In terms of column inches, the announcement that British values will be taught in schools has been this week’s top education story – see David Conway’s blog, posted yesterday. But by no means is this topic now closed: the Daily Mail and the Times Education Supplement [TES] have both revisited the story with relish today. This time however, although the two papers take quite different attitudes to it, the focus is on the ‘diversity’ aspect of these forthcoming British values. The Mail ran the story under the headline ‘New curriculum will “make every lesson politically correct”’, stating that ‘children will be taught race relations and multiculturalism with every subject they study -from Spanish to science’. The TES’s reporting on the other hand, was considerably more cheerful, running the story under the headline ‘Tackle racism head-on.’
One of Ajegbo’s recommendations, The TES reported, is that ‘all schools teach discrete citizenship lessons to encourage critical thinking on religion and race.’ The idea of any ‘critical thinking’ being fostered in the current education system seems whimsical. More importantly, however, if the aim is to combat ignorance leading to prejudice through schooling, then the best place to begin would surely be by doing just that – finally nailing the basics. Literacy and numeracy and the geographical knowledge to actually be able to place Britain and foreign countries on the map, are infinitely more likely to foster good citizens than yet more token addendums to a grossly overloaded curriculum.
Another schools initiative which really is unequivocally gimmicky, is a new £494,000 government scheme whereby 45,000 pedometers will be handed out to children in deprived areas of England. Whilst in public spending terms half a million may not seem much, there has been an awful lot of this kind of small change expenditure over the last ten years. A lot of small change which doesn’t add up to much difference. The thinking behind this scheme designed to get kids doing more exercise is tied to government fears over child obesity. A pilot found that children given pedometers did increase the number of steps taken a day. After the initial appeal of a shiny new pedometer has worn off, you have to wonder though, how many children will be inspired to keep doing extra exercise. Wouldn’t it be better to incorporate more exercise into the primary school day? We know that test pressures and an overloaded curriculum, as well as the selling off of school playing fields, has squeezed a lot of PE – and even playtime - out of children’s lives.
On a final more cheerful note, the situation in English schools could be worse: whilst the UK’s truancy rate is considered to be worrying with an estimated 55,000 skipping school every day, in Wales, which has a population of just under 3 million, the estimated truancy rate is 20,000 a day. Or as the BBC put it, the equivalent of roughly twenty schools across Wales being completely empty a day.