Who really matters?

The papers carry stories of Oxbridge success and the schools’ pride that accompany them, not least because of the added prestige they believe it brings.  So also the new arriver, who came into the country not speaking a word of English and has now emerged with a string of top results.

Of course, such praise is not misplaced for those who work extremely hard, overcome major life obstacles or are ‘gifted’ when it comes to succeeding at what schools are expected by government to deliver.  But we must also be glad to see the establishment of Progress and Value Added measures which also applaud those who most improve their scores in comparison to where they started.

At this time of year, however, what attention do we give to the delicately-named ‘non-achievers’? The Press, and most schools, focus on the number of 10-year-olds who “meet National expectations” or how many 16-year-olds achieve the classic “5 or more good grades”.  In order for “Every child matters” to be true, however, surely we must ask if those who do not reach these thresholds matter too.

It is beyond doubt that swathes of teachers, Christian and non-Christian alike, care deeply about those children and their life-chances.  Countless SEND staff and Departments labour long and hard to give a sense of achievement and value to those who find learning difficult.  But does our education system help them in that mission, or does it simply give them resources so their children fail less badly, rather than to help them to find some meaningful success?  Do these children really matter, or would a modern-day Orwell just smile and say that “every child matters; only some matter more than others?”

For as long as examination results have been published for all to see, the focus seems to be on those who achieve, and upon damning those schools who do not.  How often have we worried enough to ask serious questions about that fact that, every year in England between 2005 and the pandemic, 20-47%1 of state-educated Primary children have failed to hit their Level 4s in reading, writing and maths? Ditto for 16-year-olds, between a third and two thirds2 of whom have failed to get their ‘5 good GCSE grades’ – regardless of how successive governments have moved the goalposts in calculating the figures?  These percentages do not just account for a few of our children; they represent a truth that is both mathematically and humanly ‘significant’.  It is surely beyond being merely a system malfunction and must raise the question as to whether or not the system is actually fit for purpose at all.

So how have we generated a culture in which these young people are hidden from sight, not to be talked about, and far less to be helped out of their plight?  Why do we just shut schools or ‘re-broker’ them while perpetuating a system in which so many young people are being annually branded as failing to measure up?  And if children reach secondary school ‘below the expected grade’ then how are they supposed to catch up with the secondary train which moves at an ever-increasing speed towards Year 11 while they are still standing on the platform?

If these children are to be simply set aside as collateral damage within a system where not everyone can genuinely win prizes, then how can we claim that these children ‘matter’ in any meaningful way? Are we really content to smile and simply say “Well done; you did your best.  Look at your Progress 8 and never mind the actual grade. Oh, and by the way, we think you’re great”?

Many Primary teachers, and many Secondary teachers, have a strong sense of which children are going to struggle to achieve the ‘expected outcomes’ long before they reach the ages of 10 and 16.  We despair over a one-size-fits-all system which is increasingly spoken about almost exclusively as “servicing the economy”, “meeting the skills gap” and “scoring well against international benchmarks”.  This really is the language of widgets and conveyer belts; and in such a world, those widgets which don’t pass muster are cast aside.

Most Primary schools do a fantastic job in trying to find a variety of ways in which to stimulate young minds to learn, in the broadest and most inclusive sense of the word, but they have to be brave or stupid to ignore the irresistible conformity into which performance tables, OfSTED gradings and national expectations squeeze them.  These schools do a great job in setting children on the road to the 3Rs, and encouraging late starters and late developers, but what hope do they have when they know that this squeeze will tighten further when their children hit secondary?

Maybe it is time to ask these questions again of those currently in charge:

·        Why is it that so many children, over so many years, have not thrived within the education system we have built?

·        How do our national auditors view the huge public expenditure on a system which so clearly fails to perform to its own expected outcomes, never mind its moral obligations?

·        In the light of such failure for so many, when will we seriously engage with credible, positive alternatives to sitting children behind desks all day for most of 12 years, albeit in shiny new buildings, being obliged to push pens across paper and fingers across keyboards?

And most chillingly of all, when will we stop thinking of widgets and start thinking about human beings? 

As Christians, surely we know that the value of a human being is in their intrinsic and universal value to God, not in their position in a school performance table or in their productivity value to the economy. 

Until we have an education system which understands and responds to this difference too, perhaps we should all stop telling ourselves that every child matters, before it becomes the biggest lie since Dulce et Decorum Est.