Make education classical again

The National Curriculum Review, published earlier this month, was a rare opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about the purpose and outcomes of British education. It is an opportunity that has been missed.

In some ways, the review has a laudable conservative tenor. It is, for the most part, grounded in practical evidence rather than blind ideology. It acknowledges the improvements in literacy and numeracy brought by the previous government’s reforms, and calls for incremental rather than radical changes.

However, it fails to grapple with the connections between education and society’s most fundamental problems. No one can deny that the country is in the grip of a mental health crisis, especially amongst the young. This goes hand-in-hand with the ingrained spiritual nihilism of m