Power, Purpose and Preparation in the English education system

Contents

1. Introduction

2. An education system that is not only failing to respond

   1. What is taught in schools? And who decides?

3. Why have an education system?

   1. Redefine the purpose of education?
   2. Preparing for uncertainty?
   3. Education as a non-instrumentalised process of self-discovery and discovery of the world
4. Being the change, to drive the change
   1. Towards a decentralised and lightly instrumentalised education system

5. Conclusion - keep it light

6. References

Introduction

England has an education system that is not responding adequately to the climate and ecological crisis; but worse than this, the education system in England is actively contributing to the crisis – it is a foundation upon which today’s environmentally unsustainable and socially unjust society is built. Change, we think, is coming¹ and urgently needed; the scale of change required is considerable.

Change can be difficult, disruptive, and off-putting. It cannot be rushed, and the new that replaces the old must be both ambitious and viable. In this essay we examine the current state of England’s education system. We consider the power dynamics at play and how they shape what is taught in our schools, we look at who makes the important decisions, and explore the purpose of education – past, present, and future. We conclude by establishing the case for a more democratic education system that is much less instrumentalised, greatly decentralised, and – as a result – better for our lives and our planet.

An education system that is not only failing to respond...

The education system, in England especially, has become outdated, colonial, centrally controlled, and – incredibly – for some, a physically dangerous place to be.² Surveys reveal how concerned and disenfranchised parents are feeling about the education system.

* Parentkind research found that only 14% of parents feel that the government listens to what they want for their child’s education, and that as many as one in three parents are concerned that their child’s school is not preparing their child for the future job market

This unease is not incidental, it is echoed in the very heart of the Westminster system. In late 2023, the House of Lords Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee³ reported on the acute and systemic shortcomings of Secondary education concluding that ‘following recent reforms, 11-16 education in England is not adequately preparing pupils for the future.’

Other studies show that on sustainability issues specifically, there is strong evidence that not only are young people suffering an almost complete absence of meaningful climate and sustainability education,⁴ teachers too, are feeling impeded^† and ill-equipped^‡ to respond to student’s cries for help.⁵

† According to the Pearson School Report (2023), 7 in 10 teachers do not think that the current system is developing sustainability minded citizens of the future. They cite ‘time pressures’, ‘not being a priority to SLT’, and ‘feelings of uncertainty and/or overwhelm’ as barriers to delivering environmental education.

‡ According to Teach the Future ‘70% of teachers feel they have not received adequate training to educate students on climate change, its implications for the environment and societies around the world, and how these implications can be addressed.’

These insufficiencies are, however, only one reason why Global Action Plan sees the education system as a problem that needs to be addressed. It is not just what the education system fails to do that is problematic, what it does do is problematic too. Arguably more so.

The education system in England is not a benign force. It activates and reinforces the values, beliefs, and worldviews that underpin – and shore up – today’s hyper-consumerist and unsustainable society.^6,§

§ In 2020, Reboot the Future revealed that there is a significant disconnect between the values people think will best equip young people for the future and the values promoted by the current education system.

This is problematic because, as Global Action Plan’s Online Climate and Clean Air work both demonstrate, the collateral damage caused by rampant consumerism is vast and – if left unchecked – potentially catastrophic. Far from creating the Generation Action⁷ that the world needs, the education system is continuing to create Generation Consumer.

What is taught in schools? And who decides?

It is a general expectation that learners will know things by the time they graduate from school. They might know, for example, the capital cities of Europe, the Kings and Queens of the United Kingdom, the basic workings of the human body, and the plot of at least one of William Shakespeare’s plays. They might also know that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere is causing global average temperatures to rise. Then again, they might not(!),8 it all depends on what they are taught, and how well that teaching is done.

