Our topic this month is ‘education’ but we will not be looking at current policy or formal academic education theory. This is an opportunity to engage in a bit of creative and speculative thinking. We will be brainstorming what we would ideally like to see education delivering. We will not be constrained by cost, time or the already overstuffed curriculum. Let’s challenge received orthodoxy and come up with some original ideas about how education in the future might look like. In the process we will be asking the fundamental question: what is education really for?

How was it for you?

What do you feel was wrong with your school education? What was missing? Are there subjects you would like to have done which were never covered? What about the methods of teaching? I did history at A level and every single lesson we took dictation. Useless!

On the other hand what was right about your education. Did you have some inspirational teachers who excited you about their subject and has that inspiration lasted into adult life?

Education or Training?

There is a lot of emphasis in education these days on skills for work. That’s important but if education is simply about training for the workforce surely art, music, drama and the humanities will suffer and eventually disappear altogether. How do we justify these non-utilitarian subjects in a climate where it’s the bottom line that counts. And given that students going on to higher ed are paying huge fees these days non-vocational subjects start to look like dispensable luxuries.

Should the School day be longer?

How about the school day—is it too short? If it were longer would that not help working parents? After all one of the functions of school is child care.

Should more be done on the nutritional front to make sure that kids from deprived areas are getting proper meals, especially breakfast?

Is homework still useful or just a chore. Perhaps if the school day were longer homework (or ‘prep’ as they used to say in the boarding school stories of my youth) could be dispensed with.

Shorter School Holidays?

There has recently been some discussion in the media about the scheduling of school holidays. Perhaps there could be more but shorter holidays spread throughout the year. It is generally recognised that younger children, especially, tend to forget what they’ve learned in the term when they have a six week break during in the summer.

If the holidays were spread through the year it might discourage parents from withdrawing their kids so that the family can have a cheaper holiday out of season.

Exams?

Exams could be moved to, say, October/November when the weather is cooler and the school year could start when the calendar year starts. This would mean that universities and colleges would have to shift too.

But why have just one exam a year? Why not set up our school exams like those for law and accountancy which you can sit any time during the year and re-take as many times as you like.

Electronic testing centres already operate a system where  the candidate is randomly given questions from a bank as they turn up for the exam. With the use of AI a lot of the preliminary marking could be carried out by machine.

Or... would you dispense with exams altogether? But does coursework really test someone’s knowledge?

What is the minimum set of knowledge and skills that a student should not leave with?

I would suggest that everyone leaving Secondary & Further education should have at least the following knowledge and skills:

• A basic knowledge of nutrition and be able to cook a meal for themselves and guests.

• Be competent in housekeeping—even the boys!

• Read a book from beginning to end. 

• Write a letter of enquiry; a complaint; an application for a job.

• They should be able to do basic DIY and repairs including basic electrical wiring and plumbing, paint a room and put up a shelf. This could take the place of woodwork and metalwork and be of more use throughout the student's life. If they moved on to specialist craft and engineering work they would be building on these base-line skills.

• Handling money, budgeting, saving, investing. There have been pilot projects in the area of handling money but none rolled out nationally.

• As citizens all students should have some knowledge of how local and central government work. They should know about the political parties, what they stand for and about voting in a democracy.

• At present students can be withdrawn from Religious education but in a plural society it's important they should know about the variety of beliefs in our society. I would therefore suggest a new and broader subject that would be compulsory and called ‘Religion, Ideology and Belief’.

Study Skills

• Handwriting has never been a skill that has been consistently and systematically taught in the UK. I suggest we follow the French in adopting a universal, functional, handwriting style so that moving between schools will not cause problems for a child.

• However, all children should be taught to touch-type from the earliest age as we live in the digital age and they will be required to use a keyboard throughout their education.

• Keyboarding should be part of the subject of 'Digital Literacy': how to search for information on the Internet, how to evaluate what is reliable and how to publish on the web.

• Specific study skills such as how to take notes and how to outline and structure a report or essay should be taught. And as part of this we could include the teaching of Critical and Creative thinking.

A Universal Curriculum—Why not?

Although we have a National Curriculum this only covers the areas to be taught not the lesson content. It is difficult to see how the needs of a child in Kent differ from those living in the North-east. Why not put all the best educational minds in the country to the task of creating the best schemes of work?

How to make Universities work?

Whole university departments have been closing down recently so why have the same subject departments replicated throughout the country? My suggestion is that there is just one department in the UK for each subject. A student can enrol at any university in future and s/he will be linked electronically to the central department. Universities will simply become resource centres and students will be distributed through the country. Lectures, seminars and tutorials will all be delivered electronically. Perhaps the Open University could run it as this is kind of like the model they are already working with.