Victorian schooling has to go – technology should be the cornerstone of our education system

Coronavirus offers the chance to invest in, modernise and reinvent our classrooms, says Derek Peaple

Coronavirus is a chance to modernise our education system (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

It’s no secret that our education system was designed in, and for, a past century. The industrial revolution provided us with the epoch-defining concept of the factory, and gave us the need for engineers and the means to pay for their training. The hallmarks of the factory are still in every classroom, from the ordered distribution of desks, to uniforms, to our continued obsession with teaching in subject silos at the expense of approaches which promote creative or emotional intelligence.

But the world depicted by Charles Dickens is long since over. For decades we have tried to change a system that is perfectly built to prepare our unique and vibrant children for careers that no longer exist. We don’t need to venerate those who can recite ancient Greek epics, we need young people capable of critically, safely and perceptively navigating an online world that, if we are honest, disorientates most of us.

Yet, even as the entire world has revolutionised around it, our educational infra-structure has appeared as immovable as the grand Victorian bridges it was designed to erect. It took the earthquake of Covid-19 to finally level it, and to give us a once in a generation chance at rebuilding it.