Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No122
Themes: irrational experts, the (In)Equality Act, and Nicholas Tate on education and the nation state.
Nicholas Tate
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We’re delighted to have another article from one of the most important figures in education for the last 35 years – Nicholas Tate. Check out his article below.
George Orwell’s views about academics can be summarised by the words often attributed to him: ‘There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.’
Just to prove his point, we find that ‘biologists, doctors, and other experts’ have drafted a letter entitled Biology is not binary. In case any of these ‘experts’ are reading this, check out the article by SUE’s Dr Jenny Cunningham, on the subject of transgender ideology in Scottish schools.
People may think they are being kind by parroting this nonsense, but the result is a call for ‘urgent action to restore the rights of trans & non-binary people to access toilets and other spaces that are essential to daily life’. Do our enlightened friends mean that male rapists should be allowed into women’s prisons or that men should be able to batter women in boxing rings?
As Colin Wright explains, once you have a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of biological sex, kindness comes in the strangest of forms!
Now from one ‘protected characteristic’ (gender reassignment) to another – race...
Last week, a fascinating report was published showing that the Equality Act is stirring up a racial grievance culture in the UK. In the same week, James Esses exposed how the ‘best sixth form in the UK’ has been taken over by critical race theory – an outlook that many see as inflaming racial tensions.
The first report was written by friends of SUE, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of Don’t Divide Us, and barrister Anna Loutfi, of the Bad Law Project. Examining the claims made in workplaces about bad practices and behaviour, the report is entitled The Equality Act Isn’t Working: Equalities Legislation and the Breakdown of Informal Civility in the Workplace (available in full here).
Having studied the thousands of workplace discrimination cases in the UK, the authors found that disagreements and petty disputes between people are now formulated through the language of discrimination, especially racial discrimination. By defining certain groups as having protected characteristics, and promoting this idea through human resources, the Equality Act, rather than improving relationships between people, has contributed to a grievance culture.
Rather than deal with the matter at hand, Loutfi argues, people try to shoehorn in the idea that certain behaviour is driven by prejudice and discrimination:
Equality law is increasingly becoming divorced from reality, as employees rely on protected characteristics to argue poor treatment, rather than relying on the honest facts of their situation. Many litigants may try to rewrite the facts of their case to ‘fit’ a narrative of discrimination based on race, sex, disability etc. A cross word between two employees of different ethnic backgrounds can be transformed into racial harassment after the fact.
The inadvertent effect of the Equality Act is to make the workplace environment more toxic, especially when it comes to issues such as race, between people who would have rubbed along fine before becoming aware of their respective ‘protected characteristics’.
Overall, protected characteristics in law are not adding to social cohesion; rather, they are inflating numbers of discrimination cases so society appears more and more discriminatory with every passing year, in spite of ever more diversity and inclusion initiatives – that surely can’t be right.
Esses, on the other hand, explores a very similar process but one that is taking place in schools, where children are brainwashed while having their freedom of expression constantly limited, as part of the #BeKind brigade’s promotion of ‘sensitivity’.
Esses explains:
Even though it is reported that upwards of 90% of the students at the school are non-white, a culture of white-bashing and fixation upon skin colour appears to run throughout the school, across all subjects.
One of the clearest forms of this is the stated intention of the school to make maths ‘anti-racist’. In a maths lesson plan, students are told:
‘Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White. School mathematics curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and Pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans. Perhaps more importantly, mathematics operates with unearned privilege in society, just like Whiteness.’
Rather than teaching these foundational mathematical principles, the school attempts to discredit them because of the skin colour of their creators.
Such reports and publications are important to remind us what is going on in schools and in wider society and to raise awareness about the damage that is being done by politicising the curriculum and racialising everyday life.
Despite the use that has been made of the Equality Act in challenging transgender ideology, it is worth considering the need to repeal it. The school that Esses looks at may be an extreme example, but we need to remember that the Scottish government similarly wants so-called anti-racism to be incorporated into every subject.
