Nuffield Curriculum Centre

General issues

Education aims and values
Author: Peter Campbell

www.nuffield14-19review.org.uk

During the last few decades, education policy in England has increasingly emphasised economic competitiveness and the need for a skilled workforce. At the same time, it generally fails to address the diverse nature of English society. Schools have been driven by a target-setting agenda that focuses narrowly on measurable outcomes.

So pervasive is this new outlook that we are in danger of losing sight of broader education aims and values, and the ethical issues that come with them. Whom and what is education for?

The Nuffield 14 -19 Review discusses these concerns in a recent Issues Paper which deserves to be widely read. Its short Paper will certainly interest everyone directly involved in initial teacher education, school management, classroom teaching and continuing professional development.

Some extracts from Issues Paper 6:

The government’s use of business jargon when discussing education policy demonstrates a very limited understanding of education, for example, language such as ‘inputs’, ‘measurable outputs’, ‘targets’, ‘curriculum delivery’, or ‘performance indicators’. By contrast, not so long ago, education was defined in terms of an ‘engagement’ between teacher and learner (Oakeshott M, 1972) or as ‘the source of common enlightenment and common enjoyment’ (Tawney, RH, 1931).

The government quite rightly defines its education reforms as an attempt ‘to raise standards’, but the concept of what ‘standards’ means is rarely examined. Should it not be defined in terms of the overall aim or purpose of educating young people? How can there be an ‘equivalence of standards’ between learning standards geared to the more efficient working of, say, a budget airline, as compared with learning standards geared to grasping complex concepts of nuclear physics, or appreciating the poetry of Hopkins.

Education for all young people should be centrally concerned with:
• capacity to think intelligently and critically about the physical, social, economic and moral worlds they inhabit.
• respect for the experiences, concerns and aspirations of the learners
• preparation for responsible and capable citizenship

Education should also be about ideas and values which inspire and prepare young people to face actively the ‘big issues’ that affect them and their community, such as environmental change, racism and injustices of many kinds

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