We don't need no Education

A major report on education in England published today calls for a shift away from narrow exam-driven learning toward a broader curriculum focused on life skills, creativity and digital readiness. It recommends reducing GCSE exams, dropping the English Baccalaureate, and introducing subjects such as financial education, AI literacy and citizenship from an early age. The review argues that schools should prepare students not only for tests but for life in a complex, fast-changing world, but is anything really new or are we reinventing the wheel?

Ancient philosophers would have found much to discuss in today’s education report, after all they were for a large part the providers of education. Plato would likely have welcomed the call for a broader, more holistic curriculum. He saw education as the means by which the soul is shaped toward truth and justice, not just a training ground for skills or examinations. Aristotle might have approved of the focus on practical wisdom and civic understanding, seeing it as essential for forming good citizens capable of rational participation in society. Confucius would have recognised the emphasis on moral and social education, valuing the cultivation of virtue and respect as central to learning. However, the Sophists might have criticised the report’s idealism, arguing that education should prepare individuals to succeed in the realities of public life, not dwell too much on moral aspirations. Together, they would agree that education must form the whole person, but they would debate whether modern schooling still serves that higher purpose or has become too much a servant of the state and economy.

Modern philosophers would see the constant reshaping of the UK education system as a revealing symptom of how society understands knowledge, power and purpose. Hannah Arendt would likely warn that the endless reforming of education risks turning it into an instrument of political will rather than a space for renewal and thought. For her, education should introduce the young to the shared world, not mould them to fit the needs of the moment. Michel Foucault would see each new reform as part of a wider system of control—an attempt by the state to manage citizens through the shaping of minds and the regulation of knowledge. John Dewey, more pragmatically, might welcome change if it genuinely arises from experience and experimentation, but he would criticise reforms driven by ideology rather than evidence. Martha Nussbaum would stress the moral cost of this instability, arguing that education should cultivate empathy, imagination and civic responsibility, not merely respond to economic pressures or political cycles. Altogether they would likely agree that when education becomes a political playground, society risks losing its anchor in the deeper purposes of learning and human development.

So while education has changed radically over the centuries, philosophers would say the real question is not whether it changes, but whether the change serves the enduring human aim: to understand ourselves and our world, not just to adapt to it.