A school leader from Cornwall summed up the mood of the evidence presented to The Times Education Commission over the course of its year-long inquiry. “We’re preparing children for a world that doesn’t exist,” she told the round table for the southwest of England, held at the Eden Project.
The message that came across loud and clear from business leaders, cultural figures, scientists and teachers was that the education system is not delivering what the economy needs, what parents want or what pupils deserve. The way people shop, work, travel, bank and watch television has changed utterly over the past decade but schools have failed to keep pace.
The one-size-fits-all, tick-box mark-scheme mentality is not creating the workforce the country requires to thrive in the modern world. It does not draw out the potential in disadvantaged young people, nor does it push the best and brightest to excel. It is failing to develop the well-rounded citizens of the future and eroding teachers’ sense of autonomy and job satisfaction.
Companies increasingly take no notice of grades and qualifications because they do not consider them a useful way to find the best new recruits.
Sir James Dyson, the inventor, told the commission that the economy would continue to flatline without a greater focus on creativity, originality and innovation in education. “Children are creative. They love building and making things. But as they get closer to GCSEs and A-levels all that is squashed out of them,” he said. “It’s all about rote-learning, not using your imagination. The system doesn’t measure creativity; it measures what you can remember of other people’s facts.”
