Does education currently provide children with the right skills?
EDUCATION taking on change has always been a thorny issue. History has shown that one of the last areas of society to relinquish its grip on the cosy traditions of the past is, ironically, the very establishment that is preparing our youth for the world of tomorrow. This is as true today as it has ever been. But the implications now are frighteningly more far-reaching than at any other time in modern history.
It is a subject that was brought to the forefront recently with the publication of a report by the British government into the future of education for 14 to 19 year olds. It is not the first time that the British education system has undergone change, as several efforts at its reform have been made in the past. The longstanding O-level was superceded by the GCSE in the late 1980s in a genuine attempt to make exams more relevant and accessible to a wider range of abilities. Even the so-called ‘gold standard’ of the A-level examination was reformed in what was known as ‘Curriculum 2000’. Again, this was a genuine attempt to broaden children’s education, this time at post-16 level.
In parallel to these developments, an increasing number of schools which had previously been adhering to the British curriculum were adopting the IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) for 14 to 16 year olds and the International Baccalaureate (IB) for post-16 education. One of the attractions of the IB system is that there is an element of extended writing for students to show they can communicate an argument clearly, and the ‘Theory of Knowledge’, which aims at getting students to think about how knowledge has developed.
For schools intending to pursue the British curriculum and qualifications, the publication of an interim report by the government’s ex-chief inspector of schools, Mike Tomlinson, on the future of 14-19 year old education was great food for thought. Realising that prior reforms have perhaps been piecemeal in nature, Tomlinson has proposed, somewhat radically, that the present qualifications should be scrapped and be replaced by a diploma system, allowing progression along different paths, be they purely academic or vocational or a combination of both.
This would see the end of the GCSE, AS, A2 and also vocational qualifications such as the GNVQ scheme as separate qualifications. This is a bold suggestion indeed, but it is true to say that both Tomlinson and the British government realise that they better get it right this time or the repercussions, both politically and educationally, would not bear thinking about.
But the question should be asked, why have things reached such a state? Why the sudden crisis of confidence? The answer could quite possibly lie with one simple fact – the pace at which the world has changed, is still changing, and will continue to change, and the huge effect this has on the education that our children must obtain.
This, in essence, presents the biggest challenge to educationalists for decades; or to put it more specifically, what kind of education do we provide our young people with when it is estimated that 80 per cent of children who are now starting primary school will leave university to be employed in jobs that do not as yet exist and using technologies that have yet to be invented? This alone brings into sharp focus what skills our young people need in order to survive in such a world, and poses the question that everyone in education feels rather uncomfortable with: does the present education system provide them with these skills?
One answer has already been received from a substantial number of universities and employers, who have been quite vociferous in stating that the system as it stands at the moment is not providing young people with the skills they need in the workplace or, perhaps more worryingly, in the world in which they find themselves when they leave education. This evidence is no longer anecdotal but well-documented and undeniable, so radical changes have to be made if the situation is to be remedied.
Perhaps a useful framework in which to start this debate is to take an historical perspective and look at why schools have evolved into what they are today, for it is important to appreciate that this is exactly what schools have done.
There is no set definition as to what a school should be, should look like or should actually do. Schools per se have developed according to the norms and demands of society, a society that is not so much in a state of evolution but revolution.
The schools of today are predominantly a product of an industrial age, where their raison d’etre was to select those ‘intelligent’ young people who would become the managers of industry and business, and this goes some way to explaining the predicament we are in now. This whole process of selection was (and for the most part still is) on the basis of short-term, memory-based examinations that are designed with a very limited understanding of the word ‘intelligence’ and with little or no emphasis placed on the critical skills or transferable skills that are now essential in the real world.
If we throw into this equation a predominantly teacher-centred methodology employed in the majority of classrooms where debate and questioning are not just discouraged but in some cases explicitly prohibited, then we begin to see the abyss that has opened up before us. Tie into this a very compartmentalised curriculum, with little overlap of subjects, an over-emphasis of exam performance and little or no relevance of some subjects to what goes on in the real world, then the situation becomes even bleaker. Moreover, it is bitter irony that major areas of educational research over the last 20 years and also the explosion of the ‘information age’ have had little or no impact on the education system we purport to have in place.
Both of these areas have brought to light the major issues (see table) that must be addressed by any kind of educational reform that is going to be long-lasting. It is certain that Tomlinson and his colleagues in the British government realise the political importance of sustainable educational reform, but those of us who are actually working in education realise that the stakes are much higher than the careers of a few politicians.
What is at stake is the success or failure of the next generation, who will inherit a world that can not be predicted at the moment. That is an immense responsibility to have. Clearly, any change or reform to a longstanding establishment brings with it great risk. But in matters educational, the cost of not reforming would be much higher than that involved in making a genuine effort to address the issues raised here.
It is up to those involved in education to ‘grasp the nettle’ of this new era and show strong leadership and courage in giving our young people the skills they need for today’s world. If we settle for the status quo now then we risk having the same debate in 10 years time, when it will certainly be too late.
MAJOR ISSUES
Different children learn in different ways and these learning styles can be utilised to improve classroom practice
All of us learn by constructing knowledge from what we already know and so it is essential that teachers know how children perceive the world around them. This makes questioning and debate a priority in the classroom
Latest research shows that each of us has multiple intelligences, which draws into serious question previous assumptions of one measurable ‘IQ’
Children develop at substantially different rates and this raises doubts over schools’ age-related structure and would suggest a more stage-related approach to allow students to progress according to their level rather than age
The massive explosion in information via the internet and other media means that it is now imperative that our children have the ability to think critically and to judge how much of this information is truly reliable and can be supported by evidence etc. The testing of the knowledge of facts is relatively meaningless
Due to the rate of change within society as a whole, a major aim of any school should be the fostering of transferable skills that can be applied in the different environments that the young adults of the future will be confronted with. At a rough estimation, children who are now beginning secondary education will have at least three different career changes in their working life
The amount of information available to us is roughly doubling every three to five years and this means that the whole emphasis of teaching should shift to teaching students how to learn and not what to learn
The brain is possibly more complex than we can ever fully understand, but approximately 85 per cent of what we know about the brain has been discovered in the last 20 years. One important fact that has been brought to light is that the brain learns better when confronted with shapes, colours, drawings and diagrams and performs badly when under stress and just made to memorise facts. Accelerated learning techniques exist that can help children to learn better, rather than forcing the brain to do something it does not want to
