Business Learnings from Education’s Failures 🤔

School is back! Hooray for everyone who have survived... 

But before we pull our party poppers, let’s find out what we’ve learnt. This weekend, The Sunday Times Magazine published my article on what went wrong in education during lockdown, who is responsible, and what happens next. The most tweeted line was from London mum Serena: 

“I learnt that if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a distillery to home educate one”.

In summary:

There’s a leadership void

The government implied it was in charge, but didn’t have a strategy and threw in the towel around summer half-term and left schools to it. Some schools stepped up, and others flailed around hopelessly. 

Ofsted—with a team of over 1000 senior education experts in place—neither inspected nor led, allowing some of their staff to be furloughed to universal credit.  A number of politicians accused them of ‘hibernating like badgers’ (my mother was quick to point out that badgers don’t actually hibernate!). 

The unions sought to protect teachers, and mostly ended up making it even harder to keep children learning.

Private schools largely did better than state schools, (the incentive of collecting fees was a motivator) but many still dropped the ball.

Parents picked up the slack

More specifically, in most households, mothers did. Data shows that women led home learning and took bigger career and financial hits as a result. 

Business suffered

If anyone ever doubted that education was as important to highly functioning businesses as broadband, they don’t anymore. Across the country, people couldn’t work at the pace and level they needed to, because they were trying to persuade their 10-year-olds to answer a comprehension on the Blitz while keeping the toddler from getting tangled in cables.

But it’s what happens next that is interesting…

Pretty much everyone expects more local lockdowns this winter. Many parents fear little has been learnt from Round One and another shutdown will be no better. Publicly, Sept For Schools has become the voice for parents on this subject, campaigning for minimum standards of support.  

But my thought is…

What if business got involved?

• Helping local schools source devices, by restoring old & unused machines back to factory settings 

• Supporting wifi in homes that can’t afford quality broadband

• Constantly reminding government that education is also business

But if that’s all too much, then perhaps giving the parents on their teams a reassuring virtual *hug* for surviving would be a good start. 

- Christine x