The Purpose of Education

In 1941, the Board of Education released ‘Education After the War,’ better known as ‘The Green Book’ (not that one), which became the basis for the current UK educational system. Its goal was simple yet powerful: to ensure education played a central role in rebuilding the nation, with a clear focus on preparing children for the future. But nearly 80 years later, does our education system still live up to this vision?

The Road to Educational Equality in Britain

Before 1941, a quarter of young people left school before 16, and of those who stayed, only 40% took final exams, likely because many had already left. The system was muddled: secondary schools, accessed via a Special Place Exam, prepared a small minority (10%) for higher education, with just 5% reaching university, and only if they could afford the means-tested fees. Others went to free senior elementary schools until they were 14 or to fee-paying junior technical schools, which often ended at 13 and focused on trade skills.

Much of the Green Book’s recommendations formed the basis of the 1943 White Paper titled Educational Reconstruction, which opens with the following:

The Government’s purpose in putting forward the reforms described in this Paper is to secure for children a happier childhood and a better start in life; to ensure a fuller measure of education and opportunity for young people and to provide means for all of developing the various talents with which they are endowed and so enriching the inheritance of the country whose citizens they are. The new educational opportunities must not, therefore, be of a single pattern. Schools and courses must be available to suit the needs and aptitudes of different types of pupil or student. It is just as important to achieve diversity as it is to ensure equality of educational opportunity. Unity within the educational system will open the way to a more closely knit society which will give us strength to face the tasks ahead.

The act that came from this, the Education Act 1944, set up free secondary education for all pupils up to 16, and renamed the Board of Education to the Ministry of Education. The head of the Board of Education at the time, R. A Butler said the following:

“The war has shaken the old social order to its roots, and in education, as in other spheres, we must look forward to a new world.”

The 1944 Education Act made schooling free but kept the three-tier system, with few technical schools built and most students choosing grammar schools. By the 1960s, many technical schools abandoned their specialisms. The 1988 Education Reform Act introduced the National Curriculum, made English, Maths, and Science core subjects, and added league tables, national exams, and performance-related pay. Subsequent education acts, except for the 2011 reform, brought smaller changes over time.

Throughout these successive reforms, the pursuit of quality and equality within the education system has remained a consistent goal. The interpretation of what constitutes quality and equality is incredibly political, but the fundamental belief that every pupil, regardless of environment, location, or background, deserves equal opportunities to reach their full potential has remained somewhat constant.

This vision of education as a means to prepare students for the future is powerfully captured by Baron Morton of Shuna during the 1985 Education Reform Bill debate:

We should never forget that the pupils of today are the citizens of tomorrow, and our education system should equip them to respond to the issues they will face in adulthood.

Over the past century, education in Britain has undergone a dramatic transformation. Once a privilege for the few, it is now a universal right, with every young person able to gain formal qualifications that open doors. But if education’s goal is to prepare the ‘citizens of tomorrow,’ is our current system really delivering?

The World of Work and Skills for the Future

If we were to turn our focus to popular media, which often focuses purely on education serving as the basis for work, the answer seems to be a clear no.

TES, The Guardian, Times, and the FT, all have articles suggesting that school doesn’t prepare students for the 21st century, some even suggest we, as educators, are instead failing millions of young people up and down the country. Even the wider public has similar sentiments, with YouGov in 2021 asking if parents believe that school prepares students for work. 58% thought the education system did not prepare young people for work.

In the persistent discussion about preparing students for the ‘world of work’, the phrase ‘skills for the future’ is never too far away. Politicians often jump on this bandwagon, and I’ve personally been questioned about whether education is equipping young people with these so-called future skills for jobs that, in many cases, don’t even exist yet.

