Education

I had a surprise email this week from the headteacher of the last school in which I taught, the Princess Helena College (PHC) in Hertfordshire. The email said that, as of the end of this academic year, the school would be closing. This had been a hard decision to take but with the pressures from the pandemic and the inevitable decline in overseas students the future was not financially viable.  I felt saddened but not surprised. In many ways it is surprising that the school has managed to continue for so long. It is a small independent girls school with around 200 students aged 11-18 and was founded in 1820 to educate the daughters of officers who had served in the Napoleonic Wars and daughters of the Anglican clergy. Originally situated in London the school moved to its Hertfordshire location in 1935. Its origins and location might give you a clue  to its culture.

It is a curious thing that I came to work there at all, and, like much of my career, it found me rather than me finding it. I had previously taught at Hitchin Girls School (HGS) a much larger state school and had overseen the growth of  Psychology A-level  there from a handful of 15 students in 1992 when the subject was really quite new in schools, to well over 100 from the three Hitchin Secondaries in 2001. It had been a wonderful experience but by 2000 I was looking for my own ‘next step’. This lead me to leave the classroom and take up a post at the Villiers Park Educational Trust near Cambridge. Villiers Park offered residential programmes for  Gifted and Talented sixth form students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It turned out that much of the work was administrative and I quickly realised that I missed actually teaching. So when I was approached by the then Head of PHC asking me if I might be interested in teaching A-level Psychology there, I was delighted. For a while my week was divided between Villiers Park and PHC but within a year I was full time. As there wasn’t enough A-level work in such a small school I was given the choice of what else I might like to teach, so I opted for History. In time I was also given the opportunity to learn about Philosophy for Children (P4C) and to introduce the activity of Philosophical Enquiry with KS3 (11-13 year olds). In many ways the Psychology teaching was less rewarding than it had been at HGS. I missed the dynamic of a larger group and quite a number of the girls found academic A-level work a struggle. Although they found it interesting, in many ways it was a means to an end, a hurdle to be jumped in order to gain the prize of a university place and all its apparent consequent benefits. However, I really did enjoy teaching History and  P4C and my understanding of both subjects grew considerably! It really is true that the best way to learn any subject is to have to teach it to somebody else.

All this pre-amble is leading me to reflect a little on what we might mean by a good education. Certainly there are many voices now saying that we need to re-think many aspects of the current system. The pandemic has highlighted  growing concerns about children’s mental health, the debate about the value and limitations of learning remotely via computer and the extent to which we are still operating a system developed in the 19th century which does not serve 21st century children.  I have to say that I despair when I read about the level of unhappiness in so any children and whilst there are many reasons for this I am sure that a contributing factor is the nature of the education they are offered with its relentless obsession with assessment, testing and accountability.

The first distinction I would like to draw is the one between education and schooling. For me ‘education’ is a broad term. I think it perfectly possible to do  badly in school yet to become well educated.  For me being educated is about being able to function well in the world. It is about managing your own physical and mental health, being able to relate to others with sensitivity, empathy and compassion, being able to be a responsible, contributing member of society, being able to appreciate beauty in nature and the arts, being able to think critically and make wise judgements based on good understanding of problems and situations and to have a good all round knowledge of the world in the broadest terms.  It is what is often described as ‘soft’ in that it is very difficult to measure. On the other hand ‘schooling’ is more concerned with the content of what is to be learned and the methods by which this might be formalised and assessed in an organisation created for the purpose. It lends itself very nicely to measurement. Do you know it or do you not?!

So it might be reasonable to ask:

• to what extent our school system truly provides the best environment in which education can take place?
• how appropriate and relevant is the content of what we choose to present to students in schools?
• how can we assess the knowledge, skills, attitudes and abilities which children have acquired?

I think there are some wonderful schools and wonderful teachers and there is no doubt that many children thrive in these schools and under the system we have. However, many do not.  For me one of the main problems is that our system is largely economically based. Education has become a commodity. It is viewed as a preparation for the future and ultimately for ‘the good job’ or indeed for any job!  High grades at school give access to ‘better’ universities or wider opportunities which are perceived to be in limited supply. Rewards are extrinsic - the praise of the teacher, the gold star, the satisfaction of the test result, the recognition of peers or other significant people.  So it can be easy to conclude quite early on that you are not doing as well as some of your peers, that learning is difficult, that it has little relevance to your own life, you are not very good at it and that you might be happier without having to bother. What is the point of learning if your prospect of a local job is in doubt?

I wish we could have an education system which sees education as being an activity which is engaged in for its intrinsic satisfaction NOW. Learning about things which are meaningful to you is deeply enjoyable. It is one of the things which gives life meaning and purpose in and of itself , not because of where it might lead.  Education should  aim  to meet and address the needs, interests and development of children here and now, not a system which presents them with an endless series of tests and hurdles en route to an imagined but uncertain future.  Of course, there will be a future for young adults to manage but, I would argue, the ability to manage that future rests more on the  satisfaction and confidence achieved through the process of engaging with learning and  through an understanding and mastery of self. Clearly content is important but it is becoming increasingly secondary to the ability to use, critically evaluate and wisely apply that content. Information is cheap. It is possible to find a quick answer to almost any question on Google. But in this age of fake news where, it seems, so many people can be taken in and influenced by the most outrageous untruths we need an education system which fosters the ability to discriminate between what is true and what is false. We need children to learn how to engage in constructive debate; how to disagree without considering the other person to be an idiot or the embodiment of evil! I’m not saying we should not make assessments and there should not be challenges. Children need to be presented with things which are difficult, which stretch them. They need to learn that they can recover from failure and that effort leads to success.  So I am not arguing for an ‘easy life’ for children. But let us move away from our obsession with measurement, testing and levels. Let us find broader and more imaginative was of assessing what children know and can do at different stages. Let us move towards a future which focuses more on the joy of education; one where dance, music, art, science, maths and language are all seen as life enhancing and not just valued in terms of the career to which they might or might not lead. The high grade, the university place, the apprenticeship and good job should be the side effect or consequence of a meaningful educational experience and not its raison d’être.