Don’t let teaching unions block education reform after exams fiasco – Bernard Ingham

Bowing to the inevitable, the Government has decided teachers’ grades – and not some obscure corrective algorithm – will stand for both GCSEs and A-levels.

But why was I expecting another farce? Answer: because our education system is in a mess – and was long before coronavirus hit us.

In a Governnent of short straw drawers, Gavin Williamson, the much-reviled Education Secretary from Scarborough, pulled a very short one.

Lest I am pilloried as much as he is, let me absolve from blame all those dedicated teachers who have ploughed on through the pandemic, either in school or devising online teaching, and who, at the best of times, have to cope with parental neglect and its consequent indiscipline.

They have a lot to put up with, including their unions. These obstructive institutions have given the profession a bad name by tabling 200 demands before next month’s return to school when only one healthy child is reported to have died from coronavirus.

On this showing the prime responsibility of teachers as union members is to remove the hard Left leadership from their abuse of power.

Given the state of the economy, we all need to get back to work and help all our children.

As an ex-civil servant, I should add that all those pen-pushers who – in their thousands – have not responded to the Government’s back-to-work call ought to be ashamed of themselves.

But this does not solve education’s problem, though it will help if returning bureaucrats curb their natural instinct to complicate matters.

In my admittedly dated experience, the Department for Education was stuffed with ‘em.

Since the entire exam system has been disrupted by the plague, the next best indicator of ability was always the form teacher. Being human, they will always have favourites and be tempted to help lame dogs over stiles by generous marking. But was the answer to apply some unexplained algorithm corrective so beloved of clever-dick officials?

Is this the year – after all that has gone before it – to start tackling grade inflation when fate has dealt the class of 2020 such a raw deal?

In any case, it won’t curb it if universities just grab youngsters off the streets regardless of grades to compensate for their loss of Chinese students, charging them, of course, £9,250 a year often for a degree of little practical use.

It really is time we stopped launching youngsters on a working life with a £30,000 or so millstone round their necks, especially when they will still be paying off the coronavirus-induced national debt until well into their retirement.

In normal times employers would be snapping up every promising student for apprenticeships and other practical qualifications. But not now when redundancy and unemployment are staring millions in the face.

We must start thinking far more seriously about the future – the rising generation – and how we are to rebuild the British economy outside the European Union.

One thing is for sure: we shall not do so if union power in primary and secondary education is directed at putting spanners in works instead of producing talent and if the Left’s grip on higher education is not broken.

University education, if such it can be called, is no longer dedicated to opening minds but to closing them. Hence the tidal wave of minority single issue pressure groups demanding that this be cancelled, that be torn down and t’other silenced.

It is no use well-padded vice-chancellors saying that youth has always been rebellious. Of course it has, but why do they themselves so often cave in to its totalitarian demands? This just encourages idiocy.

In short, coming near the top of the agenda for the post-Covid recovery must be a truly radical look at education from top to bottom. We are ruining children’s futures.

The Government owes it to all students who have been messed around by grade “correction” to develop a far more effective education system that produces a healthy, liberal economy instead of a stifling, illiberal set-up controlled by Orwellian thought-police who worship at the Kremlin’s altar.

If I were Gavin Williamson – and
thank the Lord I’m not sir – I would assemble a task force of brave souls who don’t mind abuse. and tell them to come up within a year with a new system that better serves future generations and the nation without more recourse to the taxpayer.

It’s motto might be “From rags to riches”. The present system is far from gold-plated.

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