In a post today RSA Chief Executive Matthew Taylor advocates the idea of ‘schools without boundaries’. The idea is to make the work of schools, and the wider project of developing the next generation, the task of the whole community and not just parents and schools. Matthew cites an insight derived from sociological research to underpin the project.

“Taking into account holidays and weekends, school pupils spend 80% of their time out of school. If there is little in that 80% that values and reinforces learning at school, it is unlikely that children will be receptive in the other 20%. Emotional receptivity is vital to the brain’s ability to learn. This is why inculcating a commitment to young people’s development in the wider community is so vital to the success of schools and why it is worth schools making the effort, and taking the risks, to open up what they do and seek to make education a whole community endeavour”

The argument here – presumably the guiding argument of ‘schools without boundaries’ – is that since schools only represent c.20% of children’s time then the government needs to widen the scope of its interaction and influence. But the flaw is that that un-tapped 80% isn’t dominated by youth clubs, sports centres or any other civic bodies that governments can reasonably hope to shape, it’s dominated by the family or peer group interactions. Anyone who works with children will tell you how easy it is to discern those from a stable & loving background and how, far from being driven by socio-economic class, educational attainment is far more likely to correlate with the presence of an encouraging and loving home life. Difficult though this might be for those on the progressive left to accept, arguably these insight steers the formation of public policy towards the support & advocacy of marriage or civil unions, a rather tougher line on teenage crime and disorder etc.

And I think there’s a lot to be said for unburdening our education system of many of the ancillary purposes it’s acquired in recent years. Michael Gove, Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, spoke at the RSA last week on just that subject:

“Under Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, schools have lost their principal purpose – and been saddled with a host of supplementary roles. As the flagship document of Ed’s first year in office – the Children’s Plan – indicated, schools are less places of teaching and learning and more community hubs from which a host of children’s services can be delivered. In that sense education has indeed been eclipsed – and the renaming of the Department is genuinely significant – we no longer have a single department of state charged with encouraging learning, supporting teaching and valuing education.

Instead we have one department which manages schools – and sees them as instruments to advance central government’s social agenda. And we also now have another department – the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – which manages universities – and sees them as instruments to advance central government’s economic agenda. What we do not have – and what we desperately need – is a Department at the heart of Government championing the cause of education, the value of liberal learning, the wider spread of knowledge as an uncontested good in its own right.”