Education 2020 on Islay
Islay Education 2020 Unconference
It’s just over a fortnight since the unconference but it has given me time for some reflection and to put it into context. Andy Wallis and Ian Stewart of Islay High School made a magnificent job of the organisation; it is not every conference that has a help yourself bar with malt whisky. The barbecue to accompany the evening session and the tour of Bowmore distillery and not least the beauty of Islay the island made for a memorable stay.
So what of the unconference itself? Islay High School is a very appropriate venue for a look into the future. They are already heading that way with an innovative curriculum and timetable and very good use of ICT. The S3-S6 timetable is a pick and mix of academic and vocational courses designed to give pupils a real choice, even to including some Open University courses. The vocational courses provide realistic experiences through the Social Enterprise firms such as the Catering which tenders for outside contracts. Then there is the Samsung Q1 UMPC for every pupil loaded with one of the best Microsoft programs, namely OneNote. Combine this with tablet PCs for teachers linked to wireless projectors in the classrooms and wireless printers and there is a flexibility and freedom from hardware constraints which shows the way it should be with present technologies.
2020 is not that far away and the world of education and technology is changing so fast that there will barely be time to plan for it. So did the unconference point the way? Expectations for this gathering ran exceedingly high beforehand and it is fair to say that when that happens the reality of outcomes will often disappoint. If we could arrive at a blueprint in the course of an evening, even with the huge talent and enthusiasm from a considerable cross-section of informed educators present, we could all perhaps have stayed at home and sent in our answers. We are talking about a hugely complicated subject which affects the whole population and there is probably no single solution to satisfy everyone. This is not to be deplored as a sense of dissatisfaction can help innovation.
An unconference is a democratic being and the delegates at this one chose the topics we would discuss – Assessment, Learning Spaces and Relevance of Skills. By the time we got to this last one, the word relevance was not thoroughly addressed and we tended just to catalogue our favourites. However, I would suggest that the most relevant skills were certainly mentioned and are perhaps the building blocks for more specialised skills. Literacy and numeracy are fundamental. We should today define literacy as an ability to interpret whatever is presented to us, so text, music or sound, audio and visual in all its forms must be included. Interpret is not perhaps the best word as I see it as both active and passive, e.g. writing and reading. Numeracy is almost a sub-division if we call it the interpretation and manipulation of numbers and mathematical concepts. These skills are relevant in that we cannot make any progress without them. That is not to say that the whole population is equalled adept at the whole range or that uniformity is even desirable. Because uniformity too often in practice means dumbing down. If Mozart had been reduced to my level of musical literacy the world would be a dreadfully cacophonous place. I think I might define a skill as something to be acquired by practice. It is not something to be arrived at by independent thought or logic. One learns the rules of arithmetic rather than trying to re-invent them. Alphabets are a set of rules as words are a set of definitions.
Assessment proved to be as expected a contentious subject and I think we did well to highlight the ends of the spectrum, external summative tests of knowledge and internal unmoderated judgements of teachers. Assessment, evaluation, validation were all bandied about. We reached no conclusions but did spotlight the mountains to be climbed to reach a new consensus. Neither extreme is wholly right but all have elements of value. The extreme of summative tests of knowledge are frankly unreasonable when one percentage mark can change a grade and therefore a person’s future. On the other hand the nice young lady who works hard and writes neatly is bound to have an advantage over the ill-mannered lout without a pen in at least some teachers’ subconscious. Of course it could be argued that an assessment of the whole person should include manners but should not perhaps determine a pass or fail in Mathematics. If this same discussion were to take place when more of the Curriculum for Excellence is in place, there would almost certainly be major revisions of opinion.
Learning Spaces produced some interesting points of view as John Connell has already drawn attention to. There were valiant contributions making the point that a learning space is no longer a clean dry school building with superior toilets. Bearing in mind the state of the nation’s economy, the provision of large numbers of new schools may become an ever more distant prospect over the next few years and the idea of “the world is my oyster” through the medium of the internet may take on more significance. The world of the imagination is also a relatively inexpensive learning space. While the unconference was at times a bit chaotic there were many salient points made by a wide range of contributors which showed that there is change in the air and a significant minority who are going for it.
