I am overseas and have to teach English at home to my child, as she has gone to elementary school in a different language. I know a lot of other English speakers who doing the same while referring to their own countries’ curricula, so you do get a feel for what England’s schools are like in a comparative sense.
England schools (I don’t want to say UK, as Scotland, Wales and NI are quite different) have a reputation for being pushy in the early stages, but all in all I think they do a fairly sound job. They do quite well in international assessments like TIMSS, PIRLS and PISA, and the scores attained thereof have been rising slowly over the past 20 years. It’s noticeable that private education has become a niche thing, for those who are rich enough not to care about the expense. Most people I know, including those who had private education themselves in the 80s etc., now use good state schools and tutor as necessary. State schools have improved.
I would not defend everything Gove set in motion and I know he’s not popular among teachers. But he did get a lot of things right, IMO, especially pushing a more academic and accountable approach to the curriculum and kind of tightening up on a lot of stuff, which has continued after his period in office. Education involves lots of hard work; you aren’t going to get good results unless kids work hard, including the bits that are not “fun.” Things like the phonics screening and timed times tables tests were very unpopular in many quarters when they came in, but I think they have done the job.
Phonics teaching in England is FAR better than in other Anglophone countries. The British parents I know (Scottish as well as English!) in the country where I live, all use Jolly Phonics and similar schemes and they’re just great. The American, NZ etc. parents are using their own countries’ program that are still stuck in the dark ages - making their kids sing the alphabet song and do “letter of the week” and write in ALL CAPS - it takes them ages to learn to read and some just fail altogether. I’d like England’s schools to feel proud of the huge difference that this excellence in phonics has made. It’s hard to notice the difference unless you are comparing internationally. It’s almost certainly a huge reason why England has steadily improved in its international test comparisons; everything you do in school is so utterly downstream of being able to read properly!
One thing which I think is not ideal about UK schools (not just England) is the lack of textbooks and workbooks. I do feel that educational performance would be still better if textbooks and workbooks were used and came home each day; it creates a systematic curriculum, reduces workload and makes it easier for parents to actively support their child, not to mention making it easier for kids to be independent in their learning; they can revise and read ahead in their textbooks. We use the Galore Park textbooks for our own studies and our own Saturday school; they are great. CGP are not bad too, but feel more like “revision guides” and are a bit lacking in depth.
Related to this, one criticism I have of the UK (again, not just England) is the tendency to infantilize parents and expect very little of them (which in turn means you get very little of them). In the country where I live, you’re expected to support your child actively at home, cover any work missed if you take a day off, make your child do some summer homework, and even do a lot of the marking (they provide answer keys!).
One final thing that is not great is the grammar overemphasis. I have a degree in English and had to look up half the stuff my nieces were doing for SATs. A bit of grammar is essential if you want to learn how to write good academic English, but the SATs sound like someone picked up an old fashioned grammar book from the shelf, dusted it off and dumped the entire book into the curriculum. Meanwhile, the kids could do with a shitload more history teaching. If I were designing the curriculum, I’d greatly increase the amount of time spent on science, history and geography, but study these subjects in ways that involve loads of reading and writing (two birds, one stone), and cut out a lot of “English/literacy” time (especially the grammar stuff) to make room for this. That kind of “learn how to write proper English THROUGH studying history, geography and science in ways that involve doing lots of reading and writing” is pretty much what I do with my own kids, as I need efficient methods that save time.