Currently, the National Curriculum, a political document owned by the UK Government’s Department for Education, has a heavy influence on what is taught in England’s schools – even in schools that do not have to follow it.*

* As more schools have switched to Academy status, they have technically freed themselves of the National Curriculum. It is, however, a restricted freedom especially since the arrival of the new Ofsted framework, which positions the national curriculum as the informal benchmark all schools are judged against. As Matt Hood, chair at Bay Leadership Academy and CEO of Oak National Academy puts it: ‘If you want a “good” inspection grade, the national curriculum now matters. A lot.” TES magazine.

The National Curriculum lists subjects and topics for learners to study, but it also goes further than this. It also sets out skills that young people should come to master. This is the ‘knowhow’ they need to complement their ‘know what’. At the most foundational level, it dictates that students should know how to read and write, and how to add and subtract. But knowhow extends beyond the 3Rs into the domains of the arts, literature, languages, the sciences, and physical education.

For example, in Primary school, according to the National Curriculum, children should ‘become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques;’⁹ in secondary school, pupils should be able to ‘use a range of tactics and strategies to overcome opponents in direct competition through team and individual games;’¹⁰ and by age 16, through the study of Science, they should ‘develop and learn to apply observational, practical, modelling, enquiry, problem-solving skills and mathematical skills, both in the laboratory, in the field and in other environments.’¹¹

Schools and pupils are regularly assessed and tested – by the State – to monitor how well they are performing. Although methods have evolved over time, the approach has remained largely the same, regardless of which political party holds power. The results of these tests and assessments can be make or break for schools, teachers, and pupils.

This is not to say that schools have to stick rigidly to the National Curriculum, or dutifully and robotically follow the commands of an all-powerful centralised body. Things are not quite that bad (though it does remain a dangerous possibility and there are case studies that are a very real cause for concern^12,13). Freedoms do still exist, and schools are using them,¹⁴ but in practice – especially for education settings who are feeling under pressure to improve exam results and Ofsted ratings – it can feel risky, irresponsible even, to deviate (even momentarily) away from the National Curriculum. There is a tendency, in fact, for schools to double-down on core subjects, thereby significantly limiting the choice of subjects their students can pick from at key stages 4 and 5.

For all the rhetoric about choice and autonomy – and there is plenty of rhetoric¹⁵ – the education system in England is still centrally controlled. So, in a system that is ever more centrally controlled*, the short (and blunt) answer to the question of what is taught in schools, is: I refer you to the National Curriculum. As for who decides, ultimate responsibility for outlining the content and matters covered by the National Curriculum lies with the Secretary of State for Education – a post appointed by the Prime Minister (although both are, like the wider Government, beholden to the electorate and/or their corporate sponsors – depending on your perspective on where power actually sits).

* By DfE, but also by the senior leaderships teams of large MATs. LSE News.

The UK Government is guarded about the purpose of all this. Ambiguity around this is not necessarily a bad thing, or at least it wouldn’t be in a less centrally controlled system (for reasons explored later in this essay). However, in today’s education system, because it is so centralised, the lack of transparency over purpose is problematic. The education system is being centrally controlled, but those who control it are reluctant to communicate the ends to which they are directing it. Clues to the Government’s intent, however, do occasionally reveal themselves.
In 2015, the highly influential Schools Minister, Nick Gibb MP, described the education system’s purpose like this: ‘Education is the engine of our economy, it is the foundation of our culture, and it’s an essential preparation for adult life.’¹⁶

More recently, the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer MP, argued that the education system should be instrumentalised in a similar way. In July 2023, Starmer announced that ‘Labour has a plan to tear down the barriers to opportunity that hold this country and its people back’¹⁷ and positioned education as a key tool for doing this. For Labour, the education system is a tool they intend to use to break the ‘class ceiling’ so that wealth is spread more equally in an infinitely growing [consumer] economy.¹⁸  

Why have an education system? - Instrumentalising education

It is becoming something of a cliché to cite the Finnish education system as the one to aspire to. There is much to admire about it, it is - in our opinion - worthy of much of the praise it receives. Of interest here, however, is the story of how and why, mid twentieth century, Finland’s education system was transformed.

