It was “Glastonbury for intellectuals”, according to Bob Geldof; “the swots’ Glastonbury” was AA Gill’s verdict. In so far as the programme for last weekend’s Sunday Times Festival of Education managed to combine the biggest names in education — and some surprise contenders in the field, including Sir Bob himself — in a packed schedule of debate and intriguing seminars and workshops, they both summed up the spirit of the event. Wellington college in Berkshire played host to the festival, where, over two days, more than 150 speakers and their audiences got to grips with the key issues facing education.
Teachers, not surprisingly, were the focus of many discussions. “Opportunities for students only come from innovative teachers,” declared Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington. But what makes a good teacher? While the shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham, urged that the “professionalism of the teacher ... should be on a par with the doctor and the lawyer”, other speakers declared that achievements in the real world could count for more than a PGCE, the postgraduate teaching qualification. Tony Little, headmaster of Eton, declared that almost half the teaching staff at his school had no formal teaching qualification and that he had enthusiastically employed, among others, a former banker and a former soldier.
Michael Gove, the education secretary, was adamant that teacher training had to improve. He also touched on another theme running through the festival: the need to break down boundaries between private and state schools, and for a greater sharing of resources. The jazz band of pupils from Wellington (where fees can reach almost £30,000 a year) and the local comprehensive, Edgbarrow, belted out their repertoire in the quad in a musical embodiment of this co-operative spirit. However, we learnt that, while Wellington and many other top public schools sponsor academies, often in challenging areas, there is still scope for more co-operation. Gove had a dig at Little’s Eton (what he actually called it was “a certain public school in Berkshire”) for not yet joining this initiative to help failing state schools.
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Throughout the weekend, a tension seemed to be building between the forces of tradition and innovation. Gove laughed off his image as a Gradgrind, firmly stating it was not “Victorian fetishism” but a “basic truth” that without high standards of literacy and numeracy a child was hampered from “exciting breakthroughs in wonderful new subjects”.
The outspoken writer and inner-city teacher Katharine Birbalsingh reckoned “tradition in education has become a dirty word” and said the new free school she is establishing in Lambeth, south London, will “focus on traditional teaching methods. Children will stand at assembly and keep high standards of uniform.”
In the modernisers’ corner, Joel Klein, who used to run New York’s schools and is now chief executive of the education division at News Corporation (the parent company of The Sunday Times), wanted to see reforms to an education system that he thinks has pandered for too long to the interests of teachers and bureaucrats. Allowing private companies to take over failing state schools was the way forward, in his view.
Many speakers, especially eminent scientists such as Lord Rees and Lord Winston, emphasised that we are now in a global age and must acknowledge that some of the best educational practice comes from beyond these shores.
It wasn’t all cut-and-thrust argument, though. Visitors had plenty of opportunity to sneak away from the main stages and find themselves in a kind of fantasy classroom, a platonic ideal of what their own school lessons should have been like, but probably weren’t. Perched on a table in the Wellington college library, the classical historian Bettany Hughes held a seminar on Socrates. She conjured up his Athenian world, distilling his philosophy (“learn to live well ... and always keep questioning”), and elegantly managed to work in the correct use of the word “decimate”. Professor Colin Blakemore came from Oxford to take a science class, with a riveting explanation of what discoveries in neuroscience could bring to our understanding of the way students learn. And in the chapel the RSC held lively drama workshops.
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Jane Asher, cake maker and actress, is also president of the National Autistic Society, and joined the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen for a session on “demystifying autism”. He spoke of the “neuroscience of empathy”; she was well informed and surprisingly funny about a subject that often provokes fear and confusion.
Dyslexia can raise a laugh, too. The former Welsh rugby player Scott Quinnell, who is dyslexic, began his talk by observing drily that “it’s ironic that they’ve put us in the library”. AA Gill, discussing his own travails with the condition, ridiculed what he believes to be the many teachers who still consider it merely “middle-class stupidity”.
Consensus on many subjects began to emerge across the two days: we must release the shackles of constant testing, embrace the new technology that the kids in the classroom already use with ease, think globally and combine, as Seldon put it, “tradition with modernity”. Technology was also an issue Geldof touched on when he put forward his ideas on tackling truancy via mobile phone alerts for parents.
Although what was actually going to be done for our children remained tantalisingly unclear, it was evident that private contractors will be jostling to get in on the action. The nation’s educators have a year before the next festival to do their homework and report back to an audience who will still be hungry for answers.
Additional reporting by Laura Cox, Francesca Holloway, Oliver Nieburg, Holly Welham and Charlotte Young