This entry’s perspective on education looks back in time. A short history. The opposite to history is strategy. This also means that one can look back to move forward.
My own education was very much in the shadow of the 1944 Education Act. Although I’m not so old, my own schools were in a county which had still retained the selective system with grammars, although the ‘secondary moderns’ were now known as comprehensives. The main ‘leveller’ in education was the introduction of the GCSE examination which was opened to all students.
The most radical reform in education was introduced in 1988 which is often summarised as being significant in terms of choice and competition in the system. The government took responsibility for a national curriculum, and an organisation was established called Ofsted initially saw that the change was implemented.
This was the era in which I started work in education. By the mid 1990s there was a good focus on standards and continued school improvement. Many schools were allowed to go grant maintained, and independently funded, could now source their own bespoke sources of improvement and innovation. Critics would probably say that schools were becoming businesses.
We then had an era of target setting and performativity. A performance management system was starting to pay teachers for results. In my view, this did drive some school improvement but after a while, results plateaued. To counter this government enabled other qualifications to count in league tables but all this introduced perverse incentives in the system (for example, selecting easier qualifications) and future critics would suggest standards had been lowered.
Fast forward and the agenda moved towards structures. This has meant that reorganisations, mergers and acquisitions, and the hybrid company and charity called a ‘Trust’ is on the scene with Local Government having a changed, often minor role. There is much greater centralisation and as we have seen locally with closures or redundancies, efficiencies come at a cost.
If we look at the educational landscape today, we see the legacy of all these developments, as well as many more. It’s not been systematically designed. One consistent theme I see throughout this period of history is that there is no agreement as to what a quality education looks like. It is also clear that there is no ‘one size that fits all’ and so a degree of personalisation for students is an unmet theme.
At some point a strategic re-think is required which will have to synthesise central government priorities with local governance. Before we jump into another initiative without much thought, I would always urge us to look back and reflect to move forward even better. As former Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, “those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
Philip Hurst, Headteacher, Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form