When I spoke to the Science and Technology Select Committee in 2023 about the impact of AI on education, I was asked whether we should be equipping pupils with the skills necessary to navigate the potentially complex future, rather than the collective knowledge of students. I’ll admit, it was hard to stay diplomatic. I wanted to shout “absolutely not!” But instead, I responded:

I have a particular issue when we talk about the new skills for the future because all the skills that develop in the future were not taught in schools. It is a baseline foundational knowledge that needs to be focused on. Do I think AI forms a baseline fundamental knowledge? No. It is a tool; it is not a piece of knowledge. I do not necessarily believe that the kids need to know how it works or what it does because they can figure that out quite quickly. They do not know how a calculator works, but they can use a calculator. I do not think this needs to be prescribed on the curriculum. […] It should just be, as when we mentioned calculators, “This is a tool that you can use. It is incredibly powerful. It is a tool that you can use to make your life easier or to make writing something a little bit easier.”

This talk of giving students the skills for the future just bothers me, mainly because we’ve been talking about skills for the future back when I was in school. To those who initially began this conversation, we are living in the future! Even back in 2000, we were talking about young people coming into the workforce without the necessary skills in ‘marketing’, ‘basic sales’ and knowledge of ‘IT software.’

This is a mantra that we have to get out of to provide the best education for young people.

Education Isn’t Job Training

Education is not there to provide the skills for work. Education is there to provide the skills for society. If you work at a company and you think that young people are coming into the workforce without the skills necessary to do the job that you advertised for, train them yourself! It is not the responsibility of the state to train students on how to work in every establishment; that’s your job.

We need to move the conversation beyond the tired rhetoric of the ‘world of work’ and ‘skills for the future’. Let’s be honest, no education system, no matter how well-designed, can prepare students for every possible profession. And that’s because preparing them for specific jobs isn’t the primary purpose of education.

The primary purpose is to, well, educate them.

Education is about preparing pupils for life beyond the classroom and, to be fair, I think the curriculum does a decent job of this… ish.

You Never Needed to Learn That in School

To demonstrate this, let me ask you a question: Do you know how the tax system works?

Most of you have a general understanding that the government takes money from their income and uses this to fund services. Fewer understand that the government also taxes the sale of goods and services, familial inheritance, sale of houses, insurance premiums, capital gains, vehicles, and vices.

Congrats if you know the full aspects of the current UK tax code, Grade 9 for you. But the question I always have to raise is… do you really need to know this? Is this fundamental knowledge to take part in society? If so, most of the UK population is failing to successfully partake in society.

My opinion is obviously no, you don’t need to know the tax code to fully integrate into society. The tax code is almost 17,000 pages long and, printed out, it would be 5km long. The amount of time one would have to invest to understand this fully would take much longer than 12 years of formal education.

What pupils probably need to know is why this tax is taken, where it is spent, and what PAYE is. Let’s be honest, this can probably be done in a 1-hour PHSE lesson, which many schools already do.

Yes, I’ve used the tax system as an example of the disconnect between what the general population think should be taught in schools and what actually should be, but I think it is a very good example of the ramblings of the “why didn’t we learn this in school” brigade. You don’t need to learn it in school because, in reality, it isn’t that important to everyday life, and if it were, you probably learnt it in two minutes anyway.

The subjects that we teach at school are, I would argue, fundamental to the world around us. For example, science allows students to understand the world around them, ask questions that lead to fair conclusions, give a base for new innovations in science to build upon, and allow students to understand the data that has consumed our modern world.

Granted, I am biased being a science teacher, but it is also true of other subjects. In history, students learn about the past to better inform their decisions for the future. In English, the ability to communicate effectively is a core human skill, enabling the free exchange of ideas. Maths, even at its most basic level, equips us with the arithmetic skills used daily. RE teaches us tolerance of other faiths, beliefs and differing world views. And geography (which I’m guilty of poking fun at for its map colouring) provides insights into how our world is evolving, giving students the tools to understand broader global changes.

The subjects we teach at school are individually taught in their aspects, but as a whole, they contribute to the development of what it means to be a human. It does not matter the time that we are in, these fundamentals remain such regardless of how far we advance. Yes, the content may change but the fundamental aspects of why we teach that subject remain the same.

