What are schools for? This is a meaningful question insofar as the answer seems to have changed over time.

Across Western Europe, compulsory education was a product of the later 19th century, and the principal drivers were social and economic. The need to provide a workforce disciplined and drilled in the basics was yoked together with a political imperative. Binding people together in fealty to the state was an explicit aim in countries that had only recently been unified (Italy, Germany) or had just undergone an existential trauma (France). In England, an altruistic impulse to inculcate virtue as well as skills converged with an overriding need to ensure that the newly-enfranchised were properly equipped to use their votes.

In the late 20th century the focus shifted significantly, and the role of schools (by now secondary as well as elementary) was transformed. The economic purpose remained the same on the surface, but with a subtle shift - going beyond the instrumentalist function of fitting pupils for particular slots. In line with the move towards student-centred learning, schools were charged with helping individuals to fulfil their personal potential.

This dual function creates a contradiction, since the narrow purpose requires selection, and preparation for competitive exams; while the other entails more of a process than a product. It begs the question of whether our public exams regime is fit to perform this wider purpose. But even if the circle can be squared, a problem remains: in an era dominated by education of the individual for personal and career fulfilment, where does that leave education for social consciousness and cohesion?

‘Identification with the state’

Promoting social cohesion is part of what schools do, of course, but in England and other countries within the UK, there was never any consensus around inculcating identification with the state. Britain has always been a “multi-national” state, and later adoption of a multiculturalist perspective served to postpone any such need. But recently questions of national identity have, unexpectedly, become really quite urgent. The promotion of “fundamental British values” represents a belated and piecemeal response to a deeper dilemma. The integrity of the United Kingdom itself has been called into question, in the context of the Scottish independence referendum; and the referendum on the EU has created a context in which simplistic slogans like “Give us our country back” have focused the debate on sovereignty and the state. What exactly is our country, and how do we identify with it?

We should be having a deeper and more coherent debate about how schools are preparing young people for serious discussion about the meaning of “Britain”, and what it means to identify as British, whatever our ethnic background.

Whatever the result of that debate, it shouldn’t merely be injected into the interstices of an already crowded curriculum, as bolted-on “British values”. We may come to regret a lost opportunity in that the national curriculum review had very little to say about any of this.

Dr Kevin Stannard is the director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust. He tweets as @KevinStannard1

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