Education needs to be a lot more fun. That’s why nearly 10 years ago we started Festival of Education, which attracts thousands of teachers each year to Wellington College, and why two years ago I started the Festival of Higher Education at the University of Buckingham.

Out go long worthy speeches, air-conditioned lecture halls and respectful listening. In comes debate, controversy, live music and hay bales.

“Should we have selective schools at 11?” is one of the debates on the “transition to HE schools day” at the Buckingham Festival on 13 and 14 June. The consensus, amply endorsed by the evidence, says a resounding “no” to a new generation of grammars. But if our political masters are determined to do it, is there a way to ensure that they don’t becmiddle-classlass enclaves and damage schools all around them?

When an all-powerful Theresa May and her right-hand man in Number 10, Nick Timothy, drove this plan hard last year (how things have changed!), I came up with a proposal to mitigate the damage and maximise the benefit. We should build 100 “May Schools”, but only the most disadvantaged 25 per cent would be eligible, and only in the most chronically disadvantaged areas. Weekly boarding would be an option for those whose location or home background required it. The schools would be geared up to support those from disadvantaged backgrounds and to give them every possible support and encouragement. The plan would address head-on the chronic British problem of poor social mobility. Tests at 11 would be geared to reveal promise and potential for those students who might benefit from a highly academic school career.

‘It’s wrong to rule out selection’

These schools would have four forms of 25 students from the age of 11, but would take another 25 students who have developed and shown academic potential at the age of 13. Another 25 students would join the A-level or IB programme at 16, giving a sixth form 150 in each school. This would result in 15,000 of the most needy but most academically able in the most deprived areas gaining top university places each year. Because there would only be 100 of these schools spread across the country, any damaging effect on neighbouring schools should it is hoped be reduced. Perhaps this idea is not the total answer, but as the recent row over admissions to the University of Oxford has shown, along with the continued low admittance to top universities of most disadvantaged young people, it is surely wrong to rule out altogether the issue of some form of selection at 11. 

The impact of the digital revolution, well covered on the pages of Tes, is another area being discussed at the conference.

Britain needs to wake up to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) across schools and universities, which might well render the whole debate about selection at any age redundant. Children as young as 11 could be doing university-level modules in certain subjects by working at their own pace with a virtual AI teacher. Children learning at their own rates calls into question the whole future for grammar schools. Able children will race ahead whatever their school, rather than being held back by lower level expectations.

‘AI will be the death of exams’ 

AI will, sooner than we think, lead to the death of exams as we know them today. It enables students through continuous assessment to offer very detailed knowledge about their exact level and skills. AI is throwing the entire world of education in schools and universities upside down. 

Buckingham’s Festival of HE concentrates on universities, but it acknowledges that for far too long, we have treated schools and universities as separate entities. That might make sense to those who work in them. But it makes no sense at all to students who travel from one to the other, or on to further education. We need a lot more joined-up thinking.

Nowhere is this more important than in the growing crisis of mental health. Staff at schools and universities are racking their brains, desperate to know what to do. Episodes of mental health problems and suicides spike in the first year at university largely because schools and universities do not think in a joined-up way. Too little is done at schools to prepare young people for the greater freedoms and challenges of university life, while universities too readily assume that undergraduates are the finished product, able to take decisions on how to run their lives on their own.

Festivals allow people to meet and build bridges together in more relaxed ways. This summer sees masses of music, book, food and history festivals across the country and it is this spirit that education festivals are trying to emulate. The Bryanston  Education Summit is a welcome entrant on to the scene. We need them to start up elsewhere in the country, too, mixing support staff with teachers, higher and further education with schools, and to involve parents, students and communities, too.

Education should be the most joyous activity on earth. The dull and grim march towards uniform standards and tests has trampled all too often on curiosity and spontaneity, on self-motivation and individuality. Let a thousand festivals flower and we can change all this together.

Sir Anthony Seldon is vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, and a former master of Wellington School

The Buckingham Festival of Education is offering teachers a 50 per cent discount on ticket sales. Quote code: fhe-2018-50%