persist in some areas in the UK: because those in managerial positions of responsibility and therefore able to reform it are those most likely to have benefited from the system. They also have the support of all those parents who have similarly benefited, and a surprising number of aspirant parents who will support such brutal rationing of educational opportunity in the belief that their child will succeed in the test at age 11.
In such areas, the whole system is geared to providing for those 20 per cent of pupils that the spurious 11-Plus examination deems worthy of a grammar school place. By default, those who do not secure such a place are deemed to have failed in their learning at age 11.
This failure is based on the arbitrary nature of an examination heavily weighted towards those pupils coming from a secure family background: pupils whose parents benefited from this same system, with access to books and, if necessary, access to private tutors. If the 11-Plus examination was so precise a tool at identifying ability then it would spell the end of the lucrative private tutor industry in this country!
At this point, educationalists usually compare the British system, with its inherent faults, to that of Germany. There, for many years, the different educational pathways have been characterised by parity of esteem, in which academic and vocational prowess are valued equally.
Despite this obsession with the current examination system as the ‘gold standard’ in our education system, there are attempts in play to devise a broader, more rational and inclusive educational system.
Limited attempts at reform of the examinations system
One development strand is championed by the author of the original 1988 Education Act, which did much to define the landscape of British education.
Lord Baker, or Kenneth Baker as he was in the 1980s, recognised that the national curriculum, as it developed, did not address the needs of British industry to provide sufficient pupils with technical and vocational skills at all academic levels. The result was a dire shortage of apprentices, and technical and managerial staff with a scientific background. This threatened the ability to innovate, design and manage the technical projects that the UK had traditionally excelled at on the world stage.
Such shortcomings would hamper future national prosperity, so needed to be addressed urgently. Current estimates still suggest that the UK needs some 200,000 level 3 and above (A level and degree level) engineers and technical workers and that, in particular, the failure to attract females to the sector represents a lamentable waste of talent and resources (Education Act, 1988).
The antidote to this problem that Lord Baker proposed was the University Technical College (University Technical Colleges, 2010) approach. In this, a new tier of technically biased schools were set up in the 14–19 sector to address the need for more technically competent pupils at both apprenticeship and graduate levels. The use of the term UTC was a clever portmanteau, designed to capture the interest of aspirational parents and young people. In an age of uncertain employment, there was a suggestion that pupils were being trained for an area of the economy with defined and persistent employment opportunities (Engineering UK, 2018).
Many employers – such as the heavy plant manufacturer JCB, aerospace manufacturer BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Siemens, the Royal Navy and numerous others – quickly endorsed the programme with sponsorship deals, as did local universities.
The UTC system has bridged the gap between school and employment with more innovative learning programmes that stress the technical and scientific challenges and key skills underpinning an effective education for the twenty-first century. Teamwork, research, problem-solving and presentation skills are all emphasised. The involvement of large employers and universities means that pupils have the opportunity to deploy their new found skills in real-time problem-solving, often in industrial settings and with real kit, rather than through classroom-based simulations from textbooks. To some extent, this could form part of the template of a future education which decouples the learning experience of pupils from classroom activity and gives opportunities to develop broad-based and relevant skills for the changing world of work beyond formal education (University Technical Colleges, 2019).
Despite these positive attributes, there are limitations to the UTC programme. The UTCs offer a 14–19 education, so that pupils have experienced a secondary school education before having to opt to leave their existing school to join a UTC. This means UTCs represent a discontinuity with the existing educational structure (Burke, 2018).
It is a brave, well informed and innovative parent who will make the leap of faith to withdraw their child from their existing school to trust the UTC to take them through formal examinations – with the expectation that they will continue in school-based education through to the age of 19. Even the underlying assumption that they will be more valuable to local engineering, scientific or technical employers, and therefore have job opportunities built into the system, has not proved sufficient enticement to support the growth of UTCs. There have been notable and high-profile failures of UTCs, which have dented confidence in the programme, and the future of UTCs is now in jeopardy (Burke, 2017; Adams, 2018).
Towards the curriculum of the future
The preceding analysis has demonstrated the limitations in trying to reform the present UK curriculum to produce a fairer, more rigorous and more effective preparation for all young people to face the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. There is no longer uniform education provision in the home countries, as Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have legislatures that have devolved responsibility for educational provision. Subsequently, my comments are increasingly confined to experience in England. Traditionally, the starting point for review has been the limitations of the current system, so that the need for A levels is demanded by the university sector. While decrying the poor literacy and numeracy output of schools, many employers fall back on demanding more mathematics and English content in schools. The government takes as its terms of reference for change, the existing subject curriculum and the knowledge base that underpins it.
Taken together, this means that those with an interest in changing outcomes are wedded to existing delivery methods and those with the power to change things only contemplate marginal amendments to the existing structures of knowledge and delivery. Meanwhile, pupils are short-changed and prevented from experiencing a range of appropriate and challenging learning experiences to prepare them for lifelong learning in the twenty-first century.
As I write, Ofsted, the gatekeeper of educational standards, has announced a curriculum review. The narrow remit and recruitment of expertise wedded to maintaining the existing delivery system will ensure that little of portent will change following the review. Therefore, we shall fall further behind both in international competitiveness and in the life chances available to our young people (Hazell, 2019).
Meanwhile, those countries above us on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) table of educational performance are undertaking root and branch reviews. In Singapore, this means the abandonment of the traditional examination as the arbiter of the effectiveness of the educational system. Ong Ye Kung, Singapore’s Education Minister, stated, ‘Learning is not a competition’. The Ministry of Education is planning a series of changes aimed at discouraging comparisons between student performance and encouraging individuals to concentrate on their own learning development (World Economic Forum, 2018).
Meanwhile, colleagues in Finland confirm that the country has accepted the limitations of a curriculum defined by knowledge demonstrated in a traditional examination system and indeed of knowledge as the vital currency of learning. They are moving towards extended project-based learning in which the pupil has greater responsibility and autonomy for their learning and skills development. The teacher will move from a whole-class teaching