Improving education
Elon Musk, heading up the US Department of Government Efficiency, has promised, some would say threatened, to close down the US Department of Education. He argues that it achieves nothing worthwhile, and stifles state and school independence, forcing compliance with goals that do not represent the interests of parents and pupils. It employs bureaucrats, most of whom have no experience of teaching, and who consume federal funds without producing anything of value to education.
It is a bold approach, and might cause us on this side of the Atlantic to watch carefully to see if it is an approach we might learn from. At the very least it could cause us to examine in detail just what the UK Department for Education actually does.
Closing down the UK Department for Education would devolve power downwards to schools and parents. With more and more free schools and academies, this would accelerate the process by which decisions would bemade locally rather than nationally. Given that different areas have different educational needs, it would allow for more variation and innovation. It could accelerate the process under which schools could establish specialities such as music or mathematics.
The closing of such a large department would free up funds that could be allocated directly to schools and teachers. Its closure would free up educators to concentrate on teaching rather than the huge workload of form-filing and compliance presently required.
It would make schools accountable to parents and communities rather than to remote bureaucrats, enabling them to adapt to the specific needs of students. It would create space for innovation, giving schools the freedom to test novel teaching methods and varied curricula.
Improvement would occur because of the greater competition between schools to attract students and the funds that would accompany them. Parents would have more choices, and schools they favoured would inspire others to copy their success. Top-down initiatives from the DfE would be replaced by local initiatives, with decisions made by those with knowledge of local conditions.
Teachers would gain greater autonomy, improving both morale in the profession as well as achieving better results.
Perhaps the biggest gain would be the distancing of education from political agendas imposed by those seeking to use education as an instrument for social change rather than the acquisition of knowledge and skills that parents would prefer it to pursue.
For the things that still need to be done centrally, the use of outside agencies under contract might give greater control and flexibility that the use of in-house staff.
Given the likely impact of such a move, it will come as no surprise if people in the UK start looking closely at Elon Musk’s initiative and calculating how it, or at least parts of it, might be implemented here.