So far the commission has taken evidence on the purpose of education, social
mobility, the curriculum, teaching, assessment and mental health. It found a third
of pupils being written off, a demoralised workforce and a discredited exam system
TIMES EDUCATION
COMMISSION7What the
evidence
teaches us
household income of up £200,000, but
unemployed parents can have only 15
hours. Some of the most vulnerable
children are therefore not getting the
support they need. Instead of being a
driver of social mobility, the policy is
reinforcing inequality. At Reach, the gap
between advantaged and disadvantaged
children rose from three to six months in
a year after the extra free hours were
introduced for working families.
The chancellor announced money for
70 new family hubs last autumn but a
thousand Sure Start centres have already
closed and early years workers are often
paid less than supermarket staff.
Childcare places are underfunded and
442 nurseries shut in the year to March- Nurseries cross-subsidise by
charging more for additional hours,
which means that parents in England
pay the second-highest childcare costs in
the world. The price of a one-year-old’s
nursery place rose four times faster than
wages between 2008 and 2016.
Although good nutrition is proved to
improve educational outcomes there are
no free school meals for nursery-age
children and providers often charge
extra for lunch. The commission heard
that some children from poor families
have to open a packet of crisps while
wealthier infants sit down to a hot meal.
a third of children written off
The education system is failing many
young people. The existence of the
“forgotten third” of students who do not
Continued on page 8A
t the Reach
Foundation in
Feltham, west
London, education
begins in the womb.
The school runs
antenatal classes and
yoga mornings for
pregnant women.
New parents are invited to baby massage
sessions, parenting courses, relationship
guidance and play groups. “If we don’t
get involved right at the start of kids’
lives then we are playing catch-up
throughout their school careers,” Ed
Vainker, the chief executive, said.
This inspirational academy in one of
the most deprived parts of the country is
pioneering a “cradle-to-career” model of
education. The celebrity chef Jacob
Kenedy, proprietor of the Soho
restaurant Bocca di Lupo, is involved
with the catering course at the sixth
form college and, with neat synergy, the
nursery staff can do a foundation degree
in childcare. Parents are also encouraged
to join adult education courses.
Reach is already seeing the benefits of
intervening early and is working with 16
schools that want to adopt its approach
but most of the pre-school work is
funded by donations. “In our nursery we
can see a huge difference between
children even at two or three, based on
their earliest experiences,” Vainker said.
“We know how important those first
1001 days are, starting at conception, but
the funding hasn’t caught up.”
There are many purposes of
education, for individuals and society.
Everyone has their own priority but
most would agree that it should allow
every child to achieve their potential; it
should create the workers that
employers need; it should prepare the
next generation for the modern world,
boost social mobility, inculcate a love of
learning, nurture its workforce and give
young people the tools they need to live
productive, fulfilling lives.
For all the superb work being done by
individual teachers and schools, the
evidence presented to The Times
Education Commission suggests that the
system as a whole is failing on all these
fronts. “If we were to judge education in
the way that we judge our children we
would absolutely give it a fail,” Gus
Casely-Hayford, the director of V&A
East, told an evidence session.social mobility has stalled
The prime minister’s defining policy is to
“level up” the country, but poorer
students are more than 18 months
behind their wealthier peers when they
take their GCSEs and the persistently
disadvantaged are almost two years
behind. The Education Policy Institute
found that 40 per cent of this
disadvantage gap emerges by the time
children start school. Nearly a third of
five-year-olds are not reaching a good
level of development and disadvantaged
children are already 4.6 months behind
by the end of the reception year. The life
chances of many have been determined
long before they get near the school gate.That is a social disaster and an
economic catastrophe when to be
competitive the country needs to
harness the talent of all its people. An
analysis by the consultancy Oxera for
the commission found that there would
be a £45 billion boost to the economy,
the equivalent of £672 per person, in the
long term if social mobility in Britain
reached the western European average.
They said this was a conservative
estimate and the true figure was “likely
to be far higher”.
Baroness Shafik, director of the
London School of Economics and a
former deputy governor of the Bank of
England, described the “Lost Einsteins”,
the missing geniuses whose talents are
being wasted by an unfair education
system. A US study found that if this
group invented at the same rate as white
men from high-income families there
would be four times as many inventors
in America, creating billions of dollars in
economic growth. There is a similar
problem in Britain, where it typically
takes five generations for someone to go
from the bottom to the middle of income
distribution. In Denmark it takes two.early years provision is a mess
In high-performing education systems,
including Estonia and Finland, nursery
schools play a crucial role in child
development. In this country early years
provision is treated as a babysitting
service. Working parents of three and
four-years-olds are eligible for 30 hours
of free childcare, if they have a