When Tony Blair said “Education, education, education” he was widely applauded and even today few people would find much to worry about with such a definitive statement of political purpose. There is widespread faith, backed up by credible research globally, that successful schooling can to some extent counter poverty and social disadvantage. Small, private schools are flourishing in the developing world because so many parents are willing to devote a major chunk of their low income to send their children to school, and the current government is as confident as Blair was that schools are the best tools to deal with the challenge of inequity.   

But this belief has become so pervasive it is actually undermining and distracting schools, teachers and many other interested parties from their apparently shared ideal of delivering high-quality schooling to as many children as possible. So common is this belief, it convinces philanthropists, NGOs, thinktanks, charities and even some commercial interests that almost anything they choose to do is acceptable, provided it’s done in the name of “education”.

Socially engineering educational opportunities and pathways for children to follow isn’t educating them. Conflating education with social engineering, which is what Blair was guilty of rhetorically, and so many organisations and individual educational leaders today are practically, does nothing to ensure that children receive high-quality schooling from increasing numbers of strong and professional teachers. Grade inflation, exam equivalence, the introduction of new and simpler subjects to the curriculum, University Technical Colleges overselling employment opportunities, obliging independent schools to support state partners, these are all symptoms of the same malaise, whatever you may think about their benefits.

It’s not a new problem and it has its roots in the profession itself. Confident, skilled teachers will all recognise those colleagues who display an unbridled interest in even the most minor crisis or emergency in school, because it allows them to abandon the classroom guiltlessly. It’s far easier to deal with a grazed knee or to hand out a tissue than to make sure 30 children leave the room knowing more than they did when they entered it, eight or nine times every day. There are heads and educational leaders who have built their entire management style and careers around this way of thinking. Worryingly, it’s reached a stage where so many influential educational organisations have succumbed to the same weakness it has become the new orthodoxy.

Is ‘changing lives’ our priority?

Teach First, for example, an organisation I have encouraged companies to sponsor and that has always enjoyed cross-party political praise and support, tells potential recruits at first sight “It’s never too late to do something life-changing” and urges potential applicants to “Change career: change lives”.  Is that the right signal an organisation purporting to train high-quality teachers should be giving out to potential recruits? You will find the same evangelical tone and ambition voiced by many organisations and charities working in the educational hinterland between government and schools. You will even find schools repeating it themselves, usually failing ones on the road to competence or competent schools ironically puzzled at why they can’t do better.

You won’t find world-class, or genuinely strong, schools anywhere making such grandiose claims. They know what it means to educate a child. It requires a great deal more than dictating a narrow path for them, putting a sticking plaster over the gaping wounds they may bring with them from home, or, as is happening increasingly, bending the rules to create more opportunities for them. You can care as much as you like: it doesn’t mean you can teach. 

Anyone who genuinely wants to see high-quality schooling in the UK needs to distinguish between a desire to address social inequality and a desire to educate a child. The two are not the same, they never have been, and because it has become normal now to believe that they are, many schools are trapped in a cycle of failure because the people and leaders working in them have neither the skills nor the experience necessary to achieve that shared goal of high-quality schooling. In addition, they are surrounded by organisations and advisers equally blinded by the seductive appeal of thinking they’re all making a difference. Ironically, they are, just not the one they hoped for: quite the opposite.

It’s time all those hundreds of organisations, and it is indeed in the hundreds, took a serious look at their visions, and thought critically and frankly about what they are really contributing to that shared goal of high-quality schooling for all, before modifying both their messaging and their actions accordingly.

They won’t do it by commissioning research to bolster their preconceptions. They won’t do it by slapping everyone who works for them on the back every time a child smiles at a camera. Teaching effectively is hard, routine work; they need to stop distracting and undermining the hard workers who know what they are doing, help to create more of them and start listening to them, instead of trying to convince them they know better just because they care.

Joe Nutt is an educational consultant and author

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