Writerings

Several times a year there is a call by a politician, a campaign group or a national newspaper to teach more of a certain subject/topic in UK schools. Sometimes it is in response to a study showing how far behind British children are compared to their international peers. Instead of any analysis in learning from other countries, the solution is always just to study more of it. More maths = better maths?

Other times it is because of some issue that is in the news at the time. It seems that the easiest response to an issue or crisis is to hope to equip children to overcome it for us in the future. When I was at school, teachers would tell us that it would be up to our generation to solve global warming. Although they never actually taught us how to ‘solve’ this. So good luck to today’s 10 year olds in tackling the rise of AI, rising authoritarianism, and global warming (soz, we haven’t got to that one ourselves yet). 

So, here is a short (but growing) list of things that schools need to do more of:

PE – 22/08/2023

OK, seems fair, and is in response to a drop in PE hours currently. 

Maths – 04/01/2023

Another pretty core subject and possibly one of Sunak’s better ideas. Although that is a low bar. 

Gardening – 14/09/2023

I couldn’t fully read this behind a paywall, but though it seems nice, I can’t imagine the guy from Downton Abbey has a compelling enough argument for gardening over, say, history.

Male influencers – 26/02/2024

This will definitely end up as a PSHE topic that will be delivered to a Year 9 assembly by a bronze medal Olympian or a swear-word free ‘rap star’. Will be called something like The Respect Initiative.

Gender identity – 16/05/2024

A rare example of something schools should apparently be reducing. Maybe cutting all these hours and hours is what will free up the time for everything else on this list. 

Financial literacy – 22/05/2024

A bit of a rehash of Sunak’s plan from a year ago, with the added vested interest of the FT. I guess they realise that no-one is going to read the FT in the future unless they are financial literate

Critical thinking – 14/07/2024

There were many similar arguments after the recent riots, but this one in the Times was spookily prescient coming a couple of weeks before the Southport attack. While it is probably no bad thing for children to learn about misinformation, I didn’t notice many children amongst the cretins throwing bricks at mosques. 

Licking ice-lollies – 20/08/2024

Ok, yes, this is a real one.

Philosophy – 07/10/2024

I was convinced that Philosophy was one of the topics that Sam Cooke didn’t know much about, but a quick Google suggests not. Instead British schoolchildren will use it to understand better this wonderful world.

Religion and morality – 17/12/2024

This is at least a “continue to” rather than a “should teach more”

LGBTQ+ stories – 17/02/2025

The campaigner in this article mention that we already learn about the Egyptians and the Romans. If only they’d studied the Greeks instead.

Break times – 25/02/2025

I guess it’s not surprising that the inevitable consequence of all these extra topics is that break time gets squeezed.

The “game of life” – 12/03/2025

It’s a bit of a rogue headline as what actually being prooposed is financial literacy (again). But the quotes from the MP make me think he has definitely been scammed by some pop-ud ad himself.

The importance of the UK military – 29/05/2025

It seems that these kinds of policies aren’t limited to the Department of Education any more

Spotting AI – 06/2025

Maybe I’m too conspiracy minded, but could this article (that is full of em-dashes and was “created” rather than written), be somewhat generated by AI itself. Is it making a meta point? Does anything matter any more?

Incel culture – 15/07/2025

Hot on the heels (well, 4 months later is good for the government) of the TV show Adolescence, the guideline seem vague enough to allow watching the Netflix show to count towards this policy.

British values – 27/08/2025

This from a politician who was Education Secretary for all of 36 hours