social mobility

The speed with which children were abandoned shows how little we value education, argues Education Forum organiser Gareth Sturdy in Spiked…

In the space of a year, the government’s response to Covid-19 has attacked the foundations and purposes of our education system. It has exposed the education establishment’s attachment to social mobility as mere pretension. It has eroded the distinction between home and school life, and has confused education with passing on information. But this transformation could only take place because for a long time now education has been built on sand. Now that those weak foundations have been swept aside, as a society we do not have coherent or even agreed ideas on what should replace them…

Read the full article on Spiked.

The drive to make schools a force for social mobility risks distorting our collective sense of what education is meant to be for, argues Kevin Rooney in the forum’s column for Teach Secondary magazine…

For years now, educationalists and politicians of all hues have been telling us that the core goal of education is ‘social mobility’ – that is, reducing poverty and inequality, while promoting mobility up the social ladder, especially for poor working class and black pupils.

Schools minister Nick Gibb informs us that, “A welcome consensus has begun to emerge that schools must be engines of social mobility.” London schools, in particular, are held up as a great success story.

I wish I could share that rosy narrative. For me, the social mobility agenda is distorting and degrading education in a number of ways. Many schools have become boring, technocratic institutions where formulaic lessons, teaching to the test and high stakes accountability measures are now the norm. I fear this approach is sucking the life and joy out of teaching and learning…

Read the full article on TeachWire.

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