Stop measuring, let pupils learn creativity

I READ with growing despair another recent report that highlights the increase in top sportspeople, actors, dancers, artists and musicians coming from public and private education, while those from state education diminish.

The truth is while the creative opportunities disappear from our state schools and we persist in this Victorian education of training, not teaching, the masses as if there were a manufacturing base for them to enter, private and public schools embrace the arts.

The powers that be will tell you that they encourage diversity, but when PE and creative lessons are arbitrarily dropped by hard-pressed schools in order to hit targets, their view must be either delusional or self-serving.

This affects the poorer children considerably as their parents either do not support out-of-school activities or increasingly simply can’t afford them.

The Donaldson Report is a small beacon of hope, as it offers a broad opportunity for our children to enter a global job market; a market where individualism and creative thought will be necessary tools.

All parents of primary-age children should be railing against all the measuring that is going on in our schools and push for Donaldson to be implemented fully.

You cannot create an artist with occasional projects, or a musician.

A great sportsman cannot be created with one-off tournaments, or a great creative writer who has to have every bit of spelling and grammar checked as part of a target.

They need time to fail and learn from their mistakes, for only then will they develop true skills and knowledge.

You do not create an all-round individual by forcing them to succeed.

You support them in the ups and downs of a journey that results in true learning.

A journey that often takes a tortoise, not a hare.

Donaldson is a start, but we also need to rid our schools of a twotier “policing system” that suggests they are “challenging” schools to succeed.

Retain one if you must, but make the other a truly supportive group, not one breathing down hardworking schools’ necks.

Glyn Scott Barry