One unconference is like a swallow; it is not in itself a summer. However this unconference did make it clear to me that there is a movement or groundswell which is questioning orthodoxy, pushing for debate and ready to embrace new methods and experiment with alternatives to our somewhat tired teaching customs.
Quite apart from the intensity of debate is was good to meet existing friends and put faces to cyber colleagues. Anybody who thinks that social networks in cyberspace reduce real life relations should bear in mind that for many of us the outcome of virtual meetings is real life friendships with people from distant places who we would never otherwise meet and who enrich our lives as we hope to impact on theirs. I mention but a few, Ollie, Tessa, Theo, Alan, Andrew, David, Jaye, Katie, Stephanie, Stuart, Alan and a good many others.
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1 comment June 30, 2009
Constitutional Change
| A fixed term parliament of say four years would remove some manipulative power from the executive. However, a government elected by a minority of voters might become highly unpopular long before the end of the fixed term. In the event of such a situation there should be a power of recall by a percentage of the voters. As well as the usual parties listed on ballot papers there should be a “None of the above” choice. In the event of this choice being the winner, the most popular party should form the government but be required to hold a further election at the end of two years rather than the full term of four years. This system would return a lot of power to voters but also hopefully increase the power of parliament itself. There would then be no need for us to dabble with any PR type of electoral system. website http://robthill.wordpress.com |
Add comment June 3, 2009
MPs’ Expenses
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Add comment May 9, 2009
The Budget
Add comment April 25, 2009
PM Clement Attlee and Secrets
But what caught my attention was the fact that he was involved in two decisions, to continue with the atomic bomb and to devalue the pound, neither of which were leaked to the press. On the contrary they were kept secret for some months according to the programme. It was then implied that this was not possible today because of the intrusive media and 24/7 news. That is nonsense. It was only possible in Attlee’s time because his political colleagues and the Civil Service were loyal and honourable and knew how to keep a secret. It is the politicians themselves who are to blame for today’s culture of leaking to the press. By Attlee’s cabinet standards they are corrupt and self-seeking minnows of men. Contrast the relationship between Ernie Bevin and Attlee and that between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. When it was suggested to Bevin that he should replace Attlee the programme quoted him as saying “I am sticking to little Clem”. To my mind that says it all.
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Add comment April 14, 2009
The National Brewery Party Organisers
I have not posted about the economic recession for a while now. It has been a deliberate attempt to control my blood pressure. Every newscast brings fresh news of our politicians doing headless chicken acts. They are grimly Newtonian; to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Of course the media hasn’t helped. Words like disaster, meltdown, cataclysmic to describe a 2% drop on the Stock Exchange do overdo the drama. Neither group seem to have any grasp of reality.
The facts are quite simple. Personal greed led some banks to take excessive risks. Shareholders and directors were not really worried because banks rarely fail and the rewards were far too tempting. Then the bubble bursts. Governments everywhere go mad and bail them out. Let it be noted that no government can actually match the total debts of the combined world banks so at best their action is a sticking plaster on a shrapnel wound. This is the equivalent of the local council bailing out a corner shop that goes bust. In fact that scenario would have a greater chance of a happy ending.
If the toxic banks had been allowed to go bust, the unintended consequences would not have materialised. Royal Bank of Scotland would have gone under leaving some innocent profitable bits to be snapped up at bargain basement prices by more sensible banks. The pieces of HBOS of any value would have gone to Lloyds for a few hundred million instead of billions of pounds. Furthermore there would be no problem about bonuses or pensions, at least not for the taxpayer, because there would not be any. And most importantly shareholders would have learnt a valuable lesson. Best of all the taxpayer would not be about to pay for this unmitigated political tomfoolery for the next forty years.
So having saved the country about a trillion pounds, the government could have let Royal Mail have a nice fat cheque to help all the worthwhile businesses which are short of a few thousand pounds to keep them afloat while the economy adjusts downwards. This would also have saved Peter Mandelson the trouble of trying to privatise it. There would have been plenty of room for manoeuvre to apply loans and grants all over the real economy to keep more people in work. What is more the hundred or so building projects in the further education sector would not have had to be halted and it would have been possible to give more money to councils hit by the failure of their investments in Icelandic banks. I know that sounds like bailing out the undeserving bureaucrats but it would also keep a lot of people in work. Those two examples represent actual job cuts by the government. There would have still been a few billion left over to start new work, like creating first-world school buildings and investing heavily in energy related research both in universities and industry so that as the economy stabilises we are in a more competitive position. We might even have bought the army some proper gear.
