14 Feb 08

Let's talk education, not business, says the Oxford-led Nuffield Review

The government’s emphasis on making Britain economically competitive is overshadowing broader educational aims, according to latest research by the Oxford-led Nuffield Review.

Its latest paper, Issues Paper 6: Aims and Values, warns that if the key role of education and training is defined as providing the country with a skilled workforce, there is the ‘risk of damaging the values that define an educated and humane society’.

The paper points out that the pursuit of economic prosperity could be at the expense of social values, such as greater community cohesion, or personal fulfilment and growth.

One theme of the paper is the terminology used by the government and others to describe the aims of education. The language employed ‘suggests the management of business rather than the very different task of promoting the welfare of young people’, it says. The Review notes that this language is not unconnected with the fact that businesses are increasingly invited to sponsor, if not manage, schools and the new academies. The paper points out that by speaking the language of management, there is ‘the danger of treating young people and their teachers as objects to be managed’. 

Lead author of the paper Professor Richard Pring, who is the Director of the Nuffield Review,  said: 'The changes at 14-19 are too often driven by economic goals at the expense of broader educational aims. This is reflected in the rather impoverished language drawn from business and management, rather than from a more generous understanding of the whole person.

'That is why the Nuffield Review has started from the question: "What are the qualities, attitudes, understandings and capacities which all young people should acquire through their education?" We need to give young learners far more than skills for employment alone, even if such skills are key to the country’s economy.'

The paper highlights how the government’s use of business jargon, when describing the aims and values of education, demonstrates the changed understanding of education over the last few decades. Terms such as ‘inputs’, ‘measurable outputs’, ‘targets’, ‘curriculum delivery’, or ‘performance indicators’ sound business-like, as compared with only a few decades ago. In 1972, education was defined in terms of an ‘engagement’ between teacher and learner and, in 1931, as ‘the source of common enlightenment and common enjoyment’ .

The paper says that the government quite rightly defines its reforms as an attempt ‘to raise standards’, but the concept of what ‘standards’ means is rarely examined. Should it not be defined in terms of the overall aim or purpose of educating young people? If so, the paper says it makes it difficult to understand the ‘equivalence of standards’ between learning standards geared to the more efficient working of, say, a budget airline, as compared with those geared to grasping complex concepts of nuclear physics, or appreciating the poetry of Hopkins.

The Review believes that the central aims and values of education should be about making young people think intelligently and critically about the physical, social, economic and moral worlds they inhabit. It also recommends that recognition be given to ‘competence, to coping, to creativity, and to co-operation with others’ (as set out in Capability Manifesto of the Royal Society of the Arts in 1980); with respect for the experiences, concerns and aspirations of the learners; and provide the preparation for responsible and capable citizenship.

Education should also be about ideas and values which inspire and prepare young people to face actively the ‘big issues’ that affect them and their community, such as environmental change, racism and injustices of many kinds, it says.   

The Review recommends that the aims and values of education be constantly appraised, and that teachers should play a central role in such deliberation. It also urges further discussion on this issue, through forums, that involve teachers, learners, parents and members of the community.