Higher education in this country is going through a torrid time - strikes, students suing over degrees, a forthcoming government review of funding, and ongoing anger over levels of vice-chancellor pay.

It’s easy to just shrug and ask what that has to do with schools. Unfortunately, some of those issues will have big repercussions further down the system.

On salaries, the schools sector is, of course, hardly above reproach. Just look at the chief executive of the Harris Federation, Sir Dan Moynihan, who is on a package of at least £550,000 a year - more than any serving vice-chancellor in the UK.

The marketisation of HE has reduced studying to a transactional process - I pay, therefore I deserve a degree, and if I don’t get it (or that bumper salary afterwards), I will sue you.

The competitive market has also seen universities vie with one another for students, leading to a huge increase in the number of unconditional offers and causing a massive problem for schools, which are then being judged according to the results of pupils who have taken their foot off the gas. Why do all that work when you don’t need to?

But while these aspects of marketisation have been embraced, the idea that universities, which are being encouraged to run like businesses, should compensate their leaders as they would be in business is still met with old-fashioned hanky-clutching horror (and yes, Lord Adonis, I’m looking at you).

One thing the government is considering in its review of HE is variable tuition fees - charging more for courses that cost more to deliver and lead to higher salaries. What this will in effect mean is that the sciences will command a premium over the humanities and, therefore, devalue the latter. The only people who will want to study for a degree in the arts and humanities will be those who can pursue it as a hobby, not as a career - ie, those who are already privileged.

Accountability measures 

This thinking will inevitably find its way down to schools, which are already grappling with the effects of a curriculum denuded of the arts owing to accountability measures such as the EBacc.

But that is short-sighted at a time when artificial intelligence threatens not only blue-collar jobs but also white-collar ones. The skills predicted to be required in the future are those that AI cannot do (yet) - synthesising information, problem solving and thinking critically and creatively - as well as an ability to keep adapting.

This has led to the president of the CBI and chair of Teach First, Paul Drechsler, in a direct challenge to the minister for school standards and the traditionalist movement, to call for a commission on education to bypass the ideological turf wars.

In a speech to the Association of School and College Leaders last week, Drechsler said education should prioritise teaching that encourages thought, questions, creativity and teamworking. Education’s power, he said, was to give people not just what they need for today’s workplace, but the spirit of inquiry that allows them to adapt for tomorrow’s (bit.ly/CBIrotelearning).

And it is this inquiry, this curiosity, that is behind the advancement of humankind, which, as Alistair McConville puts it in our cover feature, the education system “threatens to stomp into oblivion with the heavy, deadening boots of accountability demand, progress measurements and formulaic, overly crammed curricula”.

And at the same time, the system of accountability that central government has used for more than a quarter of a century to get schools to do what it wants now appears to be crumbling.

So with all these issues, where will the secretary of state’s focus be? Universities, of course. Students are where the potential Tory votes are. Schools should prepare for a period in the policy wilderness.

@AnnMroz

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