Peter Davies: Decades over education failure '“ and still no lessons learned

OUT of the blue, local and national politicians have collectively divined that there is something badly wrong in our state education system with the new May government considering the reintroduction of grammar schools.
Peter Davies is the former Mayor of Doncaster.Peter Davies is the former Mayor of Doncaster.
Peter Davies is the former Mayor of Doncaster.

Here in Doncaster, the Labour council has become equally excitable about the poor quality of skills and education in the town. The council had adopted its usual approach of throwing large amounts of money at the problem (in this case £730,000) without the remotest possibility of achieving a solution. A consultant has been employed who is described as ‘a leading expert on further education and skills’, but who needs to hear from parents and children before she can tell us what the solution might be.

The national attack on educational standards began with the demise of the grammar schools and a selective process, and their replacement by a comprehensive system based on politically correct social engineering.

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Features of this new approach included the introduction of uncompetitive games (no child should ever lose), child-centred learning, mixed-ability and mixed-aged teaching, the growth of the pastoral care industry and the creeping, successful attempts to politicise large areas of the curriculum. This total mayhem was eventually combined with a lowering of standards in most school subjects with grammar and punctuation abandoned in English and times tables and simple arithmetic elbowed out by rubbish like ‘approximate maths’ where the correct answer was unacceptable. The use of apostrophes has become increasingly bizarre and mysterious for students and teachers alike.

Chronological English history is rarely taught and the legal requirement to hold a Christian service at morning assembly, and to teach a lesson of religious studies each week, is largely disobeyed. Where taught, it now includes little Biblical knowledge. Latin and Greek, excellent languages to study to improve English usage and vocabulary, are no longer taught in state schools. Traditional subjects have been sacrificed to make room for sex and drugs education (usually counter-productive); there is little space for any real education.

The examination system has been diluted from the late 1980s with the GCSE replacing the more stringent GCE, quickly followed by simplified A-Levels. Both are subject to the ‘no one must fail’ maxim. Unsupervised coursework, which may well be produced with the input of parents, older siblings or friends, has entirely replaced exams in some subjects while in others, examiners have been encouraged to give marks regardless of the relevance of the answer.

While the Labour Party was initially responsible for peddling much of this nonsense from around 1964 onwards, once the Tories took power in 1979 a succession of particularly useless Education Secretaries jumped gleefully on the bandwagon and furthered and fostered the Left’s polices for them. The result is the ill-educated, skills-deprived, know-nothing society we have today. None of this is the fault of the students – it is the fault of interfering educationalists and politicians.

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It is rather late in the day to talk about bringing back selective education or to waste three-quarter of a million pounds on discovering the cause of the ever-present crisis. The success of all education depends on teachers having a profound knowledge and love of their subject and the skills to transmit it to their students. Given that the majority of teachers today are products of the disaster of the last 30 years, it will not be too easy to find the staff to put Theresa May’s plans into action.

As for Labour councils like Doncaster, even if the penny dropped, there would be no political will. Departing from the little red book is not an option.

A lock, stock and barrel clearout of the educational system is urgently required (at the last count the UK was 23rd in the league table for educational success in the developed world). The academy system has allowed schools to run their own affairs, but they remain comprehensive schools in all but name.

In the meantime, the two main political parties have a duty to remedy the disaster they have conspired to create. They should admit their mistakes, apologise to the generations of children affected and put forward a competent plan to restore excellence in state education for everyone, in the process getting rid of the useless and unwanted ‘dross’ that litters the curriculum.

Peter Davies is the former mayor of Doncaster.

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