Why Real Education Matters

I was recently approached by the media to offer my thoughts as to why the provision of school education here in the UK is no longer the envy of the world. In fact, as a nation, we have slid down the international league tables in both literacy and numeracy, both to an alarming degree.

In a nutshell, I would state that the principal reason is, in our efforts to avoid reprimanding children at all costs and to try 'to get alongside them' (I know, ghastly phrase, but so often used by management), teachers' authority has severely diminished. Many British pupils seem to have adopted an inflated sense of their own importance and refuse to respect the paid professionals employed to educate them until they feel they are prepared to do so.

In British society teachers are viewed at a pretty low level in terms of the top professions and pupils are aware of this. An ever increasing number of parents, too, encourage their offspring not to accept what they are told to do at school and are quick to complain if their son or daughter is punished. In other words, they often undermine the running of the school.

Let's consider for a moment two countries in the world who annually come top of the international league for educational success - South Korea and Finland. In the way they provide education for their children you couldn't get two countries farther apart. In the case of South Korea, pupils are put under unrelenting pressure with long school days, a lot of homework and regular testing from an early age. In Finland, children don't start school until they reach the age of seven, they rarely do homework until their teenage years and don't have to sit a public exam until they reach sixteen.

But what is common to both countries is practically all children believe in the system and share a deep respect for their teachers and their academic accomplishments. Teachers are viewed as highly as doctors in both societies and the teaching profession attracts applications from the top ten per cent of graduates. In both countries the pupils are convinced that doing as they are instructed by the paid professionals will ultimately bring them success, happiness and fulfillment. They are taught how to work wisely and how to persist in the face of possible failure. Both Korean and Finnish parents support the running of their local school at every level.

In both these countries there is almost total literacy and numeracy among school leavers and the difference between the weakest and strongest is the smallest in the world. What's more, both countries spend far less money on each child's education than that spent here in the UK.

The lesson is clear but, of course, will be ignored here in the UK for generations to come - teachers' authority must be restored to how it was in the 1960s and '70s. I am not suggesting we return to the days of 'children should be seen and not heard' but as long as we persist with this notion that the pupils have every right to challenge the teachers' authority whenever they please; as long as we refuse to punish those unruly pupils who are ruining the chances of others in the class from learning; as long as teachers are treated as lackeys in our society, thus putting off top graduates from a career in teaching, and as long as parents refuse to offer their unalloyed support for the running of their local school, then the gap between educational provision here in the UK and that in countries such as South Korea and Finland will continue to widen.

Trial By Jury - Or By Prejudice?

For many, trial by jury has long been the most important part of our judicial system. Those accused of a criminal offence, it is argued, have a right to be tried by 12 of their peers, who are selected at random from the community. But, as the decades have passed, I have become increasingly convinced that the jury system has become anachronistic and is now fraught with problems.

My doubts started when I, myself, sat in a cage in a crown court in 2014 and a liar who had accused me of having touched him inappropriately 30 years earlier was allowed to give his 'evidence' from behind a screen. Those 12 jury members, most entering a court for the very first time, would not be human if they didn't feel some bias against me in my cage, and empathy towards the 'vulnerable' liar, being protected from my view. Thus, we have a natural bias against the defendant to overcome from the start.

When it comes to alleged crimes perpetrated against children, ordinary folk are programmed to feel disgusted and will be most reluctant to acquit if they feel there is even a smidgen of doubt that the accused may be guilty. Everyone knows that 'guilty beyond reasonable doubt' is unlikely to come into many jurors' decision making, but rather it is a case of  'are the chances this person might well be guilty?'

Recently, I sat through a criminal case in a crown court in which a man was on trial for alleged historical abuse perpetrated against three young women in the 1970s. I watched the jury eagerly as the evidence was presented and I was shocked that only one of the twelve was bothering to take any notes at all. If I'd been on that jury, I would have been unable to come to an informed decision back in the retiring room based solely on memory. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that some of them might well have been bored.

And how can the system prevent certain jury members from making decisions based on their in-built prejudices? What was it that juror Kasim Davey posted on Facebook after a trial at which he had been adjudicating....'Woooow, I wasn't expecting to be in a jury deciding a paedophile's fate. I've always wanted to fuck up a paedo.'

Can we really be sure that all jurors will start listening to the evidence being presented to them completely open-minded about the defendant sitting in his or her cage? It is foolish to assume so. Is the present system an expensive and dangerous way of placing incredibly important decisions in the hands of 12 ordinary citizens, some of whom might well not understand the complexities of the case?

I do concede that judges can also be biased against certain tranches of the population but if we had a system in the crown court similar to that at a magistrates' court, i.e. three trained judges prevailing, I think it would be likely we would have fewer miscarriages of justice, particularly where historical allegations are concerned, as these usually are based on one person's word against another. Three judges would also be wary of the police's m.o. of trawling for complainants when the initial complaint has no evidence to support it... quantity replacing quality 'evidence', as is often the case nowadays.

I know a professional, hitherto distinguished, man who was recently sent down on the allegation of an ex-con. The jury was unaware the complainant's criminal history and that he was facing another jail sentence as he gave his 'evidence'. The defendant was subsequently found guilty based on prejudice rather than any actual evidence. Had three highly trained, informed judges been in charge of proceedings (there is a good reason why judges have to undergo such rigorous training), they would have been better equipped to come to the correct decision and, as according to our innocent until proven guilty system, this person would have been rightly acquitted.

I dread to think the number of innocent people serving time in jail - the national figure doesn't bear thinking about. I can state without hesitation that, with the growth of social media, if anyone thinks that the long established rule of jurors not checking out the background to defendants (to avoid bias thinking) still exists, he or she is living in cloud cuckoo land.