WE ARE IN the middle of a series of events taking place in our communities that acknowledge the impact of education on mostly young people.

Last Thursday saw the A-level results and this Thursday there will be the GCSE results.

Although degree results are usually announced earlier in the year, while some graduation events took place at the end of July or beginning of August, others will take place in September. The negative aspects of some of these events is when commentators and politicians choose to ignore the celebrations and start to comment on the statistics as if this will be of any assistance to the rest of society.

The big problem is that local and national policy making bodies are all taking a break at this time and so the widespread analysis can easily get lost in the chip papers, long before any chance of policy changes emerge.

One of the social media highlights over the last few days was a tweet by Gisela Stuart MP, one of the leaders of the Vote Leave campaign, expressing disappointment at the reduction in German A-level students with the comment “shocking decline of foreign language skills”. It is unclear if the anti-European campaign which she ran had any bearing on the students whose A-level decisions would have been taken over the period of the campaign, but it is certainly an ironic comment for her to make. The hard work and decision making involved in achieving the examination results gives an understandable reason for celebrating and raising the profile of the courses and educational processes involved. However, it is always disappointing that this leads to society overlooking one of the most important parts of our educational system.

The impact of early years education, long before any exams or even Standard Assessment Tests are needed is huge for the children who are building the foundations onto which their future learning and understanding will be placed. It is of course impossible to generate a set of events for politicians to turn early years outcomes into social media tweets but the failure by this Government to address the collapse in the early years system as the over ambitious, last-minute promise by George Osborne in the 2015 General Election has spiralled down into a lack of funding and a shortage of qualified staff.

Such a set of problems will not impact the GCSE results this Thursday, but in ten to 12 years’ time things could be very different unless an urgent change is achieved by a Government that appears to be far more concerned about achieving a Brexit outcome than rescuing our early years education from the failings it has created.

I remember 40 years ago when I arrived in Brighton to study at Brighton Polytechnic that both the Poly and University of Sussex were awash with occupations as students sought to demand that foreign students would not be denied access to these places of learning.

Although Sussex-based students were not alone in making these demands it was treated as one of the hot spots for such issues by the incoming Government, possibly helped by the fact that the newly-built Brighton Centre played host to the Conservative Party Conference in the run-up to the General Election which saw the beginning of the Thatcher era and that the President of the Students Union at Sussex, Pete Silkin, was the son of the Labour Attorney General. Following the various occupations and other campaigns a great deal of positive outcomes did emerge and it is clear that there is a great deal of heritage from the two universities that makes a case for shaking up our nations democratic structures which like the early years educational system are in a state of turmoil. However, such a shake-up will depend in large part on engaging with people who are outside of full-time education as well as students.

Brighton and Hove has always been a strong location for democratic discussions along with places such a Lewes. It would be fantastic if Sussex more widely could become a place where discussions and studies could take place, with the help of the universities, but in a location outside of their dominance, and in a place where the learning spaces are not so heavily used. Bearing in mind that the Haywards Heath Sixth Form College is likely to remain closed for another three to five years perhaps this could be opened up to offer a site for a Sussex Centre for Democratic Debates and Studies to be established? Perhaps this would help us to develop democratic ideas and proposals for policies that are free from the dominance of political parties and committed to improving society for everyone.