Billy Tarr and Felix Robinson, East Devon a-level students with a passion for politics, write in this week's community education column.

Exmouth Journal: Billy TarrBilly Tarr (Image: Billy Tarr)

Exmouth Journal: Felix RobinsonFelix Robinson (Image: Felix Robinson)

Rab Butler once likened education to the fuel of the class elevators. However, in the times since the 1940s, this seems to have been forgotten.

As students of a local school, we have witnessed an educational system that is seemingly reliant on a one-size-fits-all structure that rarely caters to the needs of individual.

This system has been entrenched by successive apathetic governments that have perpetuated a narrative of ‘go to school; make money’. What happened to ‘Education, education, education’?

Our two main criticisms of modern schooling are: a lack of an alternative to so called ‘core subjects’, and a restrictive syllabus that seems to slyly convey the political views of those in power.

The first of those is arguably one of the main reasons why Britain has been subject to sluggish economic growth since the end of the Second World War.

While our European counterparts have bred a new generation of engineers, manufacturers and business owners through business-funded apprenticeship schemes and vocational positions (often sponsored by trade unions), UK failures to diversify and expand our educational opportunities, coupled with top-down short-sightedness, have meant that countless jobs, businesses and scientists have not been realised.

The post-war notion of a tripartite system, including a technical/vocational strand is not one simply rooted in ideology, it is central to the widely lauded German economy.

German schooling divides into three tiers at the age of 11.

After two years of ‘orientation’, students are split in terms of ability and preference into one of the following: Hauptschule, where students are taught lower level vocational subjects and apprenticeships,

Realschule, where higher level vocational subjects and apprenticeships are taught and Gymnasium, where one would find more traditional ‘academic’ subjects.

This system works. 40 per cent of German degrees are in STEM subjects (science, tech., engineering and maths) compared to 25% in the UK.

The economic result of this system has been clear, but the benefits also extend to a growth and strengthening of communities. This is largely a result of increased co-operation between unions, local businesses and schools.

This system, however, relies on a decentralised educational system as well as cooperation with, and reliance on, trade unions, something that seems to terrify many conservative thinkers.

Our next criticism is largely a result of the first. As we have previously discussed, a lack of trust between two authorities means that the more powerful authority has a natural inclination to centralise power away from the other; in our case, the state versus the school.

A heavily controlled, restrictive curriculum has resulted in our nation’s teachers acting as powerless mouthpieces for subtle propaganda, not to mention a relentless suppression of innovation and creativity.

In fact, Mick Brookes, General Secretary of the National Association of headteachers, described the curriculum as ‘an aura of fear’.

For a Government so committed to cutting the public sector budget, we are unsure why they don’t simply replace teachers with models of Michael Gove and videos of famous Thatcher speeches.

Jokes aside, a dangerous culture of sly propaganda has been clear to both of us in our time at school. Our history course, ‘The History of Modern British Politics’, is potentially the best example for this. 2010 was simultaneously the year our course time frame was shifted from 1945 (Attlee’s election) to 1990 (the resignation of Margaret Thatcher) to a new time frame

of 1951 (the end of Attlee) to 2007 (the beginning of the financial crisis under Labour), and the year that the Conservatives took power. It is hard to see this as a coincidence.

In conclusion, for the last 80 years, our country’s political and social inertia, coupled with our tendency to avoid swallowing our Great British pride have left us with fractured communities, a weak economy and a despairing school community.

Only by embracing change, cooperating with different organisations, and listening to those who are so crucial to our national mechanisms can we truly claim to be ‘Great’ Britai