A two way street
“If a pupil gains valuable knowledge, for instance in history, but does not get a grade four [C], they will still be better educated for having studied it.” Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted, recently gave a speech in which she repeated the call for disadvantaged pupils to not be denied an academic education. And who could disagree with that - we don't want to deny anybody an education do we? Yet I notice this is a one way street. We don't want to deny disadvantaged students an academic education but we are quite happy to deny advantaged students a vocational education. It is fine to come out of school able to identify pathetic fallacy in romantic poetry but unable to put up a shelf or cook a meal but not the reverse. Why? It clearly isn't due to utility of knowledge, the financial payback over a lifetime (compare the earnings of a qualified tradesman to an English teacher) so it must be cultural. And whose culture is it? Debates rage over the contents of th...