Extracts from Forever Learning
Click here for Keep Sats, Abolish GCSEs extract
Shorts
We are forever learning – every day, all our lives. Every day we learn new things whether by watching the news on television, going on the internet, noticing something on the way to work, listening to what our children have been up to or by having a conversation with someone…
Over the course of a lifetime the amount of learning we do is astonishing. Moreover, it is amazingly diverse…
For thousands of years the knowledge, skills and behaviour that each new generation acquired was passed on orally in the home or at work. For most of human history there were no schools where children and young people were taught because special places in which to learn were unnecessary…
The creation of secondary modern and grammar schools and the use of the eleven-plus to allocate pupils to them became the burning educational issue of the post-war era…
However, the greatest advance in our civilisation is not to be seen in our buildings, our modes of travel, our homes or our miraculous technology, it is seen in the provision of health care. This is the field of human activity in which education has achieved its most monumental outcome...
The legacy of educational provision is an enormous achievement and what is provided is undoubtedly of a high quality. Nevertheless the system has shortcomings which are legacies from the recent or more distant past...
Total spending on primary and secondary schools in the UK is £63 billion with an average of approximately £4,900 per annum being spent on each pupil at primary school and £9700 on each pupil at secondary school…
Standards of learning in our educational institutions are high. In schools I believe the standard of education is higher than it has ever been and I have set out my arguments for this view in a brief appendix at the end of the book. (Appendix B) The fact that we have high standards does not, of course, mean they should not be higher still and achieving this should be the aim for all of us…
Like most organisations schools are societies within a society and pupils are expected to conform to the behavioural norms which enable their societies in miniature to function…
Children in school should learn behaviour and values by doing and by discussion, just as they do at home, and we will look at both these ways of learning. Both are required when dealing with the enduring issue of behaviour in the classroom – the bad behaviour, that is, not the good. My view on the issue is this: there should be no issue. There should be no bad behaviour whatsoever in any school. It is as simple as that. I find it worrying that pupils are still able to disrupt each other’s learning and ridiculous that schools and society have not managed to eradicate the problem...
But there is more we can achieve and we can begin the endeavour of achieving more by addressing some of the shortcomings and frailties that exist in the way we educate our children at present. Not everyone will agree with the shortcomings I identify. That is to be expected as they are based on personal views which may or may not be shared by others…
It is in our collective mindset and the way we currently think about education where I see one final shortcoming to refer to. We have become conditioned to accept the structures, methods and underlying ideas that shape the system we have...
We should bring GCSEs to an end. They are not useful for selecting pupils for future courses and occupations and nor are they useful for preparing pupils for work. They are a time-consuming distraction from fulfilling the many essential purposes of education, they cause too much cramming of knowledge and they do too little to encourage an intrinsic interest in learning…
I have indicated what I consider to be the number one purpose of education for the individual but the five other purposes are not placed in any order of priority…
Not enough time is given to thinking skills and nor is enough time given to learning practical life skills thoroughly – another shortcoming in the system. There should be nothing unusual about pupils going straight from a lesson where they have been thinking critically about various political issues to a lesson where they learn how to iron a shirt…
They should regularly observe the natural world, learning about different trees and flowers and studying the habits of birds, invertebrates and other creatures. They should experiment with growing a variety of plants from seeds and, as was said earlier, they should all have a small plot of land at school or at home on which to grow flowers and vegetables...
Perhaps I am being hard on myself and my profession but every time I see litter in the street I consider we have failed. Every time footballers argue with the referee I consider we have failed and every time there are alcohol fuelled disturbances in our towns I consider we have failed. We fail when people cheat on their insurance, when abusive comments appear on the internet and when personal relationships become embittered. We fail seriously when violent crimes are committed and when child abuse takes place. It is not only teachers who are failing, of course, but parents and society as a whole...
My third proposal is that the school-leaving age should be lowered to fifteen and that at this point all pupils should be given a School Certificate which would contain information about their progress at secondary school, their capabilities, their attitude to learning and the development of their character…
To those who might say that starting work at fifteen would reduce the amount of education young people receive I would say the opposite is true. The educational benefits of the workplace are immense and it is here they will learn vital lessons about mature attitudes, responsibility, reliability and using their initiative…
From primary school onwards children should be taught that all jobs are worthwhile and contribute to society. They need to know that routine jobs which do not require a great deal of skill can contribute as much as skilled jobs. They should understand that an equitable, interdependent society will value all kinds of employment and will not see occupations or careers in terms of high or low status...
Giving us good lives and making us good people must surely be the essence of education. If education is not about helping each of us have a good life and become a good person then what is it about…
We must have two great ambitions for the future: to create a more fully educated society and, even more importantly, to create a kinder, more caring world.
