Many school and union leaders have claimed, with noises of exasperation, that the Department for Education never seems to learn anything about what goes on in schools.  

But maybe they are to blame. Following the DfE’s recent startling resurrection of the widely debunked “learning styles” theory in its newsletter to prospective new teachers, those outspoken critics of the DfE need to ask a few questions of themselves. Have they been using the right teaching methods in their attempts to ensure that learning takes place at the DfE? 

What the likes of Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton and NEU joint general secretary Mary Bousted really need to find out is whether the DfE fails to learn anything verbally, or whether the chronic learning difficulty there is auditory, visual or kinaesthetic. 

Maybe they have wrongly assumed that the best methods of communication there were through verbal emails or auditory phone calls. So much more learning could have taken place, perhaps, if they had simply sent a few nice pictures instead, or engaged the DfE more through some kind of kinaesthetic role-play activity. 

The DfE seizing on debunked teaching fads

And while that shock relaunch of learning styles theory was eventually removed, we can only speculate about what other moth-eaten educational ideas might have only just reached the DfE. What else is then going to be broadcast with breathless excitement, as if it’s the new hottest thing on the educational catwalk?

Most of the smart money is on it being the old chestnut about humans only using 10 per cent of their brains - another notion that is now generally regarded as a load of old hogwash. It’s the kind of thing they only really talk about now at 1990s-themed nostalgia parties for the neuroscience department. Though, without naming any names, researchers at the DfE might point to some prominent walking, talking evidence to support such a theory. 

On the matter of brains, I imagine that the dreaded Brain Gym might soon come to the DfE’s attention too. Maybe this is set for a relaunch on the same day as all the other dormant gyms?

A novel piece of technology called the cane

Even the “critical friend” might be poised for a surprise comeback. To those fairly new to the job, this particular fad involved a nominated colleague periodically dropping in and criticising you and your teaching, but only in an informal way. Then you would do the same back to them. 

As you can imagine, staff took to this initiative as warmly as they do to covering Year 9s on a wet and windy Thursday afternoon.  

What else might have only just dropped into that DfE mailbox? Are those poor new recruits in for other groundbreaking newsletters waxing lyrical about triple marking or circle time? 

Maybe the DfE will then unwittingly rewind even further and unveil some novel piece of technology called the “cane”, or release a few Dickensian images showing the revolutionary new teaching approaches being pioneered in Yorkshire by a Mr Wackford Squeers? Maybe Gavin Williamson’s sudden and strange advocacy of “teaching from the front” is the beginning of something even bigger and even older. 

But maybe I am the one who has got it all wrong. Maybe I am the one who is tragically out of date. I’m probably using my left brain when I should be using my right. (Or is it the other way around?)

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire