Education

I remember that a few years ago we visited some kind of 'modern museum' in York. There was a room set up to represent the sixties that looked just like the front room in my grandparents' house. It was quite disconcerting to be of an age where my experience was history, albeit recent. 

I was in school most of today and in the building where we usually meet there are a few artefacts - old school caps, that kind of thing - including this desk. This is very similar to the kind of desk that I sat at when I was at school in the late seventies and early eighties, although even then the hole at the top of the desk, designed to hold a pot of ink, was long since surplus to requirements. 

I went to a boys' grammar school, which suited me pretty well, but for a long, long time now, I've recognised that a good, mixed comprehensive provides the best type of education. When I was first involved with the school, we had a really broad curriculum, which made excellent provision to the varied rural location where the school is located. 

The damage that Gove did to the education system doesn't get talked about enough. His arrogance that he knew best was breath-taking and I've never met anybody in education who thought he did anything useful, quite the reverse. And we - and, more importantly, our children - are still paying the price for his ill-informed decision making. 

So, now we have a highly restricted curriculum, which means we've consigned a generation of able, intelligent, but non-academic children to lessons in which they are bored. And that's why desks get carved into and grafitti'd; not because kids are bad but because they are bored. 

All that said, in a very nifty move four years ago, our school used the 'free school' system to open a studio school, which as far as I know gives us a pretty unique set up and that means that once again we can offer all sorts of courses over and above those prescribed by Michael Gove. 

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Reading: 'The Sound Of Tomorrow' by Mark Brend