Press Officer Michael Pyke's letter was published in The New World on the 19th March 2025. The edited, published version of his contribution can be found here: https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/letters-look-at-the-bigger-numbers-rachel/
Dear Sir,
David Handley describes Peter Hyman's proposals for education reform as "impressive and radical" (letters, March 13th). It would be more correct to describe them as necessary but seriously insufficient. Everything Hyman says is true but he fails to address the underlying problem that our education system - both public and private - is based upon ideas developed in the 1860s, especially about the nature and purpose of education and who should receive it, from which we have never really moved on. Among the many problems that urgently need addressing (but won't be) are:
1. For all the pious talk of "social mobility", the social structure of the system both reflects and reinforces existing patterns of hierarchy, as it always has done. This results in vast resources being narrowly focussed upon the education of the children of the rich, who continue to form a ruling caste within society, while the children of everyone else are obliged to attend schools all of which are seriously under-resourced and many of which are structurally unfit for purpose.
2. We have a huge shortage of teachers because not enough young people want to do the job and those who give it a try soon quit. Successive governments have not had the slightest idea of how to remedy this situation but have seemed unwilling to learn from countries who don't have this problem.
3. School attendance rates are dropping alarmingly. Politicians conveniently blame this upon bad habits picked up during the pandemic but increasing dissatisfaction with school, especially among older children, was becoming apparent long before 2020 (e.g. in a 2018 survey, over 50% of children in years 10 and 11 said that they "actively disliked" school).Â
It is becoming more and more clear that the education system needs a complete re-set of the kind undertaken by Finland in the 1970s, with spectacularly successful results, but Bridget Phillipson will be lucky to hold on to her job if she attempts anything more ambitious than tinkering around the edges.Â
Yours etc,
Michael Pyke
The Campaign for State Education