Looking at all the fuss going on about budgets, cutbacks, targets, attainments etc, in education (not just att FE and HE) I make no apologies for reproducing one of Frank Coffield’s quotes here. Those who manage education need to remember that for many of us, education has provided the route to enable personal achievement and satisfaction.
“I want to end on a personal, familial and social note. I come from an Irish Catholic family which emigrated to Scotland some time before the First World War in the search for work and in the hope of improving their lot and, more especially, that of their children. My father, James, was the first and only member of the family to go to university, Glasgow, in 1930, at a time when there were only places for around 14,000 new entrants or 2% of his generation. He always said he would never have got through school and university if it had not been for the peace, space and books provided by the local public library. I went up (that’s how I thought of it intellectually and morally) to the same university in 1960, when 93,000 or 5% of my age group entered higher education. In 2000, our daughter Emma, after an excellent foundation course in a local FE college, joined our alma mater and in that year no less than 950,000 or 36.8% of her age cohort became university students. The increase from 2%, to 5%, to 36.8% represents nothing less than a transformation of British society.
Looking back over 100 years and three generations of my family, I can see three great social movements. First, every time the universities and FE colleges have prised open their doors a little, able students have come forward in sufficient numbers to fill with success the places made available. Second, the Scottish education system in 1918 passed enlightened and inclusive legislation, which financed most of the building costs of separate schools for immigrants of an alien (and to many an unwelcome) faith. Third, education has been for my family, and for hundreds of thousands like it, the route into the professions, and to an honoured, secure and well-paid place in society. Our generation must not forget, however, that we are the beneficiaries of the long and often painful journey made by our parents and grandparents, who needed structural and financial help, as well as education, in order for us to move up in society.
All this is cause for celebration, gratitude and reflection; and so I warmly welcome the most recent advances, brought about by the substantially increased investment in education since 1997, as a result of which millions more have achieved qualifications or received training, some for the very first time. These desirable improvements are, however, accompanied by gross, rising, new and unjustifiable inequalities; in each generation whole swathes of the community have been left behind and continue to be left behind in scabby estates which should outrage our collective conscience.
Moreover, something vital to the whole enterprise is being forgotten. I learned from my father, as he learned from his, to hear the music, the excitement and the hope in the word ‘education’. I also learned that it is the job of teachers to help other people’s children to hear and respond to that music. We do it because teaching is a noble profession, which dedicates itself to the lot of those who have not had our advantages. We do it because we believe in social justice and, like our parents and grandparents, we want a better world for ourselves, our children and all children. That is the meaning of our lives as teachers.”
Coffield, F., (2008; 61) Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority…, LSN London downloaded from https://crm.lsnlearning.org.uk/user/login.aspx?code=080052&P=080052PD&action=pdfdl&src=XOWEB 20 January 2009