As it is this government in particular is ranting about the greed and having a totally new banking regime while do its best to return to to the previous status quo. Actually the banks are being realistic in not lending as much as the government are exhorting them to do. Somebody somewhere in the banking system obviously realises that there is need for more caution.
And now my blood pressure is through the roof!
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Add comment March 22, 2009
Risk Management?
He said “the investments were low risk until the banks started to collapse”. Is that not the same as saying it was quite safe walking by the sea until I fell over a cliff?
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Add comment March 22, 2009
Why Should We Bail Them Out?
I have been meaning to post to my blog for about a week but events come so thick and fast at the moment that each topic seems out of date before I get to writing it up.
On Broadcasting House on Radio 4 last Sunday, Diana Rigg used the phrase “ spiralling down” talking about our present national situation. It would appear that way.
It would seem that for several years more and more people have been consumed by greed. Bankers, members of the House of Lords and of the Commons and ministers of the crown, even senior civil servants have experienced an overwhelming desire to leap on the gravy train or to change the metaphor get their snouts in the trough. None of them have probably broken the law or the regulations most of which they drew up for themselves, but they all stand terribly guilty in the eyes of ordinary men and women on modest incomes. None of them are trusted and it is all very well to say the public is becoming cynical, encouraged by the media, but it will take a very long time for any semblance of trust to be re-established.
Politicians ask for our support and yet happily enter into dubious practices with lobby firms or massage the meaning of second home. Of course they should be compensated for having to stay in London during the week, but not if they live within normal commuting distance and not to provide themselves with massive capital gains. Hundreds of thousands of commuters could make an equally justifiable claim.
But it is the government that most appals me. As far as I can see, headless chickens would be too kind a comparison. Every revelation in the media or set of statistics brings a new spur-of-the-moment solution. The banks were all private concerns fully committed to the capitalist ideology. Why should they and their shareholders be bailed out by every man and woman in this country? I have read that British banks have something of the order of £4 trillion worth of debt which they mostly cannot cover. The few hundred billions they have received from the bank of England is but a drop in that ocean of debt and obviously has done no good at all nor is likely to in the future. Yet it will mean higher taxes, poorer services and fewer benefits for the whole nation for years to come. Let them go bust and then let the government help those people who are really damaged by the collapse excluding the fat cat managers. It is not every bank that will collapse by any means. In receivership there will be no talk of bonuses and the bankers who are so brilliant that we cannot afford to lose them will be free to apply for jobs elsewhere. The receivers will be able to sell off potentially safe and profitable bits of the businesses to more responsible banks and the creditors can form an orderly queue.
The banking fiasco is bad enough but now there is talk of bailing out the PFI firms. They are also capitalist organisations who contracted to run schools and hospitals for 30, 40 or even 60 years. The government was not taking sweeties from children when the contracts were signed; more likely the other way round. And what is more there will be few buyers for the schools and hospitals in receivership so why should the government not buy them at knock down prices?
Over the last 60 or so years we have seen ever bigger economic and financial bubbles burst and governments everywhere pick up the pieces. Let this be the time when the bubble bursts and stays burst instead of ministers bleating that they really want the banks to go on lending. Ministers show as much credulity as a small child trying to re-inflate a burst balloon. Carry on Lending could easily be the title of a new film if it were not so serious for all of us. To suggest a return to pre-bubble amounts of lending is to add petrol to the fire. Instead let Capitalism reign.
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Add comment February 18, 2009
Classroom Pedagogy
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Add comment February 15, 2009
Banking Crisis and Fraud
| I have mentioned before that I am surprised that nobody mentions fraud in connection with the banking crisis and sub prime lending.
At last, I have found somebody else who thinks there has been fraud. To quote George Soros in his new book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets he says “The sub-prime area, which dealt with inexperienced and uninformed customers, was rife with fraudulent activities. The word “teaser rates” gave the game away”. The teaser rate refers to the starting interest rates for mortgages which increased hugely after the first few years. I am glad to be in such prestigious company. website http://robthill.wordpress.com |
Add comment January 16, 2009
