Wednesday, 25 June 2014

Is the British education system still unequal?

The British education system is still stratified and unequal, despite efforts to break the link between poverty and performance.

According to the Ofsted annual report from last academic year, in fact, private schools have achieved better results than state schools.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has answered to the inspectors of schools in England by saying:

We have looked at those schools that have been inspected under a new, tighter inspection regime and teachers in state schools are more qualified than ever before.
The reason why we are changing the education system by taking independent, fee-paying schools and making them state schools is because we need to make our society more equal”.

The same report has also highlighted that schools located in particular regions of the country, like rural and coastal areas, are under-achieving.

According to Ofsted inspectors, those schools are not doing well because of a lack of challenge from teachers, head teachers, governing boards and local authority in those specific areas.

The unlucky child goes to a school with low expectations, where governance is poor and local authority does not know its school particularly well,” said Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw.

Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools in England also declared:
I won’t accept and our Country should not accept leaders of our schools, governing bodies and leaders of our schools  to have low expectations on children just because they are poor or come from a particular culture. That is wrong”.

“We got to particularly focused upon the achievement levels of white British children from low income backgrounds who are doing poorest of all. What we have got to do is to highlight those areas which are stuck and are not improving at a rate that others are. (...) Ofsted itself will ensure that we focus on those areas more than we’ve ever done,” he added.

Education has been one of the busiest ministries of the last four years, introducing free schools, reforming the exam system and the curriculum. 

The great challenge now, is to ensure that the good leadership is spread more widely throughout our country.

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