Funding

The pandemic has caused huge damage to children and young people’s learning. The costs of Covid-19 have been borne by schools and colleges which just haven’t been given what is necessary to help pupils and students succeed.

Education funding needs to increase substantially if we want every child to fulfil their potential. But the amount pledged by the government to compensate for lost learning amounts to just £310 per pupil. Other countries are spending far more – the US is investing £1,830 per young person, and it’s £2,090 a head in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, class sizes continue to increase. Primary class sizes are at their highest this century, and secondary sizes at their highest since records began. As a result, teachers and support staff have a far harder job ensuring every child gets the attention they need.

To value education, the government needs to increase funding and invest in recovery now.

Poverty

The most successful nations are developing education systems which enable them to compete in a world where new technologies and industries are changing the way people work, communicate, learn, and develop. The UK is being left behind in this race to economic prosperity and social inclusion.

Disadvantaged pupils in England are 18 months of learning behind their more affluent peers by the time they finish their GCSEs. Covid-19 has shone a harsh light on the plight of 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK: that’s 31 percent of children, or nine in a classroom of 30.

Child poverty destroys children’s potential. An estimated nine percent of UK families do not have a laptop, tablet, or desktop computer. Two million UK households don’t have access to the internet. These families are not able to fully participate in modern society and remote learning is much more difficult without devices or the internet.

40 percent of the education attainment gap is set in stone before children even start school, and 70 percent of children growing up in poverty live in a household where at least one person works.

To value education, we need to end child poverty and make sure no child is left behind.

Testing

The English education system tops the OECD league table for the number of tests its pupils take. Over-testing has a profoundly negative effect on pupils’ attitudes to learning and the development of their skills. England now tops the international league tables for rote learning and memorisation.

Children entering education in 2021 will be young adults in 2033. Schools can prepare them for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated.

To navigate through such uncertainty, students will need to develop curiosity, imagination, resilience, and self-regulation. They will need to respect and appreciate the ideas, perspectives, and values of others, to cope with failure and rejection, and to move forward in the face of adversity.

To achieve these goals, our curriculum and assessment system must be changed. Our children and young people need experience of making and doing as well as reading and writing. They need more teaching and less testing.

To value education, high stakes testing should be scrapped and replaced with a twenty-first-century assessment and qualification system fit for our children and young adults.

Valuing Educators

Throughout the pandemic, teachers, leaders, and support staff have been on the front line – teaching children remotely, and safeguarding and caring for them.

But England’s education system is progressively weakened because our teachers are leaving the profession increasingly early—one in four within two years of starting the job, and nearly 40 percent within ten—driven out by excessive workload and stress.

To make matters worse, the government has imposed a pay freeze. This will compound the damage caused by a decade of real terms pay cuts, which has contributed to recruitment and retention problems in the profession.

To value education, this government must value educators too.

Looking to the Future

Our union believes there is a better way. The pandemic demands that we re-examine what matters, and what makes a difference to young people’s learning and life chances. Ensuring the voice and expertise of our profession is at the heart of decision-making, in the workplace and beyond, is vital if we are going to deliver the education that our children need.

Our ‘Value Education, Value Educators’ campaign seeks to promote and achieve a wider vision for education: a broad and balanced curriculum, which engages more children, and better professional development, where all education staff are valued and have time to collaborate and expand their learning.

We want educators to have a voice and be able to exercise professional agency in their workplace. We want to be able to shape teaching and learning, reflect on what our students need, and benefit from research to make education better.