Our children are serving the system instead of the system serving our children

August was a bad month for Gavin Williamson and for a great number of English and Welsh students. Yet at the turn of September, the education secretary still remains in his job.

The exam results fiasco has been blamed on a computer program, an algorithm constructed and applied to mass data sets. This was at best deeply unfair, as algorithms tend to be when applied to individuals, in situations that really matter. The algorithm was built on data that had been drawn from our existing and very unequal school system. The fact it spurted out results which reinforced inequality for the next generation, shouldn’t surprise us.

This week will see many of our schools reopening their doors to students who will be hoping that schools can prepare them for a better future.  

Going back to the old ways is not acceptable. Schools have increasingly been turned into exam factories, churning out exam results that are questioned increasingly by parents, pupils, employers, and teachers themselves.

Schools should be about helping children become world ready, not just exam ready. Over the next decade and beyond, those making their way through our education system will live in the 22nd century, yet we prepare them with Victorian tools. We need to rethink not just exams, but also the curriculum, assessment, and accountability. 'Levelling up' and creating a ‘global Britain’ will not be achieved within the current system, however much it is tinkered with.  

Although radical change is needed, there is a ‘blob’ that resists change. The blob includes those who do well out of the exam factory system. Politicians, civil servants, faceless bureaucrats who reduce children to single numbers that can be used to measure, compare and frame policy around. They lack the ambition to help the next generation become world ready by acquiring the skills and character they will need to thrive. The blob tinkers with a system, which is not fit for the future. We need real change and less churn. This must be done with the profession, not to the profession.  

The exam factory system means we are now just above average in OECD league tables for literacy and numeracy, but near the bottom of the league for child wellbeing. Our children are serving the system, instead of the system serving our children.

But this Covid crisis presents an unprecedented opportunity. Suddenly the entire system is coming into question yet again.

With SATs cancelled and league tables suspended, the tools of the blob have been packed away. For now, at least. In their place is a clarion call to trust our teachers, who know their students best, and give headteachers the power they need to make the best of a bad situation. Could this begin the national debate we haven’t had in a generation about not just how we do education, but why?

We as a society should be asking ourselves what kind of schools do we want to send our children back to? Is more of the same good enough? Covid-19 is forcing the pace of change everywhere: at work, across industries, and in education. Are Johnson, Williamson, Cummings, and Gove ready to step up to the challenge of change, or have they become the blob, which resists making schools fit for the future?

Jo Owen is chair of the Future Perfect Education Commission and founder of Teach First