Damian_Allen_Spotlight

Title:
The UK ‘Building Schools for the Future’ Programme and how a small municipality on the outskirts of a famous city came to exemplify a ferocious battle of ideas.

Outline:
To cover:-

•    The origins and ambitions of the UK’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ Programme.

•    Knowsley’s context and early engagement with Building Schools for the Future programme.

•    ‘Education Transformation’ or ‘21st Century Education’ – exploration , definition and extrapolation -  How living on the edge of chaos opened the door for innovation

•    The relationship between education transformation , building design and technology.

•    Colonisation – The process of procurement, partnership, migration, mitigation and bringing to life a collective vision.

•    How the failure to establish a common understanding of ‘education transformation’ hampered the UK approach

•    New ecology of learning - a template of Potentiality -  Public & private sector roles blurred; Responsive and adaptive environments; education systems less  vulnerable to future shock ; Innovation based ; New practice emerges and colonises

Abstract

Since societies have mostly decided that confining children and young people in buildings for large parts of their lives is by far the most productive approach, we have debated endlessly what is the best ways in which their confinement should be best managed.

‘Today’s high schools were conceived at the beginning of the 20th century to prepare students to work in an industrial economy that looked very different from the economy we have today’ Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. ‘High Schools for the new Millennium’

It is now fairly well understood that all aspects of our lives – economic, social, environment – has changed radically but schools remain fundamentally locked into a 19th Century model. There is perhaps an education version of Al Gore's ‘an inconvenient truth’ that highlights the need for education systems to produce 21st Century skills if it is to solve global issues let alone meet economic and social  challenges.

There is an ongoing battle of ideas that seeks to persuade Government’s across the globe that, despite the scale of the task, we cannot simply go on tinkering around the edges.

Major companies and Governments are rightly concerned by the high cost of low performance, how to drive up performance but without bankrupting countries in the process , the desperate need for schools to truly embrace and comprehend the liberation that technology can bring and the need employers have for the education system to deliver to them employees with appropriate and relevant skills. 

In short Education systems that do the following :-

•    Put the learner at the centre of how matters are organised – in practice an end to classes organised on the basis of age and a narrow definition of ability
•    Inter disciplinary and project based working
•    A massive rise in the use of technology – young people are already there – and a democratised view of the access to knowledge
•    Teaching that adopts a variety strategies and skills which requires a teacher to facilitate, guide and support as well as instruct
•    More learning taking place in authentic, real life settings.

Over the last 30 years schools in many western countries have been deprived of investment. Consequently patch and mend is the experience of a whole generation of teachers. In the meantime private buildings ( hotels, retail etc) were emerging that took great care over the psychology of their use. The psychology of a learning environment should be equally if not more profound.

More often than not, it is given no thought whatsoever.