Hard on the heels of almost all crises – revolutions, wars of independence, apocalyptic famine or plague – comes major social, economic and political upheaval.
While modern Britain has steered mercifully free from the most catastrophic of these, the upheavals that the UK has faced over the centuries have instead acted as accelerants to the political pressures and social problems that preceded them.
A century ago, the aftershocks of the First World War saw the enfranchisement of women, the election of the first Labour government and an abrupt end to the stifling deference of the Edwardian era.
The aftermath of the Second World War saw Sir Winston Churchill dumped from office in favour of Clement Attlee’s New Jerusalem, the creation of the modern welfare state, vast nationalisation projects, currency devaluation and the collapse of the Empire.
Inequalities exposed
One of the most significant features of the current health crisis is the way that it has amplified existing structural inequalities within British society. Not just health inequalities that contributed to disturbing disparities in infection, hospitalisation and death rates – and correlated most closely with those on low incomes and in over-crowded housing – but deeply entrenched social inequalities too. Over the last year and more, a fundamental reappraisal has taken place of the role played by groups in society that have preserved and sustained the hidden wiring of the world that we live in.
In our schools and colleges, the value and contribution of our “essential” workers – our cleaners, caterers, estates workers, staff – has never been higher. Yet in society at large, those that have been most needed arguably remain collectively the most substantially undervalued in terms of reward and status.
“In our schools and colleges, the value and contribution of our ‘essential’ workers has never been higher.”
David Goodhart in his 2020 book Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century refers to the rebalancing of the UK’s fundamentally “lop-sided distribution of status” as one of the most significant post-pandemic challenges. Consequently, the social, economic and political concerns of these formerly unappreciated groups will rightly feature far more prominently in the formulation and prioritisation of government policy.
Efforts to tackle regional disparities and housing costs, raise the national minimum wage, incentivise employers to hire more apprentices, and establish a National Skills Fund are just a handful of the main components of the Spring Budget. While interventionist “big state” spending projects are rarely the hallmark of Conservative administrations, even in spite of the highly unusual circumstances, the ideological outlook of the current government is nothing like that of the neo-liberal, laissez-faire Conservative administrations of the recent past.
Instead, traditional “One-Nation” policies are set to underpin the UK’s social and economic recovery and the centrality of the current Government’s “levelling up” agenda is likely to see financial commitments to schools and colleges in the maintained sector far out-strip what might previously have been anticipated.
“The closure of schools and the cancellation of examinations has magnified levels of educational inequality that long predated the crisis.”
In addition, the UK’s radical approach to controlling the spread of the pandemic has made what was previously unthinkable, thinkable. We have experienced at firsthand the shutting down of whole swathes of economic, educational, social, commercial and cultural life for extended periods of time, with expectations that we endure the privations, accept the fall-out, and collectively underwrite the expense.
If such radically interventionist action is possible to control a virus, what might also be equally and ideologically possible to “make society fairer”? For that has become the central mantra emerging from the crisis, with education at the forefront.
The closure of schools and the cancellation of examinations has magnified levels of educational inequality that long predated the crisis. However, a growing wealth of data has served to illustrate more starkly the disparities and especially the “differential learning loss” caused by measures to control the pandemic.
Set to influence policy, educational reform and future funding far more explicitly, is the Sutton Trust’s agenda to “break the link between family income and educational achievement”. In addition, the hauling of long-stifled “niche” educational debates into the political and social mainstream is set to continue.
We have so far seen deliberations on the length of school days, ever greater recognition of the moderating forces of schools in stabilising mental health, a querying of the rationale for our varying term and holiday lengths, a welcome reconsideration of the vital importance of post-school clubs and activities, and discussions of the relevance and future significance of school performance league tables (currently prohibited in all UK regions except England) in a post-examination era.
“The hauling of long-stifled ‘niche’ educational debates into the political and social mainstream is set to continue.”
The immediate future for which we prepare the vast majority of our pupils is set for major, potentially irreversible, changes too. Pre-existing trends in higher education have become even more pronounced in 2020 and 2021, the pandemic years of university entry, as the flight continues to undergraduate courses perceived to offer the firmest prospects of postgraduate employment in an ever-more uncertain professional world. A trend that is not without consequences.
