This is a question
That we do not ask often enough:
What is the purpose of education?
Not what should children know by the end of Year 6, Year 11 or Year 13. Not which grades should they achieve. Not where should they sit in a league table.
But what should education ultimately help a child become?
In a world that feels increasingly fast, polarised, uncertain and demanding, perhaps the answer cannot simply be: knowledgeable.
Knowledge matters enormously. Literacy matters. Numeracy matters. History, science, language, art, sport, technology and culture all matter. Children deserve access to the accumulated wisdom of the world.
But knowledge on its own is not enough.
Children also need to be able to meet life: to think when things are uncertain, regulate when things feel overwhelming, recover after disappointment, stay curious when they do not yet understand, connect with people who are different from them, and adapt when the world changes around them.
That is what I mean by psychological fitness: the inner strength and emotional wellbeing that help us regulate, recover and adapt.
And perhaps education designed around psychological fitness would not look like a radical departure from the very best schools we already know. It would look like a clearer commitment to what many teachers, families, coaches and communities are already trying to protect: the whole child.
Receiving information is not full learning
There is a version of education that treats children as though learning is mainly about receiving information.
The teacher explains. The child listens. The child remembers. The child repeats it back accurately enough to prove they have understood.
Of course, direct teaching has an important place. Children need instruction. They need expert guidance. They need teachers who can open doors to knowledge they may never have encountered alone.
But receiving information is not the same as learning.
Jean Piaget’s ideas about assimilation and accommodation are useful here. Assimilation is when we fit new information into what we already think we know. Accommodation is more demanding: it happens when something new does not fit, and we have to adjust our thinking, revise our assumptions or build a new understanding altogether. Learning is not simply adding facts to the mind; it is an active process of making sense of experience.
That second part takes time.
It takes trying something and getting it wrong. It takes discussion. It takes being challenged safely. It takes practical experience, reflection, movement, creativity, feedback and another attempt. It takes having enough emotional steadiness to sit with the uncomfortable moment of, “I do not understand this yet.”
There is no quick way to lay down that kind of learning.
A child may memorise the language of resilience, empathy, critical thinking or emotional regulation. But they cannot truly acquire those capacities simply by hearing about them once. They develop through repetition, relationships and real-life practice.
A child learns that disappointment can be survived by experiencing disappointment and being helped to make sense of it.
They learn that mistakes are not the end of the story by making them, repairing them and discovering that they can begin again.
They learn collaboration not through a worksheet about teamwork, but through the awkward, brilliant, frustrating business of working with other people.
They learn courage not through being told to be brave, but through being supported to take manageable risks.
This is why psychological fitness cannot be a one-off wellbeing lesson, a themed week or a poster on a corridor wall. It has to live in the rhythm of school life: in how adults respond when a child is dysregulated, how a classroom handles error, how a team loses, how a school welcomes difference, and whether children have room to ask questions that do not have an immediate answer.
The most important learning is often not the fastest learning.
We measure what we value
But do we agree on what education is for?
There is a difficult truth at the heart of modern education:
We tend to value what we can measure.
And because exam outcomes are visible, comparable and politically useful, they become the dominant story of whether a school is succeeding or failing.
But a score can only tell us about the thing it measures.
It cannot tell us whether a child feels safe enough to contribute in class.
It cannot tell us whether they have learned how to ask for help.
It cannot tell us whether they can recover after failure, form healthy relationships, think creatively, tolerate uncertainty, take responsibility or remain hopeful when life becomes difficult.
Those things matter too. Not as soft extras. Not as rewards for finishing the “real” work. They are part of the real work.
The problem is not that exams exist. Exams can provide useful information. They can open doors. They can recognise academic effort and attainment.
The problem comes when exam performance becomes the purpose of education rather than one measure within it.
When the system becomes dominated by performance data, children can begin to experience learning as something done to them, rather than something they actively inhabit. Curiosity becomes risky because there may not be time for it. Creativity becomes inconvenient because it cannot always be standardised. Movement, talk, art, practical activity, reflection and connection become expendable because they do not always translate neatly into a score.
Sir Ken Robinson warned about this with characteristic clarity. In his TED talk, he argued that “creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
That is not an argument against rigour. It is an argument for a fuller definition of it.
It is rigorous to teach a child to think deeply.
It is rigorous to help them examine a belief, name a feeling, stay with a problem and listen to another point of view.
It is rigorous to create a culture where children are expected to contribute, repair harm, take responsibility and keep learning when something feels difficult.
The OECD’s Learning Compass has already articulated a broader vision for education: one that includes knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, alongside student agency and wellbeing. UNESCO has similarly called for a new social contract for education built around relationships with one another, the planet and technology, with education serving peaceful, just and sustainable futures.
So the question is not whether there is an alternative vision.
The question is whether we are brave enough to let it shape what we prioritise.
Perhaps we need to stop asking only, “What did children achieve?”
And begin asking:
- Did they feel that learning belonged to them?
- Did they become more confident in their capacity to think?
- Did they have opportunities to move, create, connect and contribute?
- Did they learn how to respond when things did not go to plan?
- Did school help them understand who they are, what matters to them and how they can play a useful part in the world?
Those questions may require change to measure. But that does not make them less important.
The adults around children are part of the curriculum
Children do not learn psychological fitness from programmes alone.
They learn it from people.
They learn it from the teacher who says, “Let’s slow this down and work out what happened.”
- They learn it from the parent who repairs after a difficult moment.
- They learn it from the coach who helps them lose without shame.
- They learn it from the teaching assistant who notices they are quieter than usual.
- They learn it from the adult who holds a boundary calmly, rather than humiliating them.
- They learn it from the adult who can say, “I got that wrong. I am sorry. Let me try again.”
This is why the adults around children matter so much: teachers, parents, sports coaches, youth workers, grandparents, pastoral teams, neighbours and community leaders.
Not because adults have to be perfect. They do not.
But because children are always learning from the emotional climate around them.
- They notice whether adults panic at mistakes or treat them as information.
- They notice whether feelings are allowed, even when behaviour still has boundaries.
- They notice whether adults speak about difference with fear or curiosity.
- They notice whether connection is offered only when they are doing well, or also when they are struggling.
The adults around children are not simply delivering education. In many ways, they are the lived experience of it.
This is why psychological fitness is not about asking teachers to do more with less, or placing another responsibility on already stretched families. It is about creating shared language, practical skills and supportive environments so adults are not trying to carry this work alone.
The five small habits we use within Psychological Fitness Nana are deliberately ordinary: notice one belief, name that feeling, practise stillness, reach out and connect, and name the good stuff. They are not a promise of perfect calm. They are repeated practices that help people regulate, recover and adapt.
That is the kind of language that can travel between school, home, sport and community.
A child who hears “name the feeling” in a classroom, “take a minute to settle” at home and “you can begin again” on the sports field is not receiving three disconnected messages. They are building an inner map.
This is not a call to abandon standards
We should be clear about this.
A psychologically fit education is not lower expectation dressed up as kindness.
It is not avoiding challenge. It is not making every child comfortable all the time. It is not asking schools to solve every social problem alone.
It is an argument for higher expectations of what education can offer.
Children should leave school with knowledge, qualifications and opportunity.
But they should also leave with enough self-understanding to know when they are struggling; enough emotional vocabulary to communicate what is happening; enough confidence to keep learning; enough connection to ask for help; enough flexibility to change direction; and enough hope to believe their future can still be shaped.
That is not sentimental.
It may be one of the most practical things we can give them.
The world our children are entering will demand technical knowledge, yes. But it will also demand judgement, humanity, imagination, collaboration, courage and the ability to remain steady when certainty is unavailable.
- We need young people who can use technology without losing touch with themselves and one another.
- We need young people who can disagree without dehumanising.
- We need young people who can meet complexity without immediately collapsing into fear or blame.
- We need young people who can build, repair, question, create and care.
The good news: this is already happening
There is a groundswell of understanding that something is not working.
Teachers know it. Parents know it. Young people know it.
Many schools are already creating pockets of excellence: classrooms where children feel seen; enrichment programmes that give them confidence; outdoor learning that reconnects them with challenge and wonder; arts, sport and service opportunities that build belonging; pastoral systems that take emotional life seriously; teachers who are protecting curiosity despite enormous pressure.
These are not side projects.
They are clues.
Rather than treating them as optional extras, perhaps we need to start celebrating them as central to the purpose of education.
The task now is not to throw everything away. It is to shift the dial.
To move from education as a race through content, towards education as the development of capable human beings.
To recognise that a child is not a grade, a data point, a behaviour chart or a future employee.
They are a person becoming.
And perhaps the most important measure of our education system is not simply whether children can pass a test.
It is whether they leave it better able to meet life.
That is psychological fitness.