In the 1960s, when Finland was struggling economically compared to its neighbours, a cross-party decision was taken to make an unprecedented and huge investment of public funds into the transformation and resourcing of their education system. This happened because Finnish politicians of the time recognised that if Finland was to transform and thrive it needed a labour force with the knowledge, skills, creativity, confidence, and entrepreneurial spirit required to build and sustain a prosperous economy.

The Finnish education system was re-framed and re-purposed as a tool for social change. Enormous investments were made (governments can choose to do this if they so wish), teacher training expanded, school infrastructure improved, and academic achievement started to rise. Within a generation, the Finnish economy had been transformed from one of predominantly low-skill manual labour, to one of high-skill, high-tech industry.¹⁹

Finland was instrumentalizing education. Schools were no longer places where children and young people went to learn for learning’s sake. The purpose of education had moved far beyond the intrinsic notion that it should exist to ‘equip people to make their own free, autonomous choices about the life they will lead’.²⁰ Education had become something else, an instrument of change.* It still is.

* Interestingly, teacher autonomy is prioritised in Finland, teachers are trusted to choose the pedagogies they judge to be most effective in achieving the desired educational outcomes. These freedoms are recognised as being key to the success of Finland’s education system.

Instrumentalization is highly prevalent around the world. It has been evident in England for at least a century. In consumer capitalist free market economies like the UK, current instrumentalizing trends have ‘pressed education in the direction of individualism, markets, promotion of an ‘enterprising self’ and the relentless measurement of people against targets and performance criteria.’²¹

Such a purpose – a shoring up of the consumerist status quo – is obviously problematic; especially in an age of an intersecting health, inequality, climate and ecological multicrisis.

What is key, and what we will explore in this essay, is the degree to which the education system is instrumentalised, and who is in control of the instrument. This is where Finland and England, perhaps, diverge in how they run their education systems.

Redefine the purpose of education?

The obvious temptation when one is frustrated with how the education system is being used, is to look to re-define the purpose of education. Instead of an education system that serves consumerism and endless economic growth, we could lobby Westminster for an education system that serves the goal of ‘sustainable development’. With that ‘green’ purpose in place, students would be schooled via a new National Curriculum and given a fresh list of Government-chosen topics to learn. Issues and concepts of social justice, ecology, and climate would be far more prominent than they are today, and young people would be trained in a specific set of thinking and practical skills that could be put to ‘good use’ in their adult lives to advance sustainable development.

However, such a shift in purpose – if it were to ever to become a topic of serious public debate – would very likely become engulfed in a violent storm of lobbying, wrangling, and horse-trading over what should and shouldn’t be part of a young person’s learning journey.* Multiple stakeholders would battle – as they do now – over the lists of knowledge and skills students should learn, and they would fight over the values schools should promote and discourage. This is no bad thing of course; a public debate and a formal consultation process would be essential.

* This began to become evident in one recent attempt, by Lord Jim Knight and Darren Jones MP, to add 'sustainable citizenship’ as a purpose within The Education Act (2002)

Compromises would inevitably be made but, given the power of vested interests and the profound inequalities of power that exist in today’s society (and education system), there is no guarantee that planet Earth would be a net beneficiary – it would barely have a voice. And neither would many young people, their teachers, nor their parents – they would have the chance, through consultation processes, to have their say, but whether they would have the time to engage or be listened to is debatable, praise for Government consultation processes is quite hard to come by.²² The education system would change, but the change would be centrally controlled and most likely insufficient – we’d be ‘winning’ a bit faster, but still slowly; too slowly.

Preparing for uncertainty?

