Education Route Map: Covid-19

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con) [V]]

As Members have already stated, the education road map needs to be a long-term plan, because the educational impact of the pandemic will likely last for the entirety of this decade. The challenge is therefore to think long and proactively, and not to take short-term reactive decisions. This means taking a multi-annual strategic approach, not a tactical one that covers only 2021. We need to take a strategic approach that is wide in its vision. After all, we do not have an education system—we have an education ecosystem, for which a holistic approach is needed. We need an approach that prioritises outcomes, not outputs, and that recognises not just schools and colleges—although I know that is the subject of the debate today—but universities and beyond, into adult and lifelong learning, especially given the enormous potential that reskilling and upskilling can bring to a workforce that will be confronting change in this post-covid decade.

If we recognise that a long-term approach must be strategic in its values, we must also recognise that, in its implementation, we must be prepared for adverse reactions to any new policies. Today’s announcements on teacher assessment for exams, for instance, is entirely under-standable, but it must also take into account the reactions that the policy will have in relation to university admissions later in the year and, indeed, what it will mean for grade inflation. We must be careful that one person’s solution does not become another’s problem.

This brings me to the delivery of the road map. A long-term plan can be delivered, and can succeed, only if it is driven by a process that leads to specific outcomes that are set and then measured. Words simply are not enough. An ecosystem can thrive only under the protection of rules and when it is maintained by standards. This is particularly true of education, yet I believe that the framework of assessment, and therefore the outcomes and the independent standards that drive them, hang in the balance. We cannot afford to go backwards. Let us not throw away the importance of listening to evidence-based practice and the data-driven process. That will need new metrics, which will be essential.

I believe that, in the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), we need to be positive and, if we do all of this, we can seize the opportunity to learn back better and to shape an opportunity from this crisis. Ultimately, if the national education recovery plan is to succeed, it must, above all, bring hope for a better future.