Wyse, Dominic; Bradbury, Alice; Manyukhina, Yana; Ranken, Emily; (2024) Briefing Paper: The Future of Primary Education in England - In the Hands of a New Government. Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (HHCP), IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society: London, UK.

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Abstract

At its best, primary education is a phase when children’s natural curiosity and intrinsic thirst for learning is augmented by their increasing capacities for independent thinking and their levels of understanding (Goswami, 2020): a golden opportunity not to be squandered. The vast majority of primary teachers and schools provide excellent education for children, but for more than a decade teachers have had to mitigate the deficiencies of England’s policies on curriculum, assessment, and increasingly pedagogy. These policies have limited what children experience in schools, and constrained teachers’ creativity and professionalism. The consequence has been too many children not progressing as well as they could. Disadvantaged children continue to be particularly poorly served but other groups of children are also not making as much progress as they should be. England’s national curriculum, pedagogy and assessment are set in the context of a range of societal factors that impact on the capacity for schools and teachers to help children’s learning. For example, in 2021-22, there were 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK, which is 29% of children (Child Poverty Action Group, 2023). Research has shown that schools have had an increasing role in addressing the multiple impacts of poverty and disadvantage, related to both the cost-of-living crisis, austerity, and the long-term consequences of Covid (Lucas et al, 2023). This increased role includes running food banks in schools, which HHCP research has explored (Bradbury and Vince, 2023a; 2023b). While the efforts of school staff to address the problems arising from growing child poverty are laudable, they remain unrecognised by the accountability system, and unfunded. The combination of increased need for primary schools to provide social support for children and families in the context of prescriptive curriculum, pedagogy and assessment policies has become a toxic mix. Although early years education quite rightly has been recognised as an important foundational phase in children’s development, and the nature of the vocational vs academic divide at secondary and further education phases has been the subject of continued thinking, primary education is currently in danger of not receiving the attention that it deserves in spite of powerful evidence that underlines the importance of primary education but also the deficiencies in education policies (e.g. Alexander, et al 2010). The purpose of this briefing paper is to stimulate debate about the importance of primary education, and to recommend some improvements that we hope will be acted on by a new government.

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