Since the Enlightenment we have valued having more knowledge, regardless of what the content of that knowledge is. However, the realisation that all knowledge is perspective-driven has made what is taught in schools a political choice. What to teach students and our children is as important, if not more important, than how we teach it. With complaints from politicians and parents about what is being taught in schools and universities, now is the time for a debate to be had. But how should we decide upon what is taught? The evidence-based revolution in education promised data could prove the best and most effective teaching methods. However, argues philosopher of education Michael Hand, that evidence doesn’t tell us what we should teach in the first place. Deciding which knowledge is worth having is fundamentally a philosophical, value-laden question.

Evidence-based education is all the rage. The Labour Government has pledged to fund ‘evidence-based early-language interventions in primary schools’. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is ‘doubling down on evidence-based training’ for teachers. The findings of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, due to be published later this year, will be ‘rigorously evidence and data informed’. But just how far can evidence take us in our thinking about education?

The idea of evidence-based education is simple and compelling. The practice of education should be informed by the best available evidence on how to facilitate learning. As David Hargreaves put it, in an influential lecture to the Teacher Training Agency in 1996, what teachers needs is ‘evidence about what works with whom under what conditions and with what effects’.

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Empirical evidence can tell us many useful things about how to ensure that all pupils have access to the curriculum. But it can tell us precisely nothing about what should be on the curriculum in the first place.

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Hargreaves was surely right. In the 30 years since his lecture, significant progress has been made on building a body of research evidence on what works in education, and on making that evidence base available to teachers. The Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit, for example, provides user-friendly summaries of the research supporting such pedagogical approaches as individualised instruction, mastery learning and peer tutoring.

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But there is a downside to the current enthusiasm for evidence-based education. Too narrow a focus on how to facilitate learning diverts our attention from the equally important, and equally vexed, question of what learning we should facilitate. Empirical evidence can tell us many useful things about how to ensure that all pupils have access to the curriculum. But it can tell us precisely nothing about what should be on the curriculum in the first place.

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Education can and should be based on evidence, but it is necessarily based on values too.

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Questions about the content of education are questions of value. They are questions about the kinds of knowledge and understanding, and the range of skills, competences, attitudes and commitments, we judge to be worth having. And they are questions on which people sharply disagree. Some think schools should focus on vocational preparation, on equipping young people with the specific and transferable skills needed to earn a living. Others favour an education that prepares pupils for the life of the mind, acquainting them with ‘the best which has been thought and said’. Yet others take what matters to be the state of children’s souls, so charge educators with cultivating the beliefs and virtues of a particular religion.