Episode 2.34: Education must be grounded in the real-world circumstances in which pupils live.

A predetermined national curriculum devised abstractly by a Ministry of Education or a politician constrains the freedom of each school, head and teacher to devise a locally-appropriate curriculum by negotiating it with pupils in order to engage them and get their “buy in”. Without that freedom and the delegated trust it relies upon, schools are condemned to failure, their teachers disempowered from the outset, and their children not served properly by the system intended to benefit them.