About

Time for Change believes that the current education system (Kindergarten to University and beyond), is based on a largely unchanged, knowledge driven, memory and examined curriculum. It was established during the Victorian era, it is fundamentally flawed and it is no longer relevant for today’s young people and certainly not for those of tomorrow.

Every aspect of the current system has to be challenged from length of school year (terms, holidays, length of day), subjects/curriculum, classrooms/design, teacher training, examination and assessment , pedagogy/methodology, aims and objectives, structure and management,

Education is at the centre of society. Society has its own value systems, ethics and morals as a resultant of education in its broadest sense. Society and education are inseparable; each reflects each other symbiotically.

A new system of education, which is more flexible and dynamic, needs to be developed with urgency if the UK is not going to decline into an ever more diverse, dysfunctional, unequal society, characterised by selfishness and disharmony. Each of these unpleasant outcomes is currently costing the Government and tax payer huge sums of money. A new system has to be developed, delivered and through it, the creation of an aligned society at peace and mindful of its’ global responsibility, with all positively engaged in progress and development, leading to improved GDP and a more equitable, sustainable, collaborative society for the benefit of all.

We live in a digital world where the skills of accessing, analysing and delivering data are essential. These are key currently untaught skills: it will be the future. Knowledge lies within our phones, the worldwide web and new technologies.

The current system is based on Victorian agrarian and industrial working patterns which results in 3/4 terms per year, divided by periods of lengthy holiday. This is not conducive to young people’s learning, resulting in exhausted students and teachers who regularly are required to revisit and relearn materials forgotten during periods of fatigue and long holidays. This is especially true for those with learning difficulties. This is not good for a child’s mental well-being.

A typical school day is from 0800 to 1600, or part thereof, and takes no account of the age of a pupil or their physiological development including their mental well-being or the optimisation of their learning strategies. Learning should be full of happiness, engagement and relevance.

A school day for a child is determined by the clock and their timetable. Learning is constantly interrupted by the structure of the school day and is more important than the content of the lesson or the young person’s learning. Scholastic life is a relentless period of minutes dedicated to one subject. There is no freedom; all is constantly ordained.

In schools, all young people receive a narrow diet of self-contained subjects, some considered to be core, which are ‘taught’ by a teacher at the front of a classroom. Each subject is very largely an island. This didactic approach demands a delivery of knowledge and the need for the young person to absorb large amounts of data for the purpose of accountability without considering different learning styles. It is largely unchanged since the Victorian era. The focus of the curriculum is knowledge based. Success is measured in a linear format, dictated by the Universities and Examination Boards. It is a test of IQ, memory, playing the ‘system’ and speed-writing. All is summative and occasionally formative.

Lessons are taught in subjective specific, largely rectangular rooms.

Teacher training occurs in the main at tertiary level education and reinforces/perpetuates the knowledge, subject, assessment/examination system. Change needs to be systemic from Kindergarten to Teacher Training.

National tests and indeed some additional testing occurs at 4, 7,11, (13), 16, 18 and University. Our young people are the most tested children in the world. As a consequence are they better learners as a result of this relentless system? Success or otherwise in this narrow opening, determines the young person’s opportunities in life. It is divisive, limiting and takes no account of socio-economic grouping, nurture or the aptitudes of the young person, save knowledge and IQ.

If something is measurable, then it can be accountable. This is more ‘beneficial’ to the politicians and the Government than it is to the learner. This process stifles creativity in all its forms and reduces the potential learning outcomes.

The role of the following has an important part to play in the education of children from the earliest days in school to a life-time of participation, pleasure and enjoyment.

Sport – The role of Sport has an invaluable part to play in the healthy lifestyles of individuals both mentally and physically through individual and team sports. The understanding and appreciation of nutrition, diet and exercise should form of part of everyone’s daily and weekly routines.

Music – in its broadest sense – whether listening or participating – has enormous emotional and spiritual well being and encourages both individual and collaborative involvement and all of the associated benefits.

Art – since the evolution of man, Art has been an inherent creativity whether 2D or 3D imagery. Today this is further enhanced through film, photography and digital mediums, including games. An appreciation of Art has considerable mental and spiritual well-being.

