Class War: The State of British Education Book

In his time Class War author Chris Woodhead has been a radical 70s schoolmaster, a Local Education Authority bigwig, a Schools Inspector for both Tory and Labour administrations, and a writer on educational matters for the Daily Telegraph. Now he's put that unique experience to polemical use: this is his hugely well-informed and highly opinionated dissertation on the state of the UK's education system. Those with some knowledge of Woodhead's history and outlook (and why he was sacked by Tony Blair) will not be surprised by his traditionalist take. Woodhead finds Britain's embattled schools swamped by trendiness, undermined by bureaucracy, weakened by indiscipline and prone to mismanagement. But that predictability does not make Woodhead's arguments any the less germane and incisive. Each well-aimed kick--at Ofsted, the LEAs, even the University system--should bring a tear to the eye of the average teacher, pupil, parent--and voter. Woodhead's deconstruction of the National Curriculum, as it has been watered down to suit "progressive professional opinion", is particularly sharp. Here's the author in full flow concerning the dodgy sociologese, the post-modern weasel words, used by so many contemporary educationalists to disguise the sloppiness of their theorising: We now have "thinking skills" in the National Curriculum. We have "enterprise education". We have "education for sustainable development". And, as an inevitable consequence, we have less and less time for the teaching of subjects the National Curriculum was first introduced to protect. Amid all this scathing criticism, Woodhead does take time to praise certain hard-working schools, teachers, governors, and so on. He also tries to end on a positive note, by sketching a traditionalist "Way Forward", if that isn't an oxymoron. On the whole though, it's the litany of unnecessary failure that remains in the mind. This is a salutary read for the literate and pre-literate alike. --Sean ThomasRead More