Longer extracts
Chapter 1
A LIFE OF LEARNING
A lot to learn
We are forever learning – every day, all our lives. Every day we learn new things whether by watching the news on television, going on the internet, noticing something on the way to work, listening to what our children have been up to or by having a conversation with someone. Today I have learned what the weather will be like tomorrow, caught up with the score in the test match and tried to memorise numbers up to ten in Italian.
We learn every day and we learn throughout our lives. We attend courses related to our employment and learn new skills and procedures when we change jobs. We take up new hobbies and interests and we constantly learn to adapt to new situations such as forming relationships, having children or coping with health problems. Some of my most recent learning, which has not been as successful as I would have wished, has been related to building a brick wall. I have not only learned a few techniques I have learned what a great skill bricklaying is. I have also recently been learning how to identify wading birds, how to find my way around Rome on foot and how to use a more modern mobile phone. For the future I would like to learn how to lay a patio properly, become much better at bird identification generally and fulfil my long-held ambition to gain some cookery skills.
Over the course of a lifetime the amount of learning we do is astonishing. Moreover, it is amazingly diverse. We learn the meaning of thousands of words which, in our everyday lives, we speak, read and write. We learn the essential number concepts that enable us to tell the time, put petrol in the car and decide whether we can afford to buy a new television or not. We learn the food we can eat, in which shops to find it and how we can buy it with cash or a plastic card. We master the use of cookers, microwaves, washing machines, mobile phones, computers, vacuum cleaners and other modern appliances. Most of us learn how to boil an egg, drive a car, book a holiday or check a bank statement. Most of us, too, acquire a basic general knowledge which would probably include knowing the capital city of France, the date of the Battle of Hastings and the fact that the earth goes round the sun, and most of us, I am sure, are able to recognise a picture of the Queen, Adolf Hitler or President Obama.
Having been born with basic abilities necessary for our survival we quickly embark on our life of learning. On our own and with support we learn to use our hands and arms to perform a great variety of different functions. We learn to sit, crawl, stand, walk, make sounds and to talk – our miraculous method of communicating which permits us instantly to translate our thoughts into words. By playing with toys we learn to organise our thinking and movements and by playing with other children we rapidly develop the physical, cognitive and social skills we need. We learn by experience, by absorbing information from our environment and by being guided by other people.
From an early age we begin to learn about the wider world. When we go out with our parents we learn by seeing houses, shops, cars, trees, birds, animals and lots of other people. When we visit the park we learn by feeding the ducks, running on the grass and climbing on the climbing frame, and when we go to the seaside we learn by feeling the sand beneath our feet, paddling in the sea and exploring the rock pools. Our store of knowledge and learning builds up rapidly as we see and experience different things and as these are explained to us. >>>
But acquiring knowledge, skills and understanding is only part of the learning we do. We have to learn how to behave towards each other – in our families, among our friends and colleagues, and in society generally. This behaviour includes respecting the needs of those around us, not doing harm to anyone and keeping to the rules that govern the environment we are in at any given time. Moreover, our behaviour involves learning a large number of social conventions such as how we dress, how we manage our personal hygiene and how we conduct ourselves in certain situations.
We have to learn values that will guide our behaviour – values like compassion, kindness, generosity, honesty, reliability and respect for our differences. It is important that we know and understand the values that will guide us but it is even more important that we learn to apply them in our lives. Children need to hear the parable of the Good Samaritan and understand its message but if they do not put it into practice they will not actually have learned the behaviour that is being advocated. The same applies to the other values they are taught. Learning them is much more than just knowing what they are.
As well as values we have to learn important attributes of character that will guide our behaviour. Amongst these are determination, resilience, diligence and courage and, as with our values, we can only consider them to be properly learnt when they are firmly embedded in what we do.
Families and societies would be unable to function if human beings did not learn behaviour, values and character. Many people would argue that this is the most important learning we do, far more important than learning how to calculate the area of a circle or learning about the Wars of the Roses. >>>
Chapter 2
THE PAST
From the Neolithic to the twentieth century
We have a lot to learn as human beings and this has been true throughout history. It is also true that the extent of our learning today is far greater than that of our forebears. In terms of acquiring the knowledge, skills and behaviour that we need at home, at work or in our studies we do far more learning than they did. Saying this is not to belittle what they did learn – whenever in history this may have been.. They had more than enough learning to do in order to survive or live comfortably by the standards of their day and age but, compared with the quantity of our own learning, it was a very small amount. Those who studied the scriptures or Latin literature had the most to learn but this was not a great deal when set against what is learned in schools, colleges and universities today.
For thousands of years the knowledge, skills and behaviour that each new generation acquired was passed on orally in the home or at work. For most of human history there were no schools where children and young people were taught because special places in which to learn were unnecessary. Learning and teaching occurred naturally as children helped adults with their daily tasks. This was the way successive generations learned how to grow food, look after animals, make clothes, build homes and work metal, wood or stone.
