The bond is breaking between many children, parents and schools, with rising absences and more disruption. Even allowing for post-pandemic mental illness keeping more pupils from school, Amanda Spielman’s final Ofsted report, published last week, finds that in England “far too many children are missing school far too often”, with parents less likely to back schools over discipline, rules and uniform, but more likely to complain.

Did she ever consider Ofsted’s role in this decline? This has been a decade in which the inspectorate tormented schools and headteachers with a miserably narrow notion of “good”, when it was school resources that were most “inadequate”. That children are alienated from education is no surprise when schools are stunted by “examification” and a rigid, overstuffed curriculum offering so much less to spark their enthusiasm.

Art, music, dance and drama have been cut and 23% of arts teachers in England shed, so 40% fewer pupils take GCSE arts subjects than in 2010: children are less likely ever to sing in a choir or play in an orchestra. The chancellor himself says cultural industries grow at twice the rate of the rest of the economy, so where’s the arts seed corn, if not in schools? Michael Gove’s Gradgrind Ebacc excludes all arts subjects.

Love of sport attaches many children to school, but playing fields are sold, PE hours cut. Overburdened teachers have less time for out-of-school clubs and plays, with school trips rarer, and exams and Progress 8 scores (for........

© The Guardian