Briar Lipson trained through Teach First and has published influential reports on teacher recruitment in the UK, and the state of schooling in New Zealand. Daniel Dieppe is a researcher for think tank Civitas. They are co-authors of its new report, ‘Renewing Classical Liberal Education’.
Upon becoming Education Secretary in 2010, Michael Gove found English schools in disarray. English language GCSE could include a tape recording of comedian Eddie Izzard and the Hairy Bikers; science students were asked whether grilled fish or battered sausages are healthier; and fewer than 1 per cent of 300,000 English literature students in one exam body had studied a novel from before 1900.
It is widely recognised that education in England has since vastly improved. According to the OECD’s PISA data, English 15-year-olds are now 11th best in the world for maths, up from 27th in 2009, and 13th in reading, up from 25th. While Gove and the long-standing Schools Minister Nick Gibb deserve much credit, it’s also time we addressed the question of where to go from here?
As we explain in a new Civitas report, ‘Renewing Classical Liberal Education’, there are still serious problems with schooling in England. A primary issue is the pervasive assumption that good exam results equate to a good education. By addressing grade inflation Gove and Gibb went some way to addressing this deception. However, while exams are important for comparing schools, grades are widely prioritised over truly liberating schooling.
For example, GCSE students (aged 14-16) are now 162 times more likely to study A Christmas Carol, over Great Expectations. This is despite the former being only a novella and having a recommended reading age of 8-12.
Despite posing almost no contextual, linguistic or conceptual difficulty, by far the most popular GCSE text, with over 80 per cent of children studying it, is An Inspector Calls, the BBC radio adaptation of which lasts just 87 minutes.
It should hardly surprise us then that over the last 10 years, the uptake of A-level English has dropped by 20 per cent while student numbers have risen: children don’t just want good grades, they need to be stretched and challenged at school.
Equally problematic is the overly technical nature of humanities exams which means that, rather than the timeless questions of good and evil, reason and emotion, freedom and authority, English Literature questions mostly concern the ‘how’; ‘How does the poet present the speaker’s feelings’ or ‘How does the author present what life is like for women?‘.
Yet as we found while researching in Cambridge University’s Archive, exams were not always like this. In the 1955 O-level English exam, children were asked of Chaucer’s work, ‘What have you learnt from The Prologue about war, fighting men and chivalry’?; ‘Show how two parts of this anthology have charmed you with the beauty of their verse’.
Such questions elevate education to its higher purpose of cultivating wisdom, conscience and virtue yet they are at best sidelined, or wholly absent from modern schooling.
Similarly indicative of the pedestrianism of modern education, our research found that at least 88 schools have renamed school houses after Greta Thunberg, and over 140 after footballer Marcus Rashford. That young celebrity figures are venerated as heroes, above greats like King Alfred, Rosa Parks and Charles Darwin points to how detached schooling has become from our classical liberal tradition.
As we argue in our Civitas report, education should, through studying the best texts, and teaching about our greatest heroes (warts and all), develop children’s conscience, so that they might judge beauty and truthfulness, discern what is right and just, make the wise choice when it is not obvious. This is liberal education in the original sense because, rather than mould children to the service of the economy or state, it instead develops their capacities to live well by the light of their own reason. It frees them to join the great conversation of humanity.
This ‘liberal’ vision for education was once advanced by Michael Gove himself. In a great 2011 speech to Cambridge University, he said we must, “reclaim the importance of liberal learning” and recapture the idea that “education is a good in itself”.
Gove was right – and his vision continues to have lasting relevance for education today. Yes, standards are up, schools are improved, and the knowledge-rich revolution has had a positive influence. But the education sector remains lost over what it is for, especially outside the exam years.
The next step for education policy is to remind schools of their purpose, and how to reflect that in their teaching. Schools are not exam factories or production lines for the economy. They are there to give children access to the best in the world, and the capacity to engage with it fully, kick-starting a lifelong adventure of learning.
It’s time we sought the reforms to achieve that vision.
