The Times Education Commission produced its final report in June 2022, making forty-five recommendations for reforming the English education system. The recommendations ranged from the banal – ‘9. Every primary school should have a library’ – to the interesting but undeveloped – ‘16. A British Baccalaureate at 18 [would be] an equally rigorous but broader qualification than A levels with academic and vocational options under the same umbrella’.
What is missing from this report and its recommendations are:
- a coherent theory of learning
- an in-depth understanding of educative processes (as opposed to training processes)
- a theory of curriculum that is based on a real understanding of how we learn (children and adults)
- and a sense of coherence and consistency – for instance, recommendation 16 refers to the need for a British Baccalaureate, which has some holistic elements, but it conflicts with recommendation 17, which suggests that ‘at 16 pupils should take a slimmed-down set of exams in five core subjects’, which would appear to contradict the fundamental Baccalaureate principles of holism, breadth, Bildung, coherence, solidarity, comprehensiveness and liberality (as in a liberal education).
