Educational Progress Needs To Start Five Years Ago.
Barnaby Lenon, the Headteacher of Harrow School recently accused many state schools of persuading children to pursue worthless qualifications for the sake of hitting school targets. He is especially critical of the unethical tendency to manipulate children from poorer homes.
Comparing worthless qualifications to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean currency carried around a the wheel barrow, he pleaded: “Let’s not produce people like those girls eliminated in the first round of the “X factor” who tell us they want to be the next Britney Spears but can’t sing a note.” He believes many soft subjects like media studies have been pursued because is easily get a good grade than in academic subjects such as English and maths. Britain now lags many overseas countries in educational standards. Whilst we struggle to complete two academic subjects at GCSE most leading countries aim for five to six.
The educational benchmark of Singapore and Finland, routinely cited by politicians as an example of preferred educational standards, would provide all children with social mobility based on quality of qualifications and not inferior substitutes.
The brightest children from the poorest families should be allowed to fulfil their true potential and not be sidelined into junk qualifications. But this may be a difficult crusade. To achieve the transfer to more academic subjects schools would require a legion of high quality teachers. The government’s plan to increase the entrance standard for teachers would also induce a time lag and an educational quandary; how can we urge children to seek academic subjects and judge performance against targets but not possibly cope with the initial demand. A cohort of children could seek the quality subjects only to find the teaching resources required don’t yet exist.
We could see a batch of children left in a hiatus with no qualifications at all. The “softer” subjects exchanged for academic subjects without the matched teaching resources. Of equal concern is the need for improved preparation of children in primary school to be able to handle the secondary curriculum. I am reminded of the instructions on how to grow asparagus “Start by digging a trench five years ago” (it takes asparagus this length of time to mature and produce the first quality crop). Children without the nurtured ability in primary school will still fail to thrive at secondary level. Catch 22 takes on a new lease of life.