There are certainly skills students need, but it’s not about learning to use the latest IT software that will likely be obsolete in 15 years, or marketing to a generation that will soon be replaced by the next. What they truly need are critical thinking, problem-solving, and basic data analysis, both qualitative and quantitative. I’d argue, with as much conviction as possible, that the current system actually does this well. And, as controversial as it may sound, if you’re a teacher in the UK and you don’t think it does, then you are doing something wrong.

Yet despite how fundamental these skills are, they are meaningless without knowledge to anchor them. You can’t think critically about something you don’t understand.

Google Can’t Teach You Everything

I remember a pupil once saying to me, quite ardently, “Why do I have to learn this when I can just Google it?” At the time, I gave a slightly irked but sincere response that if we as learners, as a species, begin to offload all knowledge onto machines without retaining or understanding it ourselves, we risk intellectual stagnation.

The convenience of Google has given rise to the illusion that access to information is the same as understanding it. But they are not the same.

Yes, you can Google the current statistics on tuberculosis (1.25 million deaths per year, if you’re curious) but without the foundational knowledge of what bacteria are, how infectious diseases spread, how we gather and interpret epidemiological data, or even an understanding of how history and global inequality shape access to healthcare, the statistic becomes little more than a number. It cannot teach you why it’s alarming, how it connects to other global health issues, or what might be done about it.

Knowledge isn’t just about memorising facts; it’s about constructing meaning, making connections, and developing the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate and shape the world. If we rely solely on external tools to carry our intellectual load, we don’t just lose the knowledge itself; we lose the ability to interpret, apply, and challenge it.

Google and ChatGPT can tell you the “what,” but only through education can you “why” and “what do we do about it”

This post isn’t about claiming education is done well, because, to be honest, the postcode lottery in the UK means the quality of education varies. However, the fundamental aspects of education are present in every school, regardless of our geography.

Yes, it can be improved and made more effective, but if we have a core set of fundamentals we believe society needs, the solution isn’t to tear everything down; it’s about delivering that crucial knowledge in the best way possible.

Many are working towards this, but some claim the system is broken and fails to give students anything meaningful. I would argue, as I have done here, that it does.

We live in a world where a device in our pocket can connect us to anyone, anywhere, in seconds. A world where the entirety of human art, thought, and entertainment is available at the click of a button. A world of breathtaking potential (and risk) where the line between progress and catastrophe is drawn by science, knowledge, and the choices we make.

Our education system gave us the iPhone, it gave us space flight, it gave us the internet. It gave us a future built not on work, but on knowledge and understanding. The kind that comes from critical thinking and engagement with the world around us.

When it comes to preparing children for the world around them, our education system delivers. It may not be perfect, but it provides the foundations most pupils need to step into society, contribute meaningfully and thrive. With greater rigour and refinement, it could achieve even more, but its core purpose is being fulfilled: to equip them to respond to the issues they will face in adulthood.

I will finish with my closing remarks to the Parliamentary Select Committee in 2023, which I feel sums up my views on education quite well:

What is important to think of is: what do you want your education system to be? Do you want your education system to be, “You pass this exam, you do well,” or is your education one that benefits the whole of society? The reason we have our education system now is to level the playing field so that every single person has access to the future that they want. In the past, it was limited. It was based on the money that you had or the connections that you had. The reason we have our education system now is we give every single pupil in the entire country the same resources, the same knowledge and the same information in order for them to do whatever it is that they want in the future. If we make it where education is, “You learn this for X,” we severely limit the impact that education can have on wider society. Education is for everyone, and it is to make sure that we have an educated population that can make the right decisions and that can put people into power who make the right decisions for them. That is what education is for. It is not a tick-box exercise. It is about building a bigger picture. We talk about critical thinking and critical learning. That type of thing builds a good society, and that is what we need to make sure that education focuses on.