Meg Rosoff condemns UK education policy

Author Meg Rosoff has condemned UK education policy, describing the government’s focus on exams as ‘an assault on childhood’.

Accepting the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a £410,000 prize for children’s literature, the How I Live Now author said that it was no wonder that teachers were quitting the across the UK as it had become a ‘joyless profession’.

Rosoff told the audience that learning has ‘become joyless as well’ and said she had seen too many children self harming and suffering from mental illness as a result of exam pressure and stress.

The author lamented the fact that children were being told that art, music and books ‘would not help them make money’, and finished by praising the education system in Sweden for putting ‘tremendous value on children’s books and children’s imaginations’.