Another potential new purpose for education, and one that has greater momentum behind it, stems from an acknowledgement that the future is highly unpredictable. Climate breakdown, to take just one example, will lead to average temperature increases (above pre-industrial levels) of anything between 1.5°C and 4°C this century.²³ It is nearly impossible to predict when, and at what level, temperature increase will stabilise and stop, or whether a new stable equilibrium will even be reached. What we do know is that a 1.5°C warmed world will be vastly different to a 4°C warmed world – the uncertainty over what sort of world young people will grow up into means they need to be prepared for either scenario, and all those that lie between.

Complex systems trend towards chaos, multiple futures are possible, uncertainties about where we are headed are enormous. Given this, it seems foolish to attempt to create a definitive list of what should be taught to young people, and arrogant to expect that we’d get that list exactly right and seamlessly deliver something as hard to define as sustainable development (or indeed something as quixotic as infinite economic growth). Instead, so the argument goes, the purpose of education should be to prepare young people for a future that is inherently uncertain.

Again, however, debate rages. This time over whether educators should lean more towards (a) preparing young people to simply be able to adapt to whatever emerges in their futures (by developing their adaptive reactivity – a comparatively passive and individualist position), or (b) preparing them to be agents of change capable of working together to transform the world (by developing their agentic world-making – a more active and communalist position).*

* Referencing the OECD’s ‘Back to the Future of Education’ report (2021) and UNESCO’s ‘Reimagining our Futures together’ together report (2021), Noah Sobe (2023) argues that the OECD adopts an ‘adaptative preparation
paradigm’, which potentially overstates the levels of uncertainty that exist over issues like climate breakdown, whereas UNESCO prefers an ‘agentic’ preparation paradigm where the aim is to ‘mobilize and encourage groups
of people to imagine, deliberate, and work together’ to create change given what is known and knowable about the future.

Global Action Plan, like UNESCO²⁴ and many of our fellow environmental NGOs, understands the need for young people to be able to adapt, but leans more towards preparing them to be the latter, the planet needs more agentic world makers; it needs a generation of them. At Global Action Plan, we call it Generation Action and we are trying to bring it into being. This leads us to a more foundational way of thinking about the purpose of education.

Education as a non-instrumentalised process of self-discovery and discovery of the world

Faced with an uncertain world – that without determined collective action may spiral to catastrophe – students need to be willing and able to re-shape the world. Somewhat counterintuitively, if education is to nurture such students, such agentic world-makers, and therefore play its role in creating a green and thriving world, it might be better to not attempt to teach sustainable development, or indeed, attempt to teach anything specific at all. Peter Sutoris²⁵ explains:

“Education is not, nor can it ever be, the panacea, but it does have a role to play… we might serve the agenda of environmental sustainability better if we see education as an end in itself – a process of self-discovery and discovery of the world – as opposed to trying to turn education into a fix for the failures of policy, markets, or human behaviour. This might seem illogical; surely, education will make more difference to sustainability if we actually resolve to make education a force in service of sustainability? But the apparent contradiction can be resolved if we consider that noninstrumentalized education is more likely to bring us closer to our own humanity – including sensitivity to the world around us and our ability to imagine different futures – than education designed to advance any specific political agenda.”

Sutoris’ thesis, and it is one Global Action Plan supports, is that students – when given more freedom – are more likely to develop the knowledge, skills, and values needed to imagine and create a better world. Through having more agency – as independent learners – they grow used to shaping their day, their timetable, their lifeworld (rather than having it shaped, or made for them, by a teacher, a school, or a MAT). They become agentic world-makers of their own personal worlds, and this develops agentic world-making in them. Over time, because they have agency, they become used to making the world, it is normal to them, it comes naturally, and it develops into a way of being human that they carry into adult life.

In addition (and to hark back to John Dewey), in giving students more freedom, in not attempting to educate them for something – which inevitably leads us into territory where we are trying to get them to think in a certain way – we are respecting them, we are enabling them to think for themselves and to not be dependent on teachers or the thoughts of others – education is life itself. Bob Jickling²⁶ expanded on this in 1992 in one of the most devastating passages in the history of environmental education:

“To talk of educating for sustainable development is more suggestive of an activity like training or the preparation for the achievement of some instrumental aim. It is important to note that this position rests on several assumptions. First, sustainable development is an uncontested concept, and second, education is a tool to be used for its advancement. The first point is clearly untrue and should be rejected; there is considerable scepticism about the coherence and efficacy of the term. The second assumption can also be rejected. The prescription of a particular outlook is repugnant to the development of autonomous thinking.”

To be clear, we are not calling here for an education system that leaves young people completely to their own devices (pun intended), far from it.*

* Though this can be effective, see Sugata Mitra's work on ‘Minimally Invasive Education’ (MIE), more commonly known as ‘Hole in the Wall’ which highlights the process and benefits of self-directed learning and argues for it to be a part (not the whole) of every school’s curriculum.

Educators, especially teachers, are essential facilitators of children’s learning, they act as guides, coaches, and sounding boards. Teachers can co-direct learning with their students, helping them to pick topics and utilise pedagogies that are fit for purpose, rather one size fits all. To play this guiding role, teachers need freedom too, they need to be trusted by their seniors, their community, and by the State. But again, teachers can’t be left fully alone to do this, they need to be supported and guided too, by central and local government, teacher training institutions and services, and their communities of practice.

In such an education system – and we set out a provocative vision in this collection – the relationships between the State and schools, between teachers and learners, and between learners and their learning, would look significantly different to the relationships we see today. It is our belief that a rebalancing of the relationship between policymakers on one side, and teachers, learners, and citizens on the other, needs to happen.

Teachers and learners need be given more agency, genuine autonomy, and crucially, teachers need to be resolutely trusted by the State, which should still have a say in the design of education, but a more limited one and one more strongly informed and deliberated on by the citizenry. This is the soil from which good education, and sustainability education will grow.

Being the change, to drive the change

To help reverse current trends (which are towards greater centralization, less student and teacher autonomy, and full instrumentalization of the education system) a growing minority of pioneering teachers are using what agency they do have to be the change they want to see in the education system. They are thereby proving that they can be trusted and be given more agency. Global Action Plan’s strategy²⁷ is to pioneer in this way too through (i) our work in schools, to lead by example,²⁸ and (ii) by encouraging and enabling teachers and sustainability educators to be the change themselves, and thus join the ranks of the pioneers.*

* We are not alone in doing this, we have allies across the sustainability sector, and beyond, who are playing a similar role and have a similar strategy. We hope to see our numbers grow.

Through these efforts by Global Action Plan, other changemaking organisations, campaigners, and pioneer teachers, a bottom-up movement for change is growing. As we gain and align with more allies, we will turbo-charge that growth, and create enough momentum to do a third vital thing: (iii) reassure and persuade policymakers that they can and should instigate the required – revolutionary – shift in national education policy.^†

† We are describing the next two steps of our cycle of change here.

Towards a decentralised and lightly instrumentalised education system

Implicit in this reorientation of the education system is greater democracy and decentralisation. There would have to be a partial (not total) power shift away from the centre, be that Whitehall, the upper echelons of a Multi Academy Trust, or the high offices of a Local Authority. This would require a reversal of the current direction of travel, a movement away from creeping centralisation, which breeds greater instrumentalization, dependency, and diminished democracy.

We will leave readers to place their own ‘you are here’ dot on the spectrum presented below (see figure 1). If you are in a typical state school in England (if such a thing even exists), we suspect your dot might land somewhere in the middle.

Conclusion - keep it light

For Global Action Plan, the goal isn’t a fully non-instrumentalized education system, but a lightly-instrumentalised one, where both teachers and learners have more autonomy and agency, thus enabling a diversity of pedagogy, assessment, and content to thrive. This will be achieved through a strategic and once-in-a-generation process of decentralisation, and an ongoing process of deliberative democracy. Much will need to be factored in; how, for example, schools and teachers are held accountable, how children are kept safe, and how socially-disadvantaged young people and those with SEND will cope and thrive in a system that prioritises learner autonomy.

