A deeply disturbing article, taken from The Business online, about the impact of British education system on its upcoming generation and state of their mental development

It is one of the most devastating indictments of British education ever produced: a study of 10,000 children reveals that 11-and 12-year-old children are “now, on average, between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago” in their cognitive and conceptual development. In other words, their ability to think and reason has receded at an astonishing rate since 1990.

Every so often, new research deserves to transform the way a generation thinks about the world; this, from one of Britain’s leading psychologists, fits the bill. To those who still refuse to admit that educational standards in Britain are in dangerous decline, this groundbreaking research will come as a devastating shock. To the rest of us, it confirms what we had long suspected: British schools are not just failing to meet the demands of the 21st century knowledge economy in equipping children with essential skills, they are doing even worse than they used to, with dire implications for the prospects of a new generation of children in an age of globalisation and intense international competition.

The new study, by Michael Shayer of King’s College, London, soon to appear in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, also reveals that the so-called “gender gap” has disappeared, with the performance of both sexes deteriorating significantly. Much of the collapse took place between 1995 and 2000; but there was a further drop between 2000 and 2004 – so both Tory and Labour governments are implicated.

By analysing and measuring intellectual ability using the most advanced scientific breakthroughs about the way the brain functions, Mr Shayer, one of Britain’s most brilliant psychologists, has demonstrated beyond peradventure that children are regressing and becoming less capable.

His research confirms what many have long suspected: that the much-touted and relentless improvements in exam results in A-levels and GSCEs, far from demonstrating a rise in standards, are solely the result of grade inflation, the product of easier questions and more promiscuous marking.

This is ground-breaking stuff, with huge implications not just for British education but the country’s ability to compete and prosper in the 21st century. So nobody should be surprised that it has been almost wholly ignored by the British media: only The Spectator website (a sister publication of this newspaper) bothered to follow it up properly. Plain folk might regard it as a devastating indictment of our increasingly frivolous media that it did not dominate every front page and lead every news bulletin. But that would be unfair: the media had a dying whale in the Thames and the sexual peccadilloes of minor Liberal politicians to cover, obviously far more significant than a story that raises grave concerns about the nation’s future.

Only this weekend, as The Business brings the research’s findings to its elite readership, is the collapse in the ability of British children beginning to dawn, with leading economists and business groups warning that the collapse in standards will be devastating for Britain’s ability to compete in the global 21st century knowledge economy. Their concern is all the greater because Mr Shayer has no political axe to grind: he is not associated with any conservative think-tank and the money for his research came from the government-funded Economic and Social Research Council, which resides at the heart of Britain’s (failed) educational establishment.

Before he started his research, Mr Shayer was convinced it would show that British children had improved; no wonder he calls his results “astonishing”. His research does not explain why the collapse in cognitive ability has taken place; it merely identifies and measures it. He speculates that the lack of experimental play in primary schools and the growth of a video-game and TV culture may be partly to blame. While these trends have undoubtedly played a role, another factor must surely be the decline in intellectual, as well as sensual, stimulus in many schools and families. Regardless of the exact causes of this cognitive decline, Britain’s smug, deluded and complacent educational establishment, which continues to maintain that all is well in the best of all worlds, must ultimately bear responsibility for this disastrous development; and henceforth self-congratulatory ministerial claims of rising school standards should be treated with the disdain they deserve.

By coincidence, the Shayer research was released the same day that new figures showed China’s gross domestic product (GDP) overtaking Britain’s for the first time since the 19th century Industrial Revolution. The research and Britain’s relegation to fifth place in the global economic pecking order are not linked – but they will be as the 21st century develops. It has become a cliché on the left and right that advanced nations can only thrive in the face of competition from China, India, Brazil and other rising nations if they fully exploit the brainpower of their people; it is certainly true that there is a strong relationship between education/skills and income/employment – and that the link is growing even closer with the flight of manufacturing from the advanced to the developing economies and the spread of globalisation, technological progress and the knowledge-based economy. But the Shayer research indicates – ministerial spin and propaganda notwithstanding – that British education is wholly inadequate to the demands ahead. Far from rising to the challenges of the 21st century by educating more and more people to a higher and higher standard, British education is actually in decline.

Some of us already knew this. The evidence, after all, has been around for a while, though the education establishment has done its best to bury it: of the 20% of British adults with the lowest skills, 50% are economically inactive, though only 5% are categorised unemployed, according to the Labour Force Survey, which means that massive numbers are not even bothering to look for a job at all. Research from the OECD reveals that a scandalously high 29% of Britain’s younger workforce (aged 25 to 35) have no formal qualifications, against only 20% in France, 13% in the United States, 6% in Japan and just 3% in South Korea. Among the British as a whole, 35% have “low” qualifications; in America, which (like Britain) also suffers from sub-standard secondary education but enjoys hugely better universities, the figure is a much healthier 12%. A mere 28% of the British workforce has “high” qualifications, against 38% for the USA and Japan. Lord Leitch, in his interim report on skills for the Treasury, concludes that 5m people in Britain have no qualifications at all; one in six do not have the literacy skills expected of an 11-year-old and half do not have adequate levels of functional numeracy. Welcome to the stupid nation – which we now know is becoming even dumber.

Great Britain is paying a heavy price for “bog standard” comprehensive education and the 30-year war against excellence in British schools. The main villains in this sad story are Labour politicians such as Shirley Williams, Anthony Crosland, Roy Hattersley and their successors – plus the dim-witted and monolithic educational establishment they helped to create – all propelled by an egalitarian imperative which has undermined standards and reduced opportunity for bright kids from poor backgrounds; but the Tories have been complicit.

Now we can see that the damage they wreaked on British schools is even worse than anybody thought: most of us knew the school system had been consistently dumbed-down; little did we realise that our children were also getting dumber. If cognitive abilities continue to collapse (or just fail to improve), Great Britain is heading for also-ran status in the economic stakes of the 21st century. The Leitch review found increasing the literacy score of a country by 1% raises GDP per capita by 1.5% and labour force productivity by 2.5%.

The Shayer research indicates Britain is going backwards, not forwards when it comes to education. The consequences will be severe: an illiterate and innumerate workforce is disastrous for a country’s scientific, cultural and economic health; a society suffering from a collapse in cognitive ability in a knowledge-based global economy, where cognitive skills are the most highly valued, is in deep trouble. Britain’s schools need a cultural revolution if today’s children are to survive in tomorrow’s global economy. Sadly, nobody on the Left or Right is offering to lead it.

Source