What would you change about the UK education system?

Recently, we’ve been asking education thought-leaders and experts this question:

‘If there was one thing you could change in the UK education system, what would it be and why?’

Find out how Pete Dudley and Vivienne Porritt responded below.

Pete Dudley

"I would change the system’s historical fragility into robust resilience."

Pete believes that we need to get rid of certain aspects of the education system in order to achieve this robust resilience:

"Things that need to go include:

• The political footballing of education

I am with David Bell on this. State education cannot plan or develop long term, or seek serious external investment or partnership when it is subject to such dramatic swings in policy with every new government.

• Cavalier attitudes

We are too swift to dismiss evidence that gets in the way of what we want to do and too quick to adapt practice before fully understanding it. We know what works – but never why.

• Bonkers rules about which schools can do what

Local systems involving teaching schools constantly risk devastation by a rogue Ofsted. Good schools are often perversely incentivised away from becoming outstanding because of pressures to diversify and the risk of humiliation in losing that status …..because they diversified!"

Pete uses Japan as an education system that we can learn from:

“The national curriculum and assessment are modified every five years - on evidence systematically gathered from thousands of lesson studies from thousands of schools.”

Pete insists that the main change we need to make is that we need to build a greater knowledge-base for policy from evidence from classrooms and learning.

Vivienne Porritt

"The one thing I would change is to have a shared understanding of what effective professional learning and development looks like and how to achieve it."

Vivienne sees partnership between schools and universities as central to achieving this since evidence informed practice plays a key role.

She draws on her experiences as a secondary head teacher:

"My role really cemented my interest and obsession with how to ensure colleagues designed, experienced and evaluated effective professional learning and development opportunities that make a difference."

People are our greatest resource

I believe our people are our greatest resource and they should experience the best development possible so that they are able to maximise the impact of pupil’s learning.

If I were to go back into a school, I would start from scratch in designing how to achieve this."

Vivienne believes there is an enormous amount of energy spent in offering colleagues learning opportunities but much less time spent evaluating whether colleagues’ professional learning has the desired impact on pupils’ learning.

Start with the end in mind

“I would turn this process around,” she explains: “I think we should start with the end in mind. I am passionate about combining the practice expertise of teachers and leaders in schools and their research counterparts in universities.

My vision is that we are stronger together, so the professional learning we design in collaboration makes a demonstrable difference for our colleagues and those whose learning we support.”

What are your thought about the UK Education System? Leave a comment below: