Heretical reflections sparked by the problem of children being unable to improve their performance at mathematics

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, has bold plans to return the return the primary school curriculum to what he regards as secure foundations for ensuring that children know enough, not only about mathematics (symbolically being able to recite their ‘times tables’ by the age of 9) but also about reciting poetry (by age 5) and, by September 2014, foreign languages.

It is tempting, of course, simply to dismiss these as unacceptably naive proposals that won’t enhance ‘real’ education. However, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that if children are provided with some basic knowledge it will enable them to build on this knowledge by progressive improvements in understanding, and consequently as they learn and develop gain in associated skills of being able to discuss, debate and present their grasp of these aspects with more self-confidence. Perhaps, rather than rubbishing the entire package, we should be examining carefully which aspects of which particular subject areas are likely to contain the germs of the most significant gains for pupils.

In this connection, I am reminded of a particularly valuable piece of learning I gained from a chance meeting with the late Ernest Polack the well-known public school housemaster and teacher, not only at Clifton Public School in Polack’s House. Ernest and I eventually persuaded the Home Office and Clifton College to allow us to exchange jobs for a month each – he lived in at the young offenders’ custody centre where I was assistant governor and then I returned to live in Polack’s House for a month and thereafter we continued exchanges, including trainees from custody and sixth formers from the school, over a period of years. One of the most significant things I learned was the emphasis of the curriculum in Polack’s House, not to say the school – not least on Wednesday afternoons devoted to sport and cultural activities and Saturday mornings devoted to developing public debating skills between the boys – which over the subsequent years I saw bearing fruit as pupils I knew won their positions in significant positions of government and enterprise throughout the British economy and in other countries. An extraordinary outcome of a privileged education, or an inspirational attempt at tackling social inequality at the same time? Ernest and I liked to think of this as both of these rather than just the former.

Ernest served his 15 years as housemaster at Clifton College and then returned to his first love, Africa, where he was head of the international school in a prominent country, before returning, not to retirement, but to a comprehensive school in Bath. He was in many ways a visionary and undoubtedly was a very talented and yet modest person, a boundary crosser par excellence and he taught me a great deal about open-mindedness. So, I’m not for ditching the best of the traditional in schooling, and, despite my intuitive dislike of private education, I can’t turn my back on it entirely, when we have so much to learn from it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/back-to-basics/will/Gove’s/national/curriculum-overhaul-prepare children-for-the-future-7848765.html )