Results week is no time to lecture our neglected children, minister
It is abundantly clear that the current system is now redundant
How naive of me to think that the last 18 months might make us re-evaluate what and who is important in life. That, without retreating into class-based prejudice, we might begin to understand who kept us all going during the pandemic: doctors, bus drivers, delivery people, pharmacists, hospital cleaners, supermarket workers, refuse collectors, plumbers, farmers… the list goes on. Some of these jobs are highly skilled and some regarded as low status, yet we rely on all these people.
The snobbery of a professional middle class – itself now often in a fairly precarious position – has been passed down to its children. Frankly, their offspring have had a very rough deal of late. But now to watch a government of public schoolboys who have never done a proper job pose in hi-vis jackets, helmet or overalls for photo opportunities sticks in my craw.
Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, who once told parents to get over their “in-built snobbishness” and consider apprenticeships for their children, has doubled down on that position ahead of A-level results day, saying a shift in middle-class attitudes towards vocational training would be “a huge and welcome change”. Fine! Let us know which ministers’ children are going into set design or bricklaying. Show, don’t tell.
This generation of children has been utterly neglected, so let’s stop with the fake sympathy, Gavin. For two years, they have not done exams and are now being told that their results, assessed by teachers, will probably be too high (grade inflation). Children who have been in and out of school, quarantined in their bedrooms and taught mostly online are now being told there are not enough university places for them.
This is the result of treating universities like businesses that must get in as many students as possible.
Many of the Russell Group are also saying they will continue to teach mainly online. What is it all for?
My youngest escaped the A-level fiasco and sat exams, had some kind of gap year (if you can call lockdown that) and has just had a miserable first year locked in halls with no face-toface teaching. Some of her friends will not go back if this is to continue. These are the lucky ones: those who have secured university places.
Many want their money back, and who can blame them?
Our entire education policy is a mess. We had perfectly good further education colleges where children who had not done so well at school could catch up. We had evening classes where we could sit exams we needed. We had Btecs, which were of variable quality. All these things have been decimated in favour of… what? Basically trying to make all schools ape the private schools our elites went to without giving them the resources to do so.
The narrowing of the curriculum by Michael Gove and his then advisor Dominic Cummings is something I will never forgive them for. Having three children at state schools, I witnessed creative subjects, including history and English, made incredibly dull. Was this made up for by boosting STEM subjects? No.
It is abundantly clear that the Gcse/a-level/university degree route is now redundant. Why have GCSES at all if people have to stay at school till they are 18? There is no recognition that learning is best done when it is a choice. I left school at 16 because I hated it, and went back at 24 as a mature student and loved it. This would not be financially possible now because of the fees.
A while back, I returned to study and was suddenly aware of myself as a consumer of education rather than a student. So were my classmates. If a lecturer were late, they would work out how much money they were losing, or say: “Well, that lecture just cost me £350…”
For all this, I greatly enjoyed being taught again. Yet while the Government mumbles about life-long leaning, where is the support for it? Who can afford to give up a job to go to college or to retrain when we can’t even afford for our kids to go to college?
Indeed, I think I would be greatly cheered if any of my children decided to become something useful like an electrician. So to those who today do not get the results they want, all I can say is that there really is more than one path to getting to where you want to go.
Sure, it’s difficult, but at the heart of learning is flexible thinking and adaptability. And you have already shown that by surviving this pandemic.
Carry on teaching yourself. However hard it has been, your generation has learnt more than any other about what life’s priorities should be. Use that knowledge.