Design and Technology – The inventiveness and innovation acquired through the use of our hands and an understanding of materials and mechanics, has shaped our current lives and will be an essential part of our futures. All children and young people should be exposed to the thought processes of Design and Technology through problem solving, creativity and critical analysis.

The teaching of science, maths and English need to be lifted from the mechanical to the practical and be relevant to the lives and circumstances of our young people

Science – the understanding of the world and the physical, biological and chemical interactions experienced in our daily lives.

Maths – relevant, problem solving and applied practical mathematics which engages the mental and kinaesthetic

English – the development of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills to facilitate communication skills enabling the positive interaction with others physically and culturally.

Forest schools – learning without boundaries.

Developing the Self.

It is believed children learn best in 5/6 week periods, divided by short 1/2 week breaks (evidence required)

Young people learn best when their curiosity is engaged, when matters are relevant to them and when they perceive there is a purpose to what they are doing; there has to be a motivation and a stimulus. They learn best when they are engaged with the material, work alongside others and seek rewards which value them, their endeavours and outcomes. They love the ipsative and largely despise the examination/assessment model. Discovery is paramount, understanding essential, application necessary and growth and development reinforced. Confidence and positive self-esteem are central to a happy child.

These young people learn best with teachers who empower them and give them the freedom to explore, unfettered by subject boundaries, a lack of time or ‘it is not in the syllabus’…which hinders thought and creativity!

We work currently from the small, often stifling question, looking ever upwards but never reaching the ‘big-questions’. Why do we not flip this on its head? What is the meaning of life?

We currently learn all in ‘subject silos’ rarely experiencing ‘interconnectivity’. As adults, we know that all is inseparable. Why do we not teach in a manner of consilience where flow and progression are essential if learning is to be effective?

For today’s and tomorrow’s world, our young people will need the skills to access information, apply it and develop it to relevant meaningful outcomes.

Young people will need, in an ever increasing exponential digital world, to focus on the human-condition; the soft-skills, individually and collectively with the application of reasoning, debate, discussion, values, ethics, morals and philosophy. They will need to understand themselves, those immediately around and about them and their societies, local, regional, national and global. They will need to respect the planet, be resourceful, resilient, persistent, adaptable, flexible. They will need to know how to rise to a task, to grasp an opportunity and take calculated risks and decisions for the greater good of all and without the fear of failure. No man can any longer be an island. We are inseparably bound, we must have synergy, we are a team, wedded together each needing to help the other to be content, healthy and happy, in mind and body on a united planet of global interconnectivity.

In a child focused, skills-based curriculum will we need to learn in ‘traditional’ rectangular boxes? Specialist science labs, theatres, art studios, sporting facilities and a variety of learning spaces will still be needed. For debating, discussing, personal learning and discovery, collaborative engagement, the creative use of break out spaces would be more appropriate. Places conducive to study via noise not silence. Places for project work should optimise the use of indoor and outdoor spaces and reflect our learning.

Teacher training needs to be both professional and vocational, freeing up the teacher to explore, celebrate and nurture individuality. Further training should be meaningful, continuous and on-going, which models the teacher into being a life-long-learner themselves.

Teacher training therefore has to be redesigned to ensure an open mindedness, liberal creativity, consilience and facilitation. We will move from a system focused on the teacher to one which is focused on the child, their background, their emotions, their circumstances, their environment, their world.

A time in which national examinations have been cancelled is as good as any to raise some fundamental questions concerning how assessment, teaching and learning inter-relate.

Whilst there is no question that there is a place for testing students, the research literature shows clearly that beneficial testing occurs when it is able to inform future learning. Assessment for learning is a valuable tool in the teacher’s toolkit.

Conversely, we know all too well that assessment methods can come to dominate teaching, with the process of learning being too readily reduced to a matter of test preparation. The dreaded question ‘do we need to know this for the exam?’ is an understandable reaction on the part of students to the relentless quest to quantify performance at every stage but it is also a sign that all is not well with the relationship between teaching and assessment.

