By Cllr Meri O’Connell
Our unelected prime minister has made another desperate attempt to distract the nation from the real and deep problems that they face as a direct result of Tory mistakes.
As a teacher and a parent, I groaned at Sunak’s newest plan to get rid of A levels and replace them with a ‘British Baccalaureate’.
It was back in 2016, in the run-up to the Brexit referendum that Michael Gove told us that Brits were fed up with experts telling them what to do.
Given what has followed, I’d like to make a plea for a return to governments being informed by expert advice rather than governed on the whims and vested interests of a select few and their chums.
The dictionary defines an expert as ‘a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area’, call me a fool, but it sounds like these are just the sort of people who could help stabilise our country by injecting some evidence base back into policy.
Already experts who work in all parts of the education sector are condemning Sunak’s plans.
While we should always seek to improve our education system, there are countless ways to better invest in our children’s futures than binning an internationally recognised exam.
We could invest in our crumbling school buildings, increase valuable support assistant numbers or subsidise healthy school meals.
We could reduce waiting times for special needs assessments and mental health support.
How about we improve teacher recruitment and retention by offering wages in line with inflation or by a total overhaul of the inspection process?
Nobody has been clamouring for the abolition of A levels.
We need real policies that have been planned with the help and agreement of people who actually work with our children.
Unlike the Tories, these people are very knowledgeable and skilled in the area of education.
Please Sunak, talk to the experts.
Cllr Meri O’Connell is the Lib Dem Lead for Education on Reading Borough Council and ward member for Tilehurst
