Is it time for a radical rethink of the UK education system?

My Mother used to say “Education and manners will carry you through the world”, and never a truer word was spoken. Education seeps into every pore of society’s fabric, from the economic benefits to the employment market, to the mental and physical wellbeing of the nation. Luckily, I found most high school lessons pretty straightforward. However, I often cast my mind back to double maths on a hot, stuffy Tuesday afternoon, with me constantly peering at the Smith clock ticking second by second, wishing time would hurry up.

Maths was one of the few subjects where I had to concentrate, but concentrate I did. In truth I’d say I was mildly average at maths at best. Throughout my working life I’ve often mused over why was I forced to learn trigonometry, calculus, logarithm, algebra, Pythagorean theorem etc? Since leaving school, I’ve never used or come across any of these branches of mathematics in my personal or work life.

I had a good grip of essential maths eg: addition, multiplication, subtraction and division, and I also knew my way around fractions, decimals and percentages. The advent of smartphones with calculators (and if all else fails Google), means basic maths has never been a problem for me, so what was the point of liquifying my brain until it seeped out of my nostrils, trying to get my head around square roots and prime numbers etc?



Wouldn’t I have been better off learning how to sign up for a bank account? Learning how to pay utility bills online? How about changing babies nappies, and identifying and coping with teething? What about an insight into the emotional side of adult relationships? What about lessons in how the stock market works? The list of life essentials that I had to make up as I went along, use commonsense or ask the parents how to do is endless. Wouldn’t learning these essential life-skills at school been more beneficial to me than the mathematic disciplines I’ll probably never use again?

I’ve long since realised that academia doesn’t suit everybody, and many highly intelligent people learn better by doing. So with this in mind, mightn’t we not be better off identifying children who’d be more suited to learning technical skills or a trade from year 9 of Key Stage 3 (13-14 years old), in readiness for Key Stage 4 (14-16) and beyond?

I wouldn’t advocate an end to academic learning, but I’d be happy to see a shift in focus to high quality essential education in English, maths, general science, humanities (geography, history and social science) and physical education (PE), alongside meaningful apprenticeships in nursing, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, plumbing, heat engineering, building and business administration etc, with suitable pupils aged 14 and above.



I recently bumped into an old friend who I’ve not seen since our high school days, and his story typifies my thinking. My old buddy says he was a failure at school and just couldn’t get his head around our academic lessons. He left with a basic education, and after trying a few dead end jobs, he joined the British Army. It was a revelation! After his basic training, he opted to specialise in communications, and after several years training and doing the job, he left the service an expert at secure, encryted communications.

His job during and after the army took him to exciting places all over the world, because his technical skills were a highly sought-after commodity in today’s digital world. He was so successful, his career path allowed him the option of taking early retirement, but he soon got bored, and after a year he re-entered the job market as a car salesman at a main dealership. He was so successful in this post during his initial 6 years, he now manages the dealership and he couldn’t be happier!



This was a boy who was academically written off age 16, but who took a vocational skills route in life after high school and flourished as a result. l’ve heard similar stories from highly intelligent adults who’ve also lamented their bad school experiences. The UK has a chronic skills shortage, and the knock-on effects have led to a post-Brexit immigration explosion to fill the positions vacated by Europeans who left the UK, after being made to feel unwelcome by the likes of Farage and his Far Right ilk.

Labour advocates a skills policy of “growing our own” instead of relying on foreign skills and labour, but does this mean waiting for nursery school children to graduate high school, before going on to vocational trade and technical skills training? I would like our new Labour government to consider radical reform of training and skills in respect to our schools, so the UK is better prepared to meet the current and future demands of a technology skills driven society.



The Tories clunkily touched on this subject in the past, but coming from them, their plan seemed to suggest leaving white collared careers to their children, whilst the rest should be forced into trade or manual jobs, whether they’re suited to them or not. The likes of Ree Smogg, may have had honourable intentions with his skills rhetoric, but being the same Tories who supported Boris Johnson (who was a stranger to the truth), it’s hard to trust a word they say, or to not have to seriously consider their ulterior motives.

Vocational skills studies are as valued as academic studies on the continent, hence the reason why Europe is forging ahead in the manufacturing sector. Services, now accounts for 70% of UK GDP, which is nothing to be sniffed at, but we could be passing up a golden chance to capitalise on Labour’s Green Great British Energy revolution by not revising the way we educate our young. This is a conversation, the UK urgently needs to have.