This blog is not about education (per se), but Rosemary Sutcliff – who in fact did not go to school until about ten years old, and left at fourteen, but who was passionate about engaging and exciting young people and children. She would, I suspect, have found  it unsurprising but depressing that the Secretary of State for Education does not think children and young people are “interested in creating a genuinely world-class education system”. For he said this when he announced changes to the national curriculum review in England (?and Wales) just before Christmas:

The longer timescale will allow for further debate with everyone interested in creating a genuinely world-class education system; teachers, governors, academics, business leaders and parents (my italics AL), as well as giving schools more time to prepare for a radically different and more rigorous approach.

Where is the readiness, indeed desire, to involve young people and children in helping shape the curriculum for the future? And where are the educationalists who should be jumping up and down about the assumption about education implicit in this exclusion of young people? I have seen no significant comment on this, where I would have expected all manner of organisations and people to have raised this and changed this.

via Written Ministerial Statement – National Curriculum Review – The Department for Education.