Square Pegs, Round Holes: Transforming Our Education System

by Kieron Smith, Headteacher at Archway School, Stroud

“If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done, You’ll Always Get What You’ve Always Got” – Henry Ford

Education is in a fix.

We set the template in Victorian England, and to all intents and purposes, it has remained largely unchanged for over 150 years. While the world has transformed beyond recognition—technologically, economically, socially—the structure of our schools has remained trapped in amber.

Meanwhile, our learners have changed. We’ve seen record numbers of students diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. The volume of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) issued in recent years has overwhelmed schools and is pushing county councils to the brink of financial collapse. Unless something changes, 18 county and unitary councils will be technically insolvent by spring 2026, when the current statutory override allowing them to exclude special needs overspends from their budget reporting ends.

In response, we funnel more and more money into support—teaching assistants, interventions, therapeutic provision, specialist units—all in an increasingly desperate effort to squeeze square pegs into round holes. But these square pegs are pushing back. School attendance is at a historic low. Persistent absence rates are rising year-on-year. Many young people are simply choosing not to show up at all.

Why? Because for many of them, school no longer makes sense.

Kieron Smith

When I talk about the “structure” of schools, I’m not just talking about the buildings or the uniforms. I mean the entire framework: the national curriculum, rigid timetables, age-based cohorts, fixed subject divisions, the school calendar, the exam system—even the hours we expect young people to function within. None of it mirrors the world they are growing into.

The workplace of 2025 is fluid, digital, global, and collaborative. People learn on demand, work flexible hours, form international teams, and leverage AI to accelerate productivity. In bedrooms across the country, young people are already living this reality—learning through YouTube, developing side-hustles, building apps, editing videos, collaborating on Discord. But we call them “disengaged” because they don’t sit still for an hour of history or trudge in at 8:30 a.m. for registration.

Who’s really disengaged here? Them—or us?

In 2025, not many children need to help bring in the harvest in July, yet we still adhere to a school calendar designed for agricultural labour. We still batch students into cohorts based on birth dates that fall within a 12-month window, despite enormous variation in their developmental stages, emotional maturity, and lived experiences.

We feed them a one-size-fits-all timetable of 10 to 12 subjects, doled out in hourly chunks, all assessed in broadly the same way. It’s little wonder that nearly 20% of students are persistently absent. And how many of the remaining 80% are simply tolerating it—surviving, rather than thriving?

Imagine a school of 1,100 students supported by 110 staff. That’s a 1:10 ratio. What if we thought differently? Break them into 22 learning communities—each with 50 students and 5 trained adults with complementary skills. Within these communities, learning becomes relational, tailored, and purposeful.

Now bring in AI: intelligent tutors capable of adapting to every learner’s pace, style, and interests. Suddenly, students aren’t waiting for the slowest or racing to keep up. They’re on their own optimal path, supported by both human mentors and digital guides.

This isn’t about replacing teachers. It’s about freeing them—liberating their time and energy from rigid lesson plans, marking marathons, and compliance-driven box-ticking. It’s about empowering them to do what they came into the profession to do: inspire, guide, provoke curiosity, and help young people grow.

With this new structure, we also need a new foundation. Not a national curriculum carved into granite, but a set of living principles focused on:

• Readiness for the Adult World: Personal finance, emotional literacy, digital safety, civic responsibility, communication, careers, and life skills. Integrated subjects might include English, psychology, business studies, economics, and PE.
• Global Citizenship: Environmental awareness, intercultural understanding, ethics, and human rights. Here we fold in geography, history, RE, sociology, art, languages, and drama—not as silos, but as interconnected lenses on the world.
• STEM and Innovation: Not as a buzzword, but as a vehicle for problem-solving and invention. Maths, science, computing, design technology, and engineering come alive when applied to real-world challenges.

These aren’t just subject clusters—they are themes that echo the skills and mindsets our young people will need to navigate the world they’re inheriting.

We already have the most powerful resource we need: the educators. In spite of the system—not because of it—teachers and school staff show astonishing levels of creativity, adaptability, and passion every day. Imagine what they could achieve if the system truly served them and their students—rather than restraining them with outdated conventions.

We don’t need more tweaks. We need transformation. The world has changed. It’s time education caught up.

So let’s stop patching the past and start building the future.

Kieron Smith

Featured Photo by Kelly Eliason, Unsplash