Seminar report: What’s the story? A debate on how the media covers education and skills

In the UK it is taken for granted that education is an issue of the greatest national importance. Education policy is frequently at the top of the political and news agendas – and yet vocational education and skills continue to suffer from a longstanding dearth of coverage.
 

This seminar, hosted by Nic Dakin MP, Co-Chair of the Associate Parliamentary Skills Group and a former college principal, sought to explore the barriers to better media coverage of education and skills, and the impact that the media’s presentation of these issues has on the policy landscape.
 

Speakers at the seminar included:
 

• Michael Shaw, Times Educational Supplement
• Richard Garner, Education Editor, The Independent
• Toby Young, journalist and co-founder of West London Free School
• Richard Pring, former Director of the Department of Education, University of Oxford

This report provides an account of the issues discussed. It considers the following issues:
 

• The high volume of government intervention in skills and further education, and the complexity of the sector as factors contributing to the under-reporting of skills
• The politicisation of education policy – how it determines which debates are and are not covered by the media 
• The role played by both politicians and journalists in perpetrating fallacious stories and educational myths 
• Language: how it conditions our conceptualisation of education, and its power to transform the way in which we think about it

Read the report