The Guardian Education Debate

Polly Toynbee, chaired a discussion between conservative politician Nick Gibb, the former Secretary of State for Education Kenneth Baker, writer on education Melissa Benn, and the children’s writer Michael Rosen. This was a highly entertaining discussion, tinged with shock that the two MPs seemed to show such little understanding of the nuts and bolts of the everyday teaching and learning process. The person who dropped the most clangers was poor Nick Gibb. He droned on about evidence-based policy, then was rather embarrassingly put right by a member of the audience concerning his view that phonics is categorically superior to any other teaching method. It turns out the evidence for his theory is flawed. While Gibb criticised other panel members for basing their views simply on ideology, he continually gave weak, broad-brush, ideology-based reasons for his policies and just bandied the word ‘evidence’ about. Michael Rosen asked for studies to be done so that we might be able to base our education policy on evidence, and Kenneth Baker harked back to the old days when students did not have the distractions of ipads and computers. Baker thought he was lucky that all he had was books and the radio, (I’d be surprised if he wasn’t corrupted by listening to all those episodes of Dick Barton). Melissa soothed us with rational and insightful arguments for how education might be improved. Rosen provided the inspiration; he asked ‘what are the most propitious circumstances in which learning might take place?’ The MPs couldn’t be bothered to think about it like that and were certainly not prepared to entertain his suggestion that teachers should be put in control of the study of learning. Michael Rosen should be Secretary of State for Education, what a fantastic educationalist.

Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome, 12 May 2013

Rating: