Should schools be more like Tesco?

Education standards in Britain are “woefully low”, leaving employers to pick up the pieces.

That was the stark message from Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, the country’s largest employer.

Speaking at a conference yesterday, Leahy said companies like his needed well-educated applicants, but was not getting them.

He blamed excessive bureaucracy: teachers spend too much time on paperwork and not enough in the classroom, he said.

“One thing that government could do is to simplify the structure of our education system. From my perspective there are too many agencies and bodies, often issuing reams of instructions to teachers, who then get distracted from the task at hand: teaching children,” he said.

Leahy reckons the education system should learn lessons from how Tesco is run. “We try to keep paperwork to a minimum, instructions simple, structures flat, and – above all – we trust the people on the ground. I am not saying that retail is like education, merely that my experience tells me that when it comes to the number of people you have in the back office, less is more.”

Leahy is not the only business leader who thinks he could do education better. Dragon Peter Jones has set up his own academy for young entrepreneurs and is changing the way business skills are taught, keeping the focus as practical as possible.

Do you think they are right? Could schools learn a thing or two from the commercial world?

Are schools providing value for money? Photograph: Reuters