Stuart Waiton, SUE Chair
Education and the nation state
Nicholas Tate is a historian who taught at the former Moray House College of Education in Edinburgh for 15 years. He worked on the development of the old Standard Grade and Scottish history syllabuses, and edited the History Teaching Review - the journal of the Scottish Association of the Teachers of History. He has been Chief Adviser on Curriculum and Assessment to both Conservative and Labour Secretaries of State for Education in England, a member of the French Minister of National Education’s Haut Conseil d’évaluation de l’École, and Director-General of the International School of Geneva.
This article is based on a speech given at the MCC-Ordo Iuris conference on Reclaiming Classical Education, Warsaw, 2 June 2025.
My justification for proposing the topic ‘Education and the nation state’ for my chapter in a book with the title Reclaiming Classical Education [1] was that learning about one’s nation state, and indeed one’s nation, is and should be an important part of that transmission of inherited culture and knowledge which is at the heart of a classical or liberal education.
First, a word about nomenclature.
I refer to a ‘liberal education’, and not to a ‘classical education’. In normal usage in the UK, ‘classical education’ means either the classical pedagogical approaches bequeathed to us by the Greeks and Romans or to an induction into the Greek and Latin languages and their associated civilisations, or to both. The concept of a ‘liberal’ education is much more open. Its main defining characteristic is the development of qualities worthy in themselves and which are not being pursued for the sake of any utilitarian benefits.
Education strongly focused on the nation and nation state does not fit neatly into a ‘classical’ education centred on ancient civilisations, nor does it with the notion of a Christian religion which has been the other main influence on European education over the past two millennia and which transcends national boundaries. There was much, however, in the Greek city states and in both republican and imperial Rome with which analogies could be and were made. There is also of course much more in what most people in this conference call a ‘classical education’ than the trivium and classical languages and civilisations. I am sure that this wider meaning of the term ‘classical education’ will in time become more generally known. It is not, as yet, at least in the UK.
Seeing the nation and the nation state as central to education is easier with the concept of a ‘liberal education’ which in English since the sixteenth century has been used for an education which emphasises character, sociability and virtue as much as the cultivation of the mind. A ‘liberal education’ has often been seen as the education of a ‘gentleman’. It was not aimed at scholarship but at the transmission of essential knowledge, habits, manners and morals. Such aims were worthy in themselves, but also the ones needed by those expected to play an honourable part in their community and in their nation. Adapted to a democratic and more egalitarian society, I see these as continuing aims.
When a Conservative government first introduced a national curriculum in England in the early 1990s no one used the terms ‘liberal’ or ‘classical’ in relation to it. It was, however, very much a ‘liberal’ education. It was strong on transmission: a knowledge-rich history curriculum presented chronologically, a stress on classic texts in literature, a strong science programme, Christianity to be the main element in religious education, even the maintenance of the traditional requirement for daily collective worship.
The new curriculum, through its programme of transmission, provided a basis for an education that would enable pupils to develop their own sense of belonging to the nation and the nation state (we have three interlocking ones – England, Britain and the United Kingdom) of which they are a part. But we did not make this explicit, which was a major omission.[2] I therefore took it upon myself when I became head of the national curriculum and assessment agency to promote publicly at every opportunity the notion that enabling – not imposing – the development of a sense of national identity was an important educational objective. What my article in the book is mostly about are the reasons why the nation state is more numerous than ever before, continues to thrive, and remains crucially important and why education can play a part in weakening the powerful forces of oikophobia (Roger Scruton’s term for distaste towards what is one’s own) that threaten it.
In preparing to move house I have been sorting out my archives and found all the daily press digests I received when this topic was hot news in the national press. I was called ‘ridiculous’, a ‘neo-racist’, ‘cultural restorationist’, ‘neo-conservative’ and ‘cultural imperialist’, despite which the response in the press was more positive than negative, with a willingness on the part of many to see that there were different points of view on the issue. The press admittedly sought out students I had once taught years before in a school and trainee teachers I had supervised on teaching practice to see what negative things they could say about me. They also found a disaffected member of my staff to tell them how dreadful it was to have a boss with such views. But – and this is the point of this anecdote – I never feared being ‘cancelled’, nor did I lose my job when, after the 1997 general election, I found myself working with a Labour secretary of state for education. In the current world of X, TikTok, Instagram, etc. I would not have lasted long in an official position. Thinking back to those times has made me realise how much more difficult it is conducting these debates today for anyone holding a post and earning a salary. We have taken a serious step backwards.
