one cease of the process with a set of scores, and they pass through the educational production line, during which value is added, so that they exit the procedure with comparatively better scores. Those running the educational factories are assessed on the amount of value added, fifty-fifty though they are the ones who actually score the widgets at the kickoff and cease of the process. And the companies who provide the end exams can also run training for teachers to show them how to teach the children to pass the exams, so the system is inherently open to both corruption and reductionism. No wonder those of long feel complain that this is less pedagogy, and more exam-pass training.
Simply the 2d, contradictory pressure that I hear in political discourse is the supposition that schools and teachers operatein loco parentis. How do we tackle religious extremism? In schools. Who is responsible for good sexual activity educational activity? Schools. Where do we disseminate a vision of what it ways to exist a responsible denizen? In schools. I heed to the news twice a day, and the BBC News is my browser dwelling house page—yet I don't think I can retrieve a unmarried statement from any politician which suggests thatparents accept responsibility in these areas. And this is despite it being well established that the single greatest determinant for children of success in gaining qualifications is…parental interest.
Given these twin and contradictory pressures, it is not surprising that the teaching profession feels under pressure. The level of turnover in education is quite astonishing.
Almost iv out of 10 teachers quit inside a year of qualifying, with 11,000 leaving the profession before they accept actually begun their career and record numbers of those who remain giving upwardly mid-career, co-ordinate to analysis of regime figures.
When I was a personnel director in industry, if my departments had annihilation similar that level of wastage (for that is what it is) both I and the department manager would be out on our ears. And yet when has Government always been held to account for this? The assistants and bureaucracy is like in other public service sectors; my married woman, a GP, reckons that she now works near an hour a day longer than she did ten years ago. At our Governor'south meetings at my children's school, I recollect it is off-white to say that only a minor proportion of usa really understood the statistical measures that the senior staff were working with—notwithstanding we were the ones to whom they were supposed to be accountable.
Into this context comes the latest Governmentvolte face is the announcement of the introduction not simply of new grammar schools, but the possibility of whatever schoolhouse to be 'selective.' This is in defiance of any support from enquiry, that is, what actually happens and what the evidence really says. The best judge on this new 'policy' is that it is an attempt by Theresa May to assuage those who are disgruntled with current policies, and might be upset when it turns out that Brexit doesn't actually mean Brexit, since the give-and-take has no actual referential content. When, oh when, volition a Government stop treating public policy as a political and ideological football, and in education do what is bestfor teaching? When, for case, will anyone take detect of the fact that electric current educational strategies mean that girls do better than boys in every subject area?
The apparent purpose of this new policy is to assist 'upward mobility.' Never mind that it won't actually practise this; can we ask what this really means? If some people are going to be upwardly mobile, and given that we are not all 'moving up' all the time, this ways that, correspondingly, another people volition need to be 'downwardly mobile'. I wonder who the Government proposes these people should be? Volition it be those who, in our increasingly diff society, already have a monopoly on wealth and influence? The hint at questioning the charitable status of public schools might advise this, but overall it is unlikely. Societies, like complimentary market Western economies, who manifestly prize social mobility, actually turn out to exist the least mobile, since, when information technology is easiest to 'move upward', those who corner the market in wealth and influence simply use this freedom to consolidate their own grip on power. Or, as Charles Moore puts it, in Theresa May'southward meritocracy, what will become of the useless and stupid?
The soapy answer is, "Well, anybody has claim. In a well-run social club, these will all exist recognised and and then anybody will be fulfilled." In principle, this might be truthful, but we tend to guess merit by comparing the behaviour of ane person with that of another. Experience teaches united states that relatively few people are outstandingly good, bright, brave, entrepreneurial and so on.
Social systems based solely on merit therefore tend to exist harsh…One of the tricks needed to run a nation as opposed to a big company or a team of rocket scientists, is to take that people can be pretty useless at lots of things. At that place are millions of u.s., Mrs May. Please don't forget usa.
And attempts to socially engineer mobility always have perverse results. The fact that I went to Oxford actually puts my children at a disadvantage, since in their applications they accept had to state how their parents were educated. If we take made sacrifices to send them to a more academically demanding schoolhouse, that besides would disadvantage them. So, in gild to do the best for them, I have to choose an academically weaker school, so that they volition get preferential treatment due to the disadvantages meted on them by my previous decisions. If you want your children to do well, you need to put obstacles in their way, so that the educational system volition exist able to compensate them for information technology!
And how is 'up mobility' characterised in this public narrative? I recently heard someone from Liverpool bemoaning the lack of aspirations of people 'in the north' because they were non aiming to be 'doctors and lawyers.' I was struck: does not being a skilled artisan found aspiration? What about someone who does a great chore working in manufacturing industry, or mining, or farming? If the teaching organization is designed to enable people to be aspirational, and existence aspirational means making anybody middle grade, is it any wonder that we continue to lack any respect for working culture? And if there is no vision for pedagogy to equip people to do these other jobs well and effectively, every bit rounded and responsible citizens, is it any wonder that we are chronically dependent on immigrant labour in order for these jobs to be done?
What might Christian theology contribute to all this?
Starting time, information technology contributes a rounded and integrated vision for human flourishing. We are not individualised units of economic production, and the purpose of education is non simply to requite us employment skills, fifty-fifty if that is role of the job.
Secondly, it contributes a better vision of work as vocation. Employment is non simply most making and economic contribution to society (though information technology does exercise that); neither is it but about 'adding value' to whatever we are involved with. Pay is not a recompense for the inconvenience of labour as it prevents united states of america undertaking the leisure we would otherwise make apply of. Nor is pay something determined past market forces that depend on the power of our negotiating position to make up one's mind.
Instead, work is virtually using the gifts and skills that God has given the states, in line with the vocation or calling of God on our lives in guild to participate in God's sovereignty of the world by exercising his dominion as his vice-regents, created in his paradigm and sharing in his creative purposes for the earth. Pay is the reasonable remuneration as part of this process.
Thirdly, it contributes a vision of both society and family, where the importance of family structures and stability provide a safe and secure context for the flourishing of children and their total participation in education. The teaching system should complement strong family structures, and not supervene upon them.
Finally, the Church will continue to brand its key contribution to didactics at every level, through national structures and interests, only also past calling individual Christians into teaching at every level. Much of our modern education organization arose out of Christian initiative and concern in the nineteenth century—not to turn people into operational economical units, only to help them abound into mature adults, able to contribute to the greater good of society and to fulfil their own vocation.
(If you lot are working in whatsoever aspect of teaching, as teacher, parent or governor, don't forget to check out the excellent Grove Education serial.)
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