Emma Peach

The last question to the panel was "what would you like the new government to do on curriculum and assessment?" My answer: If we are talking about curriculum and assessment, the biggest thing for me is a reduction. There's too much content across the board, and we need to strip back. We also need to stop assessment backwash, where exam mark schemes become a part of the curriculum and determine what students do and don't learn. But that's if we're talking curriculum and assessment. If we're talking education in general - if @bphillipsonMP picked up the phone to me and said "what's the biggest thing in education" I would say something else: Broadly, the education system itself in this country is working. Training is getting better, standards are improving, professionalism and professional knowledge is increasing and slowly, slowly, outcomes across the board are heading in the right direction. Curriculum and assessment need some changes, fixes, and tweaks, but in a broad sense they work. What isn't working is everything else: we can't access CAMHS and we don't get hold of social workers. We have a two child limit and a benefits cap that keeps children hungry and in poverty. We have income cliff-edges that mean children whose parents can't afford meals are also not eligible for free school meals. We don't have Sure Start, we don't have youth centres. The SEND infrastructure is byzantine, underfunded and on the verge of collapse. The very fabric of the social security net is tattered and frayed, and vulnerable young children are falling through the gaps. Parents have lost faith in the system, and are losing their trust in schools and teachers. Despite this, schools are heroically battling the odds to provide students with a high-quality, robust and meaningful education. But when everything outside our gates is in such disrepair there's a limit to what we can do. So yes, there are things within education that need fixing. But the main thing - the biggest thing - is everything else. The best thing you can do for us is to fix that.