Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s latest statement on how to use equity in education as a launch pad to furthering social mobility in the UK is a decent read.
She talks about sacking off one-line Ofsted reports, raising teacher pay, bringing more expert teachers in (love this), and remembering the role of poverty in undermining attentiveness among, especially, regional students.
All commendable. All based on involved discussions with teachers over many months.
But to my tutoring eyes, international eyes that have been working with international students for fifteen years, the bit that I found the most powerful was this:
“A curriculum that reflects the issues and diversities of our society, ensuring that every child is represented.”
I love this comment because from a learning point of view, if you don't address the class, culture and race bias in the curriculum, there isn't space for meaningful development.
This isn't just a comment on introducing African or Muslim texts alongside George Elliot or Chaucer in GCSE or A-level English Literature—though for sure, there is room for those additions.
It's about addressing the embedded cultural values that become markers of analytical (or intellectual) skill in exams.
Let's take an example.
The skill of literary analysis—the process by which we extract new meaning created by literary devices like similes or oxymorons—-requires that students are sensitive/clever enough to perceive multi-layered meanings in words or phrases. But new meaning is often based on cultural images. Does Shakespeare have even one play that doesn't make reference to a pagan heretic, a holy shrine, the "quality of mercy"? Without Biblical knowledge you’d miss these. More: how are you supposed to understand the impact of economic reform on societal structures without an understanding of the English class system, in, say, any number of Victorian or Edwardian works?
Scoring well in English at GCSE isn't about being good at English. It's about being English.
Even the 11+ is guilty of this in vocab tests which expect international students to know what a 'turnip' or 'wheelbarrow' is when they might not necessarily have encountered arable farming methods or produce.
We need to look at what implicit messages we are sending to students about our values, our supposed cultural superiority relative to others, and celebrate how meaning itself is open to interpretation. We sometimes call this critical thinking. We need to be critical of how we think. Yes.
Link here
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/fixing-the-foundations-of-opportunity-education-secretary-speech?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications-topic&utm_source=29b07d15-6d1b-4f02-beb5-c4ad118b14a8&utm_content=daily