English education policy is based on a nasty little theory
Underlying education policies in England is the misguided idea that only a few children are clever and that the rest are less valuable, argues Prof Danny Dorling
Danny Dorling: ‘Pupils in free schools, academies and private schools need not be taught their place so rigidly’. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
At the very core of the latest version of the national curriculum for maintained schools in England is a nasty little assumption. It is an assumption that has been harboured by a few for many decades, and one that often rises to the fore during hard times. It is what underlies the current government's approach to education. This assumption first gained popularity following the popularisation of Darwin and Wallace's discovery of evolution. The assumption is that children vary greatly in what they might be able to achieve, that some have far greater potential to do well than others, but all have only a fixed potential.
The job of government is routinely described as being to aid children to achieve within limits. As the deputy prime minister put it last week when announcing tests for five-year-olds: "I make no apology for having high ambitions for our pupils. But for children to achieve their potential we need to raise the bar."
In July 2013 the Department for Education made it clear that the underlying purpose of the new national curriculum had remained unchanged since Michael Gove first announced the detail of his int