One of my favourite topics for discussion these days, which I’ve written about before, is the current state of the education system in the UK (and USA and the rest of the West). These days I’m often raising it with people to gauge their reactions as part of the backdrop to the book that I’m writing with Toby Moores and David Tebbutt on “Capturing Creativity”. I believe we need a radical new approach in our schools. Our current system was designed for churning out graduates for the 19th Century industrial age, not the 21st century information age. To make it worse we have expanded university entrance and created “academic inflation”. When I came in to the workforce in the 70s with a degree, I had a choice of jobs. Today, having a degree gives a of member of Generation Y no guarantees at all. And then to make it even worse, our friends in China or India can produce graduates of the same quality at 20% of the cost. We have to do something differently to be able to compete in this New World, and it starts by rethinking our approach to education.
One of the issues I have with the current, broken education system in this country made the Observer and BBC News 24 today. The General Teaching Council (GTC) believes exams are failing to raise standards and are demoralising children. I could not agree more. On the BBC News website, they say:
“Currently, every child in England is tested at the ages of seven, 11 and 14 in what are known as standard assessment tests (Sats). In all, children face about 70 tests or exams during their school life. “
I’ve always believed this level of testing is absolutely ridiculous. If we want to check standards, we can do that by sampling what is going on. The current level of testing means that the main purpose becomes a school’s position in their particular league table at that particular level, because their position on the table will be linked to their funding in some way. This shifts the benefit of the testing away from the pupil, and towards the school, which has got to be wrong. I’ve used this quote below before, but I’m going to add it here again because it encapsulates the problem so well. Back on 10th May 2000, Alan Smithers (the then Director of the Centre of Education and Employment Research at Liverpool University) wrote:
“Life opportunities are more closely related to degree results than ever before. Coupled with that, children are being examined more than ever before. This loses sight of exams being an indicator of how you are progressing and becomes rather like continually pulling up a plant to see how well it is growing”
In the intervening seven years the problem has only got more pronounced. I really hope both the government, and public opinion take notice. Our kids are under the wrong kind of pressure and the system needs to change for them and this country to be able to compete in the global workplace of the 21st century.
