British education and how it is broken

Why has it taken a BBC documentary, and a group of visiting teachers from China to bring their brand of education to Hampshire-based Bohunt School, to show us why our education system is so utterly broken? Why don’t we get it?


God only knows what it must have been like for the Chinese visitors, accustomed as they are to operating in a country that values education, competitiveness and success. One can only imagine how they felt when they arrived in Britain, a beacon of Western success, to discover unruly children who were both physically unfit and mentally unfit for the world in to which they will enter as adults. Their dismay was apparent, as they battled to maintain order, faced down a barrage of abuse from pupils for the simplest of requests and tried to overcome their students’ apparent distaste for traditional learning methods of dictation and copying in to books. Worse, their arrogant, patronising boss, head teacher Neil Strowger, seemed confident that “The Chinese school will fail.” I know this man of old as he used to teach me French. He has completely swallowed liberal progressivist mantras that school should be cool, and that what worked so well in the past is, apparently, not needed anymore. “Kids need to care,” he told us. True enough, but was he turning a blind eye to some of his students responding enthusiastically to traditional learning methods? He is perhaps now too far gone, so convinced by the leftist progressives who use words like ‘fun’ and ‘engaging’ to espouse approaches that have chipped away at the authority of, and respect for, the teachers over decades.

The thing is, it’s easy for Mr Strowger to make sweeping statements for the superiority of his approach over that of the Chinese. It’s easy (especially when you’ve met him) to see that he is perhaps afraid of criticism. What’s important, though, is to substantiate these generalisations. If he is right, why would China’s concept of education fail in Britain, when it’s obviously working so well in China? As China’s competitive edge grows and grows, and businesses continue to insist that workers from Eastern Europe excel over the best of British, I think we need to ask ourselves what damage the progressives have done, and how they have made our own young people so unreceptive to education. One episode in to the BBC documentary series, we don’t yet know whether Mr Strowger is right, but already the Chinese are giving us the answers loud and clear to the more important question of why our education system is so broken. There are toxic twin evils at the heart of the problem. Écutez-moi, Neil Strowger!

First, respect for authority is non-existent. Why did the young people not look smart in their uniforms? Why did they feel that it was okay to answer back? Why did they feel they could simply talk over their teacher, because they found the lessons boring, or the manner of delivery unsatisfactory? Why did even the Chinese teachers take so long to take the unruly kids, kick them out and put the fear of God in to them? Why have we allowed a situation to develop where teachers are on the back foot and their pupils are in charge? Of course, this kind of behaviour must, in part, be traceable to the home. It was taken for granted once, that if you misbehaved in school, you’d get a roasting when you got home as well. Now, if the school even bothers to tell your parents, you’re more likely to see them marching up to protest at the teacher ticking their child off. Some of these parents probably don’t value education. Others probably work, dump the kids with a nanny and ease their consciences by caving in to their child’s every wish when they do take time out of work to actually be a parent. Whatever the case, I’m absolutely convinced that across social classes, teachers can no longer count on the backing of their pupils’ parents. The disregard for authority will, I’m afraid, be hard to reverse if this generation passes its values on to the next. We are in crisis, be in no doubt.

The other half of the problem is that our education system does not educate people in the art of failure. Yes, that’s right: kids today do not know how to fail. I was 25 when I first failed spectacularly at something earlier this year, that I’d set my mind to; it was horrible, but it was also a relief. My life had been heading on an achievist trajectory which saw me make decisions based on proving things to myself and others, rather than my own happiness. Yet I sometimes wonder if I would have crumbled completely had I not been shown a good example in the education I received, of how to put a brave face on minor failings. I did feel sorry for Joe, the young boy who failed hopelessly as the Chinese brought their exercise regime to the British teens: timed runs of 1000 metres for boys, and 800 for girls. I was Joe once, and I’m sorry to tell him that the unsporty, fat, asthmatic kid will probably be an unsporty, fat, asthmatic adult. But where I could laugh it off and keep trying, poor Joe burst in to tears. (One year I even swam the wrong direction in a race where, of course, I came a distant last but received rapturous applause from everyone when I made it, and it was smiles and laughs all round).
Joe’s British teacher’s response said it all: “Don’t worry, you’re good at other things.” I’m sure that’s true: this unsporty, fat, asthmatic adult has 2 degrees and earned a coveted place on the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme. But it is wrong to dish out comfort without advising Joe to help him deal with his shortcomings better in future. Why didn’t his teacher tell him to keep trying? Why didn’t she tell him that, even if it would never be his best talent, he would get better with practice? Why didn’t she help him think about how he could have a thicker skin and a more robust character in the face of failure?

Our obsessive desire for equality, fairness and prizes for all has led us to deny the inherently unequal nature of life. Some people are cleverer than others. Some people are better at some things than others. Some people have to overcome greater odds than others to achieve the same things. In failing to accept this, we have turned every subject in to an academic one. Even food design technology (that’s home economics to the older reader), or design technology, are only marginally assessed on one’s ability to actually cook, or make things. We have tried to make everything academic, and to design every assessment in such a way that most will pass. Not only does shielding young people from failing leave them ill-prepared for life, but it marginalises those who actually aren’t academic. They may be capable and able to perform well enough, but what if it’s sport, or practical work that really inspires them? Our equality-obsessed attitude is, ironically, terribly snobbish and biased towards academia, narrowing education so much that, for all the buzzwords, there is actually less on offer that might be ‘fun’ and ‘engaging.’ We have actually swapped offering education to inspire young people, instil them with a love for learning and help them identify the right path for their future, for education with the purpose of passing exams, ticking boxes, fulfilling targets, and congratulating ourselves that another year group is leaving with 9 or 10 GCSEs in hand, for which they have worked hard, and no preparation for the real world at all.

My next article will outline how I would fix education, and it wouldn’t be through yet more tests. The reality is, however, that education is so broken that I would, without hesitation, send any child of mine to private school. Privately educated kids are disproportionately represented at the country’s top universities, and today we learn that graduates with a private education earn more. I say this with the heaviest of hearts, owing everything as I do, to a most wonderful state school with dedicated staff who gave me their all and who did instil in me a love of learning and a confidence and robustness that have carried me through life ever since. But I wonder how much teachers are really in control now. I wonder whether the next generation will encounter these remarkable individuals who butted up against a system, or whether it’ll be my generation, educated under Britain’s broken system, that will make the same mistakes all over again. I don’t look primarily for league tables, but rather I look for the kind of character the school is likely to produce. People don’t presume the privately-educated deserve greater rewards, but they earn them, because there are plenty of people, like me, who think the product of the private school is simply better.