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Act Now: Education

A visual representation of the issues involved in Education
"Act Now: Education" by the Common Sense Policy Group is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Britain’s education system frequently fails to produce the outcomes we need. Our children are seldom equipped with the skills necessary for the challenges they will face across their lives. In the state school sector, there is an obsession with a small number of subjects to the detriment of the diversity of experience and knowledge needed to engage with a rapidly developing society. This system is associated with unhappiness and poor health outcomes in both children and teachers, not least because they know that those who can afford to pay for education are likely to leapfrog state school pupils for reasons that have very little to do with merit. In order to have an educational system that facilitates democratic processes and realises the potential of all children, reforms are required at all levels. We need a system that prioritises care, consideration and cooperation across the sector, with a significant increase in educational spending levelling up the playing field and reducing the segregation that concentrates wealth and opportunity in an ever-smaller and more-detached part of society. Here, we set out means of broadening and balancing the curriculum to produce healthy, happy children capable of repairing our society in adulthood and creating democratic structures that restore and recognise teachers’ professionalism.

Recommendations

  1. Prioritise care, consideration and cooperation and reduce the cliff-edge implications of assessment that harm pupils’ health and wellbeing.
  2. Increase school spending by at least 9%, sixth form spending by 23%, Further Education spending by 14% and Higher Education spending by 18% to return to pre-austerity levels.
  3. Remove distortionary forces by removing private school charitable status, prohibiting profit making in the sector and merging public and private provision.
  4. Reduce educational segregation and value social diversity by granting Local Authorities direct control over admissions policy.
  5. Ensure all children have a broad and balanced curriculum to enable our children to rebuild our society as adults.
  6. Introduce democratic structures and remove the arbitrary power of wealthy actors in order to ensure that experts direct education in consultation with communities.
  7. Ensure that teachers are graduates with core academic capacities to guide our children through education.
  8. Take active steps toward removal of Higher and Further Education Tuition fees to achieve a level playing field after 5 years, removing the ideological experiment that has burdened our younger generations in ways that are projected to last their lifetimes. While the removal of tuition fees takes place, Sixth Form, Further Education and Higher Education students would receive additional support from the basic income element of the social safety net, providing a replacement for the Education Maintenance Allowance, which was discontinued under the Coalition Government.