Rethink Fairness is the latest chapter in Radio 4's Rethink project that ran throughout last year. It is a series of five discussions spread over one week at the start of the new year, presented by Amol Rajan. Its focus is fairness, a theme that emerged time and again in the conversations and essays of 2020. The pandemic brought renewed focus on different educational experiences as some schools managed to deliver online lessons more successfully than others. It also shed light on our exam system as different parts of the UK wrestled with the question of how fair this form of assessment was likely to be. However, education has been at the centre of the debate about how to increase social mobility for decades. Is now the time to bring about a fundamental shift and rethink how we might make education fairer?

Contributors
Sammy Wright, vice principal of Southmoor Academy in Sunderland and member of the advisory body, the Social Mobility Commission.
Katherine Birbalsingh, founder and headteacher of the Michaela Community School in London
Anna Vignoles, professor of education at the University of Cambridge
Lindsay Paterson, professor of educational policy at Edinburgh University

Producer: Louise Hidalgo
Editor: Rosamund Jones Show less