Last year, over 75,000 students enrolled on business related degree courses at university, representing an increase of more than 25 per cent within a decade. The same period, boosted by the establishment of the National Centre for Computing Education to provide a consistent and positive experience of computing at schools, saw a 50 per cent increase in the number of students starting computer science and artificial intelligence courses.
With around 250,000 18-year-olds gaining a place at university each year, the proportion of them commencing courses in such a tight range of subjects – namely business and computing – is significant. While commercial proficiency and expertise in computer science and artificial intelligence is likely to be important for the UK’s economic recovery and its global competitiveness, the trend represents a growing concentration of undergraduate skills, experience and aptitude, and one that the aftermath of the pandemic looks set to intensify.
“The implications of so few leavers continuing to study subjects that we devote so much time to will be worth a disruptive discussion.”
Other popular “professional” degree courses related to law, science and sport continue to prosper too, but the last decade for many “traditional” subjects such as English (down by more than a third to fewer than 7,000 entrants) and history (down by a fifth) indicate a future that looks uncertain at best. The implications for schools and colleges, of so few leavers continuing to study subjects in higher education that we devote so much curriculum time to, is worth a disruptive discussion sooner rather than later.
In particular, the decline in acceptances onto undergraduate Modern Foreign Languages courses, down by a third to under 4,000 entrants, is a longheld source of apprehension and unease and set to exacerbate the professional language skills gap in the wake of the UK’s departure from the European Union. Government moves to introduce languages into the national curriculum for primary schools from 2014, and the current roll out of a £5 million Government funded pilot programme to boost the confidence of pupils studying modern languages in selected secondary schools are yet to run their full courses.
Examination reform
Calls for examination reform have long predated the health crisis, but there is little doubt that the experience of recent months has substantially enhanced the appetite for change – potentially tipping the balance in favour of the disruptive advantages of a transformation in the way that we assess young people and in the organisation of the curriculum that supports it.
“The supposedly ‘blue chip’, standardised, one-size-fits-all mass examination hall arrangement has failed us. Twice.”
The evidence for examination reform is well established. For many, tinkering will not suffice since it is the system itself that is the problem: one that appears to be deliberately engineered against the interests of so many young people. In 2019, the last time that GCSE examinations took place, a quarter of all 16-year-olds again failed their maths GCSE. That is nearly 200,000 students achieving below a grade 4 (the equivalent of an old C grade) with all the resulting diminishment in life chances that accompanies it. The stark reality is that for the “integrity” of our current examination system to work, the annual toll is that a very substantial number need to fail.
In the same way that the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of our previously unassailably hyperefficient global supply chains, the fragility of our national examination system has been laid bare too. The supposedly “blue chip”, standardised, one-size-fits-all mass examination hall arrangement, largely unchanged since the 1950s, has failed us. Twice. And a reinsertion of the previous system from 2022 onwards will only serve to widen the educational inequalities that have been so evidently revealed.
Who is clapping for whom?
There is little doubt that the pandemic has prompted many to reappraise and re-evaluate their own lives. Amid this, we have seen tension between those that have become increasingly fearful of mortality and of life’s risks and those desperate to regain old freedoms; some becoming angrier and more intolerant, taking to social media in support of popular eruptions of fury to vent at the circumstances they face.
“There has been a welcome revaluation of professional purpose, the importance of care and service.”
Things that were previously held to be of indisputable importance – the routines and interests that shaped our lives – have all been weighed and measured against differing lockdown experiences, periods of furlough and the dawning realisation among many that they too would like to be “clapped for”.
Alongside, there has been a welcome revaluation of professional purpose, the importance of care and service, an exponential rise in applications for nursing degrees and, yes, for teaching jobs too. It is this latter point that provides a substantial reason to be optimistic, and the possibility – already evidenced in many schools and colleges – of a considerable revival of interest in our profession.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2021 edition of Independent School Management Plus magazine.