Expectations 2 High School

Almost a million children in the UK are being failed by their schools according to the National Audit Office.

I have just watched the first episode of the BBC2 series Who Do You Think You Are? in which Jeremy Paxman traced his family back to Glasgow and Suffolk. His great grandparents lived in poverty and their education finished as soon they could go out to work to boost the family income. When I was at school 50 years ago far fewer children passed their GCE O Level exams and went on the further and higher education than do today. I can only observe that children today enjoy fabulous opportunities and unparalleled education. So why the hysteria?

My wife teaches and her view is that the biggest hindrances to achievement are not resources or process but the attitude and social problems that the children bring to school with them.
The fact is that more children than ever before are attaining grades a-c at 16. Schools now have policies for dealing with under achievement. There are bullying policies to deal with poor behaviour towards others and everything that can be recorded is recorded.

The result is that we are more aware of the performance of schools than we have ever been. Expectations have been boosted above what is reasonably possible. In fact I would suggest that parents and politicians are blaming schools for a broad range of social ills that expose their own failings and are nothing to do with formal education. Politicians have increased the demands they make on schools and as a consequence the expectations of parents have been raised to the point where there's a feeding frenzy by the media if performance falls below an unrealistic level.

Education is not failing our children. If there are failures they are being let down by the rest of society, including parents, politicians and moral leaders. Can we stop blaming schools and look closer to home for a solution?