The fundamental changes proposed here will, however, only arise in England if policymakers: 

1. recognise the criticality of the moment and the need for an education system that meets that moment;
2. believe in the transformative potential of an education system that is less prescriptive on pedagogy, assessment (as per Finland), and – crucially – content;
3. have the courage, conviction, and mandate required to successfully build a defining new era of education;
4. are willing to use their power to empower others.

In this time between education worlds, it is the task of the environmentalist to work with allies across the education system to make the above a reality. We can do this as ‘first mate’ environmentalists.²⁹ 

If you'd like to talk to us more about the opportunities for change in the education system, please get in touch: [email protected]

References

1. Global Action Plan (2024) On the cusp of change

2. Walker, P., and Sally Weale, S. (2023) Sharp rise in number of schools in England with collapse-risk concrete, The Guardian

3. House of Lords Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee (2023) Secondary education has moved in the wrong direction, House of Lords, UK

4. Wheeler, K. (2023) SEEd Youth Listening Project Report 2021-23, Sustainability and Environmental Education, UK

5. Reboot the Future and Cambridge University Press & Assessment (2023) The Rebooting Education Report - A transformative vision of the future from teachers.

6. Dunedin, A. (2019) Challenging consumerism through education as human development, BERA

7. Global Action Plan (2023) Mobilising Generation Action - Global Action Plan’s Education & Youth Engagement strategy

8. Royal Meteorological Society (2022) Climate Literacy Amongst School Leavers

9. Department for Education (2013) Art and design programmes of study: key stages 1 and 2 - National curriculum in England

10. Department for Education (2013) Physical education programmes of study: key stages 3 and 4 - National curriculum in England

11. Department for Education (2014) Science programmes of study: key stage 4 - National curriculum in England

12. Mansell, W (2023) Teachers at Astrea secondary academy told to remove all items from the front of their classrooms – and to have all year groups reading with a ruler, Education Uncovered

13. Kevin Courtney (2023), for joint General Secretary of the National Education Union raised concerns over the role of Oak National Academy and its relationship to the DfE

14. Millar, F. (2022) How an Oxfordshire school created its own enriching baccalaureate, The Guardian

15. Bayliss, C. (2016) Our LA is quite ‘hands-off’ anyway, so what freedoms would academy conversion bring? Schools Week

16. Department for Education and The Rt Hon Nick Gibb MP (2015) Speech - The purpose of education - Schools Minister Nick Gibb addresses the Education Reform Summit

17. The Labour Party and Rt Hon. Sir Kier Starmer MP (2023) Keir Starmer unveils Labour’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity at every stage

18. The Labour Party (2023) 5 missions for a better Britain - Breaking down the barriers to opportunity

19. Antikainen, A., and Pitkänen, A. (2014) A history of educational reforms in Finland, in [Eds] Verdugo, R. Educational Reform in Europe: History, Culture, and Ideology. (pp.1-24)

20. Bridges, D. (2006) Enterprise and Liberal Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 26, Issue 1, July 1992, Pages 91–98

21. Woods, P. (2012) Out of the Dragon’s Den: Self-organising change for a broader vision

22. Burrows, D. (2023) Are government consultations worth the paper they are written on?, ENDS Report

23. IPCC (2023) Climate Change 2023, Synthesis Report - Summary for Policymakers

24. UNESCO (2021) Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education

25. Sutoris, P. (2022) Educating for the Anthropocene, Penguin Random House, UK

26. Bob Jickling (1992) Viewpoint: Why I Don’t Want My Children to Be Educated for Sustainable Development, The Journal of Environmental Education, 23:4, 5-8

27. Global Action Plan (2023) Mobilising Generation Action – Global Action Plan’s Education & Youth Engagement Strategy

28. Phillips, M. (2023) Chris Packham: “Give them that trust.”

29. Global Action Plan (2024) First Mate Environmentalism