My driver through Nairobi’s rush hour paused in the way people do when unsure whether to trespass on private grief. “We Kenyans seem to be better in running election campaigns than you mzungus!”. I had to see his point but he then went on to say “and our schools are getting better as well”. After many years of indifference the Kenyan ministry of education is getting involved in quality assurance through curriculum innovation, teacher training, the monitoring of international schools and much else. At last week’s Dine and Discuss Toby Salt gave a masterly survey of MATs within the big picture of state education. Other sage voices, such as those of Neil McIntosh and Julian Drinkall joined in as did Jo Grills, the last proper Director of Education in Gloucestershire. But that was forty-eight hours before the astonishing voting results started coming in. Probably the only item on which I will agree with Jeremy Corbyn is that Labour won the election and the Conservatives lost, whatever the electoral arithmetic. What will this mean for our world of Teaching and Learning? For the last fifty years we have had the great educational debate, a continuum of BOYLE>CALLAGHAN>JOSEPH>BLAIR>ADONIS>GOVE. Slowly a broad consensus has evolved with government seeking to define a national curriculum, establish national standards, and through a powerful inspectorate achieve a serious uplift in educational standards. The necessary underside of this was to take power away from the “blob” – the combination of left-wing educational authorities, teaching unions and fellow-travelling university departments of education. We are now in a “phoney war”. If this is followed by a Corbyn-McDonnel led Labour government then we will see the return of the “authorities” and all that will mean in terms of educational mediocrity and soggy socialist thinking. That is except in the case of Gloucestershire which was a wonderful exception under the leadership of my friend Jo Grills! I am writing this gazing across a flamingo-clad Lake Elementeita and am due to return to London on Tuesday, I think…
Anthony Millard
Executive Chairman and Director
