Unanswerable evidence?
Posted on 05/11/2025
The Autumn number of FORUM is now available. Patrick Yarker outlines how its contributors examine the purposes of education at a time of widespread child poverty and many another crisis.
In his recent review of Nick Gibb and Robert Peal’s book: Reforming Lessons: why English schools have improved since 2010 and how this was achieved, Tory grandee Ferdinand Mount was happy to relay without analysis, let alone criticism, the pair’s self-congratulatory account of recent state educational history. Readers of the TLS, a publication Mount used to edit, learned that although Ofsted introduced rigour into the classroom in 1992, it wasn’t until the arrival in office of Gibb and Michael Gove that standards in state schools at long last properly improved. The pace of improvement was maintained by a full-blooded academisation drive, coupled with a return to traditional teaching: ‘relentless practice, repetition of words and movements broken down into memorable and iterable memes, in tandem with detailed and persistent instruction and testing…’[1] The work of headteachers such as Wilshaw and Birbalsingh provides, for Mount, ‘unanswerable evidence’ that such approaches work best, as does the rise in test scores reading ability of England’s primary school pupils as reflected in international rankings.
Those with a firmer grip on what has been happening in England’s state schools might want to point out that Nick Gibb, Michael Gove and others did their level best to exile from the English system imagination, critical thinking, the joy of learning, and pupil voice and agency. Or what the website of Ferdinand Mount’s old school endorses as: ‘creativity, individuality, innovation and enjoyment…and…a lifelong appreciation of independent thinking and learning….’[2]
The half-truth that prevailed under Gove at the DfE, that remembering is essentially the whole of learning’s law, neglects a more profound and fruitful understanding: that learning is the reconstruction of knowledge and experience. The arid conception of learning which Gibb and Peal applaud themselves for upholding affords only the narrowest perspective on the purpose of school and the nature of what it means to be educated.
Richer and more vibrantly informed consideration of education’s purposes can be found in the contributions to the Autumn number of FORUM. Peter Moss sets the tone by arguing that the question of education’s purposes cannot be considered apart from the condition of the times. And our time of ‘polycrisis’ puts humankind’s future on the line, with urgent ramifications for the way education’s aims are to be framed. John White highlights the consequences it heralds for participation in democratic citizenship. Diane Reay makes clear that instrumentalism is not enough. ‘Social mobility’ and ‘learning for earning’ remain inadequate educational goals. Eddie Playfair sketches a really useful education, in which desired individual and social ends are mutually constitutive. Nathan Archer argues against the disconnection from community and self which, in his view, current mainstream provision cannot help but foster. Brian Stillings urges practitioners to reclaim purpose, while Colin Richards cautions them against expecting too much of themselves.
The number also includes a striking account by Alice Bradbury and Sharon Vince of the role many schools now play in trying to ensure that children and their families do not go hungry or lack basic material necessities. It is estimated, Bradbury and Vince write, that there are 4000 food banks in schools in England. This is more than the number of food banks operating in the community beyond school, and unanswerably also part of the legacy bequeathed by arch-improvers Gove and Gibb.
One in three children lives in poverty now in England, while in the UK as a whole over three million children live in what is called ‘deep’ poverty (defined as a household where income is below 50% of after-housing-costs equivalised median income[3]). In her article, Clare Cameron looks at Early Childhood Education and Care services through the lens of social pedagogy, a discipline better known in mainland Europe than in this country. She argues that the service, at present fragmented and woefully underfunded, might better alleviate child poverty by setting up neighbourhood centres which focus on all-round support for families. This would require sharing power with parents and carers, and integrating the educational growth of children with their social development and well-being. Now there’s a purpose.
Elsewhere in the Autumn number Ian Duckett defends the comprehensive ideal in the face of the depredations of recent years. Collaborative learning, critical inquiry, and democratic, egalitarian and liberatory ideals offer a hopeful way to address the challenges which the polycrisis sets schools. These ideas, along with the comprehensive ideal itself, will be weighed and debated by Diane Reay, India Rees and Fiona Millar at the Caroline Benn Memorial Lecture on Tuesday 25 November, from 6,00pm until 8.00pm in Committee Room 12 of the House of Commons. FORUM and the Socialist Educational Association sponsor this event. Each year the Lecture remembers and celebrates Caroline Benn’s lifelong advocacy of comprehensive education, her campaigning verve, and the scholarly cast of the research she undertook in pursuit of non-selective, anti-determinist educational approaches. The Lecture is a free event. Sign up here to attend:
Caroline Benn Memorial Lecture 2025 – Comprehensive Revolution: Completed or Defeated?
[1] Ferdinand Mount, ‘Second mover advantage: The British state fails when it innovates’, Times Literary Supplement, October 17, 2025, pp12-13. Both quotations can be found on page 13.
[2] See Eton College website: https://www.etoncollege.com/about-us/our-purpose/
[3] See: Child poverty statistics – new record high and further breakdowns | CPAG