Is the education system in England on the cusp of a new era? It feels like it is, but is it?!
There are an endless number of thought pieces that say that the education system needs to change. There are an equal number of suggestions and proposals that outline what various people think it should change too. The sheer volume of these pieces is evidence that change is in the air. But is it evidence that change is definitely coming?
In interviews promoting their brilliant book 'About Our Schools' Sir Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters (2022) argue that the education system (in England) is 'on the cusp of change'. In an interview with Fiona Miller (The Guardian) Brighouse said this:
“Today feels like 1976 when Callaghan made his speech. It took time, but change came in the end and this moment feels very similar, so even if it takes five to 10 years, we will have been happy to give these ideas a push and contributed to that.”
I don't think he was wrong in saying this. The changes that happened in the late 1970s and 1980s to create the current age of education were preceded by a distinct period of doubt and delusion, epitomised by the then Prime Minister James Callaghan's 'Ruskin speech' Brighouse is referring to in the quote above.
In that historical moment - an interregnum between the two great post-WWII eras of formal education - many proposals and ideas on what the education system should change to were being aired. Doubt and delusion is again evident today, as are multitudinous proposals for what the new era of education should be. For some, this is evidence enough that we definitely are on the cusp of change and heading for a new era of education in England.
However, there has to be more evidence out there (not least because today's education system has built up a lot more in-built resilience to change than was true in the 1970s). What are the other tell tale signs that change is coming? What might give those of us who want to see transformative change some hope?
For me, in regard to the English education system specifically, there are three key signs:
Change is all around - the formal education systems in both Scotland and Wales have recently changed quite dramatically.
What Jon Alexander calls the 'Citizen Story' is gathering pace as more and more people are having their old worldviews about the nature of human nature transformed (something we are fully engaged with at Global Action Plan).
The wider system, Capitalism, appears to be disintegrating 'not so much from organised opposition fighting for a different social order but from it's own internal contradictions' (David H Hargreaves, 2019) - as it disintegrates it causes huge disruption (regular catastrophic climate change events being just one example). Disruption often leads to change. This is where calls for education systems to be re-orientated around a new purpose: 'preparation for uncertain futures' and debates about what that 'future' of education might look like, come from.
I am sure there are more signs, I'm sadly not a good enough historian to spot them. I'm posting this to appeal to anyone who has studied the history of education and specifically the triggers of era defining change - not just in England, but globally - are there more signs of transformative change that we can cite?