There are alternative possibilities. Some twenty years ago a group of like-minded educators set out to explore what could be done to put together a course that, whilst still rigorously assessed as part of the qualifications framework (as an AS Level), would allow scope for deeper learning, exploration of the student’s own questions, and investigation of the many fascinating questions that lie at the point where one discipline overlaps with another. The result was a pilot course in the history, philosophy and ethics of science which was assessed solely by means of a research project and oral presentation.

This course (‘Perspectives on Science’) served as a prototype for a subsequent, wider development, namely the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ). The EPQ allows students to take a question of their own choosing, or a practical challenge, and follow a process of research, development and review, working with a teacher who acts in the role of a research supervisor. Its origins represent the deliberate creation of an alternative to the ‘learn the right answers for the next test’ model of learning. The best projects stem from open-ended questions or challenges and thus call for inquiry, critical thinking and creative exploration of a range of alternative possible responses to the central question or challenge.

Modelling as it does a mode of learning which had traditionally been more associated with higher education, it has come as no surprise that the EPQ has proven its value as a gateway qualification, recognised for its potential to help students progress to the next stage of their studies. Nor is the value of project-based learning solely to be found in its capacity for promoting independent research into academic subjects; projects have long had a significant association with vocational or technical learning, enabling school learning to come closer to workplace learning, and so facilitating the development of valuable skills for employability.

Where, then, do we stand, as we ask important questions about the future of assessment? A reflective response will recognise what is valuable in our current systems, whilst also taking cognisance of points for improvement, not least as a consequence of changes in the world, the most obvious one of which is the glaring exposure of an assessment system that is premised on the assumption that examinations during a brief synoptic assessment window can carry the majority of the weight of the grading process.

We should celebrate, then, our strengths. UK examinations are a strong brand, such that schools operating across the world may well choose them, or comparable international versions of them, for their own assessment purposes. Moreover, there has been a tradition of curriculum and qualifications innovation in the UK which has led to the successful creation and implementation of new models for teaching, learning and assessment, such as EPQ.

But we should also reflect on what we could do to counter-balance deficits. The issue is perhaps not so much one of ‘should we test?’ but rather: ‘are the assessment stakes too high?’ If we value the opportunity for deeper learning that stems from allowing scope for open-ended inquiry-based approaches, and consider that the skills developed in this setting are the very ones that young people will need to flourish in life and work in the modern world, we should look seriously at steps to reduce the weighting that attaches to examinations, and expand provision of alternative assessment models.

Obvious steps worth exploring here include a critical examination of the accountability matrix that schools labour under, an inquiry into whether alternative modes of learning and assessment, such as projects, can better equip learners with skills for the future, and reflection on the question of how best to engage learners who are simply not reached by a curriculum that focuses heavily on a small range of academic subjects.

We should also engage in a conversation with international partners. There is a growing sense, across the world, that ‘deeper learning’ now needs to be a priority. Future generations will not be well-served by a system that treats examination success as the be-all-and-end-all. We need a richer vision of the creative possibilities of alternative models of learning, teaching and assessment, coupled with serious thought about how to take these to scale at the national level. Now is as good a time as any for thoughtful re-assessment of assessment.

Dr John L. Taylor
Director of Learning, Teaching and Innovation
Cranleigh School

Dr John Taylor is Director of Learning, Teaching and Innovation at Cranleigh, with responsibility for the development of independent learning.

John works closely with staff, providing professional development opportunities and organising and leading CPD in areas connected to independent learning. He is one of the principal architects of the Extended Project Qualification and other project-based qualifications in the UK, including the School Certificate in Philosophy, developed in partnership with the New College of the Humanities.
Contact can be made through this webpage: https://www.cranleigh.org/staff/john-taylor/

The young people will determine their direction of travel and make considered decisions at every at every junction – destinations will be self-determined and determining with the adults as the facilitators and the sign posts. Young people are remarkably capable; the glass ceilings need to be removed; because young people can achieve so much when inspired and in control of their own learning outcomes.

A change of mind set is required; consider not what society can do for you but what you can do for society!