Your point on 'why' - that standards are simply not a high priority - I think is spot on (and that they are being disingenuous about trade-offs). Interestingly, for a family whose children learn to read fluently at three, particularly at primary school, swapping 'standards' for 'fun' (e.g. the odd Forest School day) may be a reasonable position, particularly given Y7 starts at the same place for everyone. It is this class of people who were never convinced by the Gove reforms, and are forming the mainstay of Hymanism (along with genuine concerns on the bottom third - although I do fully agree with your concerns about how they are being addressed). I have a couple more thoughts on this, which I may turn into a full piece.
I suppose the only substantive area I'd disagree with is on languages. I personally think it's great to study languages, just as I think it's a shame people don't study Latin any more, because I like knowledge for its own sake. But it's very hard to make a case for them more broadly.
Translating and interpreting have always been poorly paid, and as for languages helping you elsewhere, as a Belgian friend of mine once said, ‘Why hire an English graduate in French, when you can hire a Belgian engineering graduate, who can also speak English and French, and is also an engineer?’ And this is the status quo before instant, cheap, good AI translation!
It seems likely that the best way to think of languages is like a subject with music: intellectually stimulating and demanding, do it if you’re genuinely passionate about it, and a shame if no-one at all did it - but equally, hard to see why we want large numbers of people doing it, other than for intellectual interest.
Education policy has to focus first and foremost on the forgotten third, and the reason it has failed to do so is partly because low educational attainment tracks disadvantage so closely; partly because many schools regard them as a structural inevitability; and partly because schools - and Ofsted - tend to measure themselves against a weak national average. (Only this week I heard a vigorous argument for recognising the children for whom ‘a 2 is a ceiling’ when I was critiquing a history cohort where over half failed to get a 4; and a school defending their 71% English and Maths 4+ rate among children with <90% attendance and no disadvantage or SEN.) There are schools who have been very successful in raising standards for all - but these are overwhelmingly in urban areas with large immigrant populations for whom education is seen as empowering; and, crucially, plenty of job opportunities. Raising standards in white British rural areas faces many more barriers.
If education was actually to teach language acquisition, yes these reforms need to happen... But once again, it all comes back to how are these measured, who decides and on what scale is mastery? Will it be long winded debates or Formal & Proctored Certifications: Official exams (like Cambridge English, CERF, IELTS, TOEFL, or DELE)?
Then when they reach the highest teir do we just stop with Oracy? It's a whole age vs stage debate again.
I have so many thoughts... But I'll keep them for later, you've definitely covered a lot of ground here.
I was one of the sixth form students impacted by the “parity of esteem” policies of the late 2000s.
I couldn’t get into Durham, Edinburgh or a number of other top universities as they told me they wouldn’t accept a DT A level to study English Literature (which at the time was one of the most popular academic degrees and v competitive).
I did also initially select a BTEC in Business as my mother suggested a vocational course like that would help me get a job.
When I joined my new sixth form and was exchanging A level choices with the others in my year, most laughed at me when I said I’d chosen DT and Business. I sat through the first couple of classes on the Business BTEC and was equally confused as to why I was there, and swapped it for another humanities A level.
But I kept on with DT as I enjoyed it, totally oblivious to the secret university recruitment policy until I rang them all up and got admissions to tell me themselves.
That’s a long time ago now and I managed to sort it out - but as someone who experienced this first hand the first time, I have some of the same questions as you about the assumptions underpinning these new policy proposals.
My main issue is that it further disadvantages academic young people from lower SES backgrounds who didn’t get the memo that parity of esteem is political rhetoric and not reality.
Really great piece.
Your point on 'why' - that standards are simply not a high priority - I think is spot on (and that they are being disingenuous about trade-offs). Interestingly, for a family whose children learn to read fluently at three, particularly at primary school, swapping 'standards' for 'fun' (e.g. the odd Forest School day) may be a reasonable position, particularly given Y7 starts at the same place for everyone. It is this class of people who were never convinced by the Gove reforms, and are forming the mainstay of Hymanism (along with genuine concerns on the bottom third - although I do fully agree with your concerns about how they are being addressed). I have a couple more thoughts on this, which I may turn into a full piece.
I suppose the only substantive area I'd disagree with is on languages. I personally think it's great to study languages, just as I think it's a shame people don't study Latin any more, because I like knowledge for its own sake. But it's very hard to make a case for them more broadly.
Taking a language A-Level actually has a negative impact on earnings (due to the opportunity cost for anyone smart enough to do a language A-Level) and languages is one of the lowest subject returns at university, only marginally above creative and performing arts (see Figure 5.6, here: https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2026-07/IFS%20Report%20-%20New%20estimates%20of%20the%20impact%20of%20undergraduate%20degrees%20on%20lifetime%20earnings_changed.pdf – this is for the cohort who took GCSEs in 2002).
Translating and interpreting have always been poorly paid, and as for languages helping you elsewhere, as a Belgian friend of mine once said, ‘Why hire an English graduate in French, when you can hire a Belgian engineering graduate, who can also speak English and French, and is also an engineer?’ And this is the status quo before instant, cheap, good AI translation!
It seems likely that the best way to think of languages is like a subject with music: intellectually stimulating and demanding, do it if you’re genuinely passionate about it, and a shame if no-one at all did it - but equally, hard to see why we want large numbers of people doing it, other than for intellectual interest.
Education policy has to focus first and foremost on the forgotten third, and the reason it has failed to do so is partly because low educational attainment tracks disadvantage so closely; partly because many schools regard them as a structural inevitability; and partly because schools - and Ofsted - tend to measure themselves against a weak national average. (Only this week I heard a vigorous argument for recognising the children for whom ‘a 2 is a ceiling’ when I was critiquing a history cohort where over half failed to get a 4; and a school defending their 71% English and Maths 4+ rate among children with <90% attendance and no disadvantage or SEN.) There are schools who have been very successful in raising standards for all - but these are overwhelmingly in urban areas with large immigrant populations for whom education is seen as empowering; and, crucially, plenty of job opportunities. Raising standards in white British rural areas faces many more barriers.
If education was actually to teach language acquisition, yes these reforms need to happen... But once again, it all comes back to how are these measured, who decides and on what scale is mastery? Will it be long winded debates or Formal & Proctored Certifications: Official exams (like Cambridge English, CERF, IELTS, TOEFL, or DELE)?
Then when they reach the highest teir do we just stop with Oracy? It's a whole age vs stage debate again.
I have so many thoughts... But I'll keep them for later, you've definitely covered a lot of ground here.
I was one of the sixth form students impacted by the “parity of esteem” policies of the late 2000s.
I couldn’t get into Durham, Edinburgh or a number of other top universities as they told me they wouldn’t accept a DT A level to study English Literature (which at the time was one of the most popular academic degrees and v competitive).
I did also initially select a BTEC in Business as my mother suggested a vocational course like that would help me get a job.
When I joined my new sixth form and was exchanging A level choices with the others in my year, most laughed at me when I said I’d chosen DT and Business. I sat through the first couple of classes on the Business BTEC and was equally confused as to why I was there, and swapped it for another humanities A level.
But I kept on with DT as I enjoyed it, totally oblivious to the secret university recruitment policy until I rang them all up and got admissions to tell me themselves.
That’s a long time ago now and I managed to sort it out - but as someone who experienced this first hand the first time, I have some of the same questions as you about the assumptions underpinning these new policy proposals.
My main issue is that it further disadvantages academic young people from lower SES backgrounds who didn’t get the memo that parity of esteem is political rhetoric and not reality.