There were some rational arguments against the idea that schools should be consciously passing on a heritage that would enable pupils to develop a sense of membership of a national community. The complexity of membership of what one of my most articulate critics kept on calling ‘The (Dis)united Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ was certainly an issue that needed to be addressed, but in my opinion was all the more reason for pupils to learn how this unstable union had come about and to form their own views about their participation or otherwise in it.[3] Similarly, with the concepts of ‘majority culture’ and a ‘high culture’ that I argued should shape curricular choices, the obvious difficulty of deciding what qualifies and what does not under both headings should not lead to the complete abandonment of any attempt to discriminate between a major curricular emphasis and a minor one.
The implication of the criticism of the very notion of an education for national identity was that what I was proposing was ‘indoctrination’ into a harmful way of viewing the world. Having rejected my focus on membership of a nation state the critic I have mentioned concluded with his own recommendation that a history curriculum ‘cultivates [...] universal values such as tolerance, social justice and honesty’, ‘looks outwards, not inwards’, and ‘recognise(s) and celebrate(s) a multiplicity of potential identities’. The implication was that somehow these aims – with elements of which I would not disagree – were self-evidently right whereas mine were self-evidently wrong.
‘Indoctrination’ is a term that is often used on both sides of debates about the school curriculum. It is not always a helpful word. There is an excellent recent article in the Journal of Philosophy of Education which in effect recommends that the word be largely dropped from educational discussions as one that is unable to do much more than express someone’s subjective opinion.[4] If one believes that a central aim of education is the development of a sense of global citizenship, which is the declared aim of most of the schools in the international education sector in which I worked for many years, one would regard an education focused on national citizenship as inculcating harmful views and thus might be inclined to call it ‘indoctrination’, and vice versa. One would be better advised, however, to avoid ‘name calling’ and instead to lay out the arguments for and against the two approaches and make a considered decision on the basis of one’s conclusions.
None of this is to suggest that one cannot distinguish between curriculum content that is ideologically one-sided and content that is rigorous and nuanced. Indeed, in a world keen to use the school curriculum to promote contemporary causes, it is the key distinction that keeps on having to be made.
In creating the conditions in which a sense of national identity might flourish, some things are clearly unacceptable: presenting contested issues in a partisan fashion; using the curriculum to promote contemporary causes; censoring views thoughtfully expressed in discussion; putting pressure on pupils to accept positions they do not share. As I say in my chapter, ‘we cannot and should not force a sense of nationality on people, but that does not mean that we should not encourage it or be anything but concerned about its absence both among pupils and teachers’.
In conclusion, the obstacles to helping to develop a sense of nationality remain legion. They include:
all the ideological currents that flow into the oikophobia that I analyse in my chapter;
the prominence of these attitudes among progressive elites who have captured key cultural bodies (look at the UK Classical Association ‘Queering the Past(s)’ materials[5] or the UK Historical Association webinar series on decolonising the curriculum[6]);
the continued obsession with identities based on sex, gender, race, skin colour, religion and sexuality and the attempt to rewrite history in their image;
the divisive Black History, Women’s History and Muslim History months, in which huge numbers of schools take part (happy Pride Month to you all by the way);
the flood of free materials produced by activists that bring (I quote a recent Policy Exchange report[7]) ‘highly contested narratives from the academy into mainstream teaching’;
the dominance of some of these ‘contested narratives’ within initial teacher education programmes;
and the open and widespread acceptance in some quarters that the purpose of education is ‘curating minds’ to ensure that young people sign up to progressive causes.[8]
The struggle for classical and liberal education, and for an education that does not scorn the nation state, therefore continues, not just in the state education sector but also – at least in England – in the private sector, some of whose heads in the past have been among the most craven in giving way to pressures that ought to have been resisted.
