It's Time to Wake Up - MVA CEO Hugh Viney Issues Stark Warning to UK School Sector

MVA CEO Hugh Viney gave a stark warning to school leaders this month that the UK education sector is rapidly heading towards catastrophe if attitudes aren't changed and action isn't taken. At speed.

Speaking at the 44th Annual COBIS - Council of British International Schools Annual Conference, Hugh sited the record highs of SEND diagnoses, low and non-attendance among students, and complete withdrawal from the system by both families, turning to home education, and teachers quitting the profession entirely.

These are trends that Hugh and others have been warning about for years, but which have only intensified as the mainstream system has proven sluggish and inflexible.

But that does not mean solutions are not available - they are, and they're no longer hypothetical experiments. They haven't been for a long time.

The truth is that the current mainstream school model is no longer fit for purpose. It doesn't serve a significant minority of children and, in its attempts to do so, is now stretching teachers and staff to breaking point.

The mainstream model works best when students fit the expected mould. It's designed to be streamlined and predictable - and that works for most children.

But it's a model that immediately begins to struggle when students present with individual needs that don't fit the assumption, and is forced to turn to special measures which often place undue stress and pressure on staff, and frequently ends up treating the child themselves as a crisis to tackle.

It's also true to say that more flexible, individualised models like MVA are not suitable for all children. Hugh himself will gladly say that he thrived at mainstream school and would not necessarily have enjoyed an online model.

But Hugh, and other leaders in the space, are not advocating for the replacement of the mainstream. They're advocating for the cooperation of all available options to ensure every child goes to a school that can serve them best, and each system can work to its strengths.

This cooperation has been feasible for some time now, but inertia and outdated attitudes towards alternative provisions have prevented this from happening at a large scale. In particular, as Hugh set out in his recent talk at The Schools & Academies Show, despite an accreditation from the Department for Education, alternative provisions like MVA are forced to go through a fresh vetting process with every single local authority they work with.

These are the kinds of sluggish inefficiencies that make collaboration between systems difficult, slow, and waste huge amounts of time.

And when it comes to education, every day wasted on paperwork is a day of learning that a child will not get back.

The solution to the crises we face is within our grasp - we simply have to be willing to grasp it.