Burnham Is Right, We've Got To Stop Blaming Kids For Adult Failures

I wasn’t intending to write a post today. I’ve got to get on with my edits, but I read the news today and oh boy, I wanted to punch the air. Andy Burnham has been Prime Minister for just over a week, and lo, on the eighth day he decided to reform Britain’s education system.

And seriously, it needs it. The second biggest disappointment of my parenting experience1 has been Britain’s education system. It is broken, on life support, and so we are not churning out of it bright, sparky, clever or practical kids excited to crack on and change the world, but instead we are spitting out those who a system has not even tried to serve. And this is the key point, the system is meant to serve them, not the other way around. But you try to get a school to listen to its ‘service users’, they will stick their fingers in their ears and say ‘la la la, we’re not listening, and while we’re at it here’s another detention for speaking out to us.’

Since Covid when we gave kids instructions to protect adults l…