I enter this conference therefore pessimistic about the continuing strength of all these forces hostile to the kind of education I have been advocating for decades. I am optimistic, however, that I will leave it reassured by hearing more about how other advocates of classical education around the world are fighting back against the prevailing current.
Notes
1. Williams J, Fodor R. 2025. Reclaiming Classical Education. Budapest: MCC Press.
2. It was not until its second revision in 1998 that the national curriculum included a statement specifically stating that ‘the school curriculum should contribute to the development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society and of the local, national, European, Commonwealth and global dimensions of their lives’. Although the focus of the statement was on communal identities and there was no suggestion yet that schools needed to support identities based on race, skin colour, religion, sexuality and gender (as there now is), it failed to stress the unifying centrality of the national dimension. Also, in practice. it was widely ignored.
3. Phillips R. 2004. Reflections on history, nationhood and schooling. In: Roberts M, editor. After the Wall. History Teaching in Europe since 1989. Hamburg: Körber-Stiftung; pp. 39–48.
4. Lewin D. 2022. Indoctrination. Journal of Philosophy of Education. 56(4):612–626.
5. Classical Association. Queering the Past(s). https://classicalassociation.org/queering-the-past/
6. Historical Association. Webinar series: Decolonising the secondary history curriculum. https://history.org.uk/secondary/categories/486/news/4209/webinar-series-decolonising-the-secondary-history
7. Marsh Z, Mansfield I. 2025. Lessons from the Past. The State of History in English Secondary Schools. London: Policy Exchange; p. 91.
8. Tate N, 2017. The Conservative Case for Education. London: Routledge; p. 228.
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-14770729/Veronica-Garcia-Transgender-athlete-message-critics-washington.html Daniel Mathews, Transgender athlete sends defiant message to critics after dominating girls' high school track meet. 02/06/25
Joanna Williams, Reclaiming Classical Education 12/06/25
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/07/why-young-brits-arent-dying-to-join-the-army/ Georgina Mumford, Why young Brits aren’t dying to join the army. It will take more than 'military gap years' to solve the armed forces' recruitment crisis. 07/06/25
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, The Equality Act isn't working. In a guest post, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of Don't Divide Us, explains why the Act seems to be exacerbating divisions and encouraging workplace disagreements to be resolved through litigation. 12/06/25
Claire Fox, Suffer the children? The dangers of expanding the realm of mental health. This is an edited version of my foreword to an important new report by Lucy Beney for the Family Education Trust. 14/06/25
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgq7ldw3p0o BBC News, Schools to create single-sex toilets after gender row. 13/06/25
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/11/the-fall-of-pride-is-upon-us/?utm_source=Today+on+spiked&utm_campaign=45eaaf7b20-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_06_11_05_43_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-e16fb79c71-99442038 Dennis Kavanagh, The fall of Pride is upon us. Gender ideology is the enemy of gay and lesbian rights. 11/06/25
https://archive.is/N2xK5 Andrew Learmouth, For Women Scotland threaten SNP with fresh legal action. 15/06/25
https://archive.is/EPsRE Sanchez Manning, White guilt drives schools’ diversity push, Birbalsingh says. ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’ says children are given no sense of our history and should be learning algebra not looking at each other’s differences. 15/06/25
Sarah Phillimore, T.H. v The Czech Republic. There is nothing new here. It is not lawful for a State to require surgery before recognising a gender identity. Nor do women's rights and women's identities get a mention. 15/06/25
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/15/we-were-forced-to-change-in-front-of-a-man/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwK8sNxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHm3vQM_a_YYgOVx1ytLtU4YDHIM7GQt73h0tp3FzWgZShkc49GkgjhdPxFf9_aem_5x5E2vw6MLKjGoIDr3h78w spiked, ‘We were forced to change in front of a man’. Darlington nurse Bethany Hutchison on the NHS’s capitulation to trans ideology. 15/06/25
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