Briar Lipson trained through Teach First and has published influential reports on teacher recruitment in the UK, and the state of schooling in New Zealand. Daniel Dieppe is a researcher for think tank Civitas. They are co-authors of its new report, ‘Renewing Classical Liberal Education’.
Upon becoming Education Secretary in 2010, Michael Gove found English schools in disarray. English language GCSE could include a tape recording of comedian Eddie Izzard and the Hairy Bikers; science students were asked whether grilled fish or battered sausages are healthier; and fewer than 1 per cent of 300,000 English literature students in one exam body had studied a novel from before 1900.
It is widely recognised that education in England has since vastly improved. According to the OECD’s PISA data, English 15-year-olds are now 11th best in the world for maths, up from 27th in 2009, and 13th in reading, up from 25th. While Gove and the long-standing Schools Minister Nick Gibb deserve much credit, it’s also time we addressed the question of where to go from here?
As we explain in a new Civitas report, ‘Renewing Classical Liberal Education’, there are still serious problems with schooling in England. A primary issue is the pervasive assumption that good exam results equate to a good education. By addressing grade inflation Gove and Gibb went some way to addressing this deception. However, while exams are important for comparing schools, grades are widely prioritised over truly liberating schooling.
For example, GCSE students (aged 14-16) are now 162 times more likely to study A Christmas Carol, over Great Expectations. This is despite the former being only a novella and having a recommended reading age of 8-12.
Despite posing almost no contextual, linguistic or conceptual difficulty, by far the most popular GCSE text, with over 80 per cent of children studying it, is An Inspector Calls, the BBC radio adaptation of which lasts just 87 minutes.
It should hardly surprise us then that over the last 10 years, the uptake of A-level English has dropped by 20 per cent while student numbers have risen: children don’t just want good grades, they need to be stretched and challenged at school.
Equally problematic is the overly technical nature of humanities exams which means that, rather than the timeless questions of good and evil, reason and emotion, freedom and authority, English Literature questions mostly concern the ‘how’; ‘How does the poet present the speaker’s feelings’ or ‘How does the author present what life is like for women?‘.
Yet as we found while researching in Cambridge University’s Archive, exams were not always like this. In the 1955 O-level English exam, children were asked of Chaucer’s work, ‘What have you learnt from The Prologue about war, fighting men and chivalry’?; ‘Show how two parts of this anthology have charmed you with the beauty of their verse’.
Such questions elevate education to its higher purpose of cultivating wisdom, conscience and virtue yet they are at best sidelined, or wholly absent from modern schooling.
Similarly indicative of the pedestrianism of modern education, our research found that at least 88 schools have renamed school houses after Greta Thunberg, and over 140 after footballer Marcus Rashford. That young celebrity figures are venerated as heroes, above greats like King Alfred, Rosa Parks and Charles Darwin points to how detached schooling has become from our classical liberal tradition.
As we argue in our Civitas report, education should, through studying the best texts, and teaching about our greatest heroes (warts and all), develop children’s conscience, so that they might judge beauty and truthfulness, discern what is right and just, make the wise choice when it is not obvious. This is liberal education in the original sense because, rather than mould children to the service of the economy or state, it instead develops their capacities to live well by the light of their own reason. It frees them to join the great conversation of humanity.
This ‘liberal’ vision for education was once advanced by Michael Gove himself. In a great 2011 speech to Cambridge University, he said we must, “reclaim the importance of liberal learning” and recapture the idea that “education is a good in itself”.
Gove was right – and his vision continues to have lasting relevance for education today. Yes, standards are up, schools are improved, and the knowledge-rich revolution has had a positive influence. But the education sector remains lost over what it is for, especially outside the exam years.
The next step for education policy is to remind schools of their purpose, and how to reflect that in their teaching. Schools are not exam factories or production lines for the economy. They are there to give children access to the best in the world, and the capacity to engage with it fully, kick-starting a lifelong adventure of learning.
It’s time we sought the reforms to achieve that vision.