8 minute read
Jim Fitzpatrick
Columnist
Jim Fitzpatrick,
Journalist and Broadcaster
Education, Education, Education...
Journalist and broadcaster Jim Fitzpatrick reflects on the effects that the pandemic has had on the education system.
Home schooling. There are two words that were clearly never meant to go together. But thanks to the pandemic and lockdown, they have become far too well acquainted over the last year.
For years teachers have been targets for parental gripes about their easy hours and long summer holidays. At the school gates you might hear mutterings about how lazy they were and how they did little else but pass round handouts and drink coffee all day.
I wonder how many parents think that now? After months of home schooling combined with home working (another two words with a developing relationship), I suspect many parents have made a fundamental reappraisal of their erroneous assumptions.
While the pandemic has revealed the incredible value of our teachers it has also exposed what appear to be huge challenges in our education system.
The debacle over GCSE and A Level results last year was unedifying. The resolution was unsatisfactory. And this year has, it seems, been little better.
You’re left with the impression of a system that’s designed to measure and quantify like the small-minded Mr Gradgrind of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times; so that some sort of a reductive number can be placed against each child at each stage in order to allow the system to continue to operate as before.
For instance, why are we bothering to assess A Levels this year (or even last year) at all? The last formal exams these students will have sat properly will be their pre-pandemic GCSEs. Can universities not use these as a guide for their offers? It would seem fairer than trying to contrive a system that looks official, but can only be far from objective.
Meanwhile universities in the UK rely on tuition fees. They also rely on accommodation fees. Hence the promise of face-to-face teaching was important in order to ensure they got both sets of fees last autumn.
And then in Northern Ireland we have had the particular spectacle of the grammar schools scrambling to devise ways to determine entry in the absence of tests. Regardless of the merits of academic selection, there were no easy solutions here as a fair alternative to oversubscribed schools can’t be created overnight.
If we stop for a moment to consider what the purpose of education should be, we might wonder if the system is designed for something else entirely.
What does education deliver in terms of health, nutrition, environmental awareness, financial management, political understanding, ethics and good citizenship? All of these things are in the curriculum to some extent, but they are rarely the main focus.
Why are school dinners so under-funded and so time restricted? The practice doesn’t match the healthy eating preaching. Why is PE so limited and not part of every school day? Sitting at desks all day doesn’t encourage the healthy lifestyle we know is necessary. The same applies to all those other fundamental life skills; the system just doesn’t prioritise them.
The Department of Education has launched a review of education in Northern Ireland. Perhaps in the context of a greater appreciation of teaching and what education can be, now is the right time for that fundamental look at how the system could be redesigned to meet the needs of the 21st century.
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