“I think it is an enormous mistake to still have the GCSE examination at 16,” states Michael Young, a professor of education at UCL Institute of Education.
For those who know his work - particularly his research on powerful knowledge and curriculum, more of which later - such comments will not come as a surprise. An education system that is geared to examinations and accountability is the opposite of what he thinks our children need.
Speaking on this week’s episode of the Tes Podagogy podcast, he says that a loss of specialism is one of the key problems with the current education system.
“We need to limit differentiation before 16 years old, so we can maximise the range of choices available to young people,” Young explains. “We have [GCSEs] for various accountability reasons rather than educational reasons. There is no educational reason for having an examination that [restricts choice] in the middle of a school career.
“We have a vastly over-specialised education system. I did nothing but physics, chemistry and maths from the age of 16. That is not a good education. [We need to] maintain a breadth for longer.”
By “breadth” he does not mean cross-curricular teaching in schools. Quite the opposite, in fact. He says he is “committed to subject specialisms” and we should do more of them for longer, only making a choice to narrow our focus to one or two at the end of our education.
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Is primary education not mostly cross-curricular, though?
Yes, Young says, and that is an issue: he would get rid of generic literacy and numeracy and introduce subject-specialist teaching, meaning that children would sometimes have to move between those specialists.
“There is too sharp a distance between child-centred [teaching] all the time in primary and then the opposite in secondary. No wonder some children find it difficult to make the move,” he states.
“I think there is a great mistake in the literacy and numeracy strategies - I don’t think generic knowledge of language or number is knowledge. What it has led to is a diminution of opportunities in primary school to develop their learning in a variety of contexts.
“You can’t get away from the fact that teachers who are excited and challenged by their subject are the most likely to stimulate pupils. If you are an English teacher, you are never going to be able to stimulate a student in literacy, because it is boring. You will stimulate them in literature. And if literature is well taught and well selected, the student will become more literate.”
Powerful knowledge and curriculum
Young is perhaps most known these days because of his writing on knowledge and its place in the curriculum. Tes columnist Mark Enser wrote a short explainer of Young’s thinking earlier this year.
Young’s work has been most championed by those teachers pushing for a knowledge-rich approach to curriculum and, in some quarters, it has been used to justify a move to a more traditional form of teaching.
When asked about his views on pedagogy, Young says application in the classroom did not feature in his thinking when he wrote about powerful knowledge. He was instead engaged in sociological research. Many who use his work “probably haven’t read it”, he adds.
Changing lives
So, how would Young define knowledge in an educational context?
“What teaching and education is about is that movement from the everyday knowledge you bring to a school and the knowledge you end up with,” he says. “That’s why it is worth having kids at school - we want them to be able to think in ways that they couldn’t before they came.
“Regardless of cultural background, the knowledge you have acquired is related to the context you are in, and you come to school because we think you have to make a break with that knowledge, you can’t rely on it.
“[In doing that], you are changing the authority of the knowledge for a child from experience to the body of knowledge the student is engaged with [in school].
“Some find that shift easier than others. Some circumstances children grow up in make it easier than others. Some adults have never really experienced the idea of knowledge not being tied to experience.”
Being in charge of that shift is a “huge responsibility”, he says, and he believes teachers are vastly undervalued in this regard.
“The teacher has to have in mind the development of the child, and what impact decisions they make will have on that development. In that sense, the teacher is more like a doctor. They are looking at the future health of the patient and they are advising: if we do this, then it will do that. We don’t give enough credit to teachers or enough responsibility to them so they can make that judgement. The teacher is best placed to know how to help that child to [access] a better future.”
You can listen to the podcast above or on your podcast platform (including Spotify) - just type in ‘Tes - The Education Podcast’