In Britain the first schools appeared during the Roman occupation and were available for the sons of Roman citizens and native chieftains. It was in Anglo-Saxon times, however, that schools were created which gradually evolved into the institutions we are familiar with today. The impetus for education came with the revival of Christianity and the endeavours of the early Church to spread the word of God to a heathen population. Schools were established in cathedrals, large churches and monasteries, in order to train converts as priests and give them instruction in singing, Latin, the scriptures and liturgy. Although by the eighth century there may only have been about twenty of these schools they were of enormous historical significance. They marked the beginning of a structured system of education and at the same time began the close involvement of the Church in the provision of schooling which has continued to this day. >>>
The twentieth century and beyond
The Education Act of 1870 marked the beginning of a new era. Under the Act locally elected school boards were charged with the task of establishing elementary schools where provision was inadequate and by the turn of the century education was compulsory for all children up to the age of 12. In 1902 state intervention in education, as well as state provision, was cemented by legislation giving local councils responsibility for both elementary and secondary schools. From this point onwards the growth of state intervention and state provision in all sectors of education would proceed unremittingly.
It was the legislation of 1902, Balfour’s Education Act, which began the public funding of secondary schools already in existence, amongst which were fee-paying grammar schools. New secondary schools were also established resulting in an increase in provision from nearly five hundred in 1904–5 to over one thousand in 1913–14. Significantly 349 secondary schools were for girls and 237 were mixed which marked a considerable advance in female education – although it should be said that the girls at these schools were almost entirely middle-class and in fact represented only a small number of their class, the vast majority of whom were still educated at home or in private schools. Parents were charged fees for their children at secondary school but after 1907 all secondary schools in receipt of a grant were obliged to provide a quarter of their places free to pupils from elementary schools who passed a qualifying exam.
Pupils attending state secondary schools followed a curriculum prescribed by the government which comprised English, history, geography, maths, science, drawing and at least one language other than English. Girls were to receive training in practical housewifery and both girls and boys were to engage in physical exercises and some kind of manual work. The curriculum was broadly in the academic tradition of grammar and public schools and it has a very familiar look about it. It formed the basis of the education that most secondary pupils received in the twentieth century whether they attended an early secondary school, a secondary modern or grammar school of the fifties and sixties, a comprehensive school or a leading public school. >>>
Legacies of the past >>>
The legacy of educational provision is an enormous achievement and what is provided is undoubtedly of a high quality. Nevertheless the system has shortcomings which are legacies from the recent or more distant past. I describe what I believe to be the shortcomings of the system in Chapter 5 but will mention one of them here: the essentially monolithic nature of what has developed – a legacy that has almost inevitably resulted from the expanding role of the state. Our system is not as uniform or as regimented as systems in some other countries but pupils do attend similar sorts of schools, learn in a similar manner during similar hours of the day, follow a broadly similar curriculum and take a broadly similar path through their education. If we want to raise standards and bring new dimensions to the way we learn we need to explore what can be achieved by having a system that is less monolithic and which offers more diversity.
Chapter 3
THE PRESENT
Provision
The provision of formal education in our country has become one of the largest services delivered by the state. It has substantial sums of money spent on it each year, it directly employs over two million people and in various ways it generates considerable economic activity and employment in the private sector.1 Total expenditure on state education in the United Kingdom today is £83.4 billion which represents 11% of all government spending.2 Whether this is too much or too little is a question for the taxpayer to ponder.
The money spent by the government provides almost 21,000 primary schools in the whole of the United Kingdom, just over 4,000 secondary schools, 94 sixth form colleges and 291 colleges of further education. Government money also helps to provide 125 universities. Together these establishments educate over 9 million primary and secondary pupils, 4.5 million students, any age, full and part-time, in further education colleges and 2.5 million students, again any age, full and part-time, in higher education.3
Total spending on primary and secondary schools in the UK is £63 billion with an average of approximately £4,900 per annum being spent on each pupil at primary school and £9700 on each pupil at secondary school.4 Total spending on further and higher education combined is £10.5 billion and for the youngest age group the sum spent on under fives is £5 billion.
In recent years there has been a change in the way schools are funded and controlled. Many secondary schools and a considerable number in the primary sector have now become academies which have opted out of local authority control and are funded directly by central government. They are not obliged to follow the national curriculum but the curriculum they offer must be broad and balanced and include English, maths, science and religious education. In practice the content of what they teach is not very different from what has normally been taught in schools. >>>
Chapter 4
THE ACHIEVEMENT
The greatest legacy of education is everything it has achieved for individuals, society and humanity. It is impossible to quantify the scale of this achievement but it has been colossal. To repeat what was said earlier, it has enabled people to provide for themselves and their families and to contribute to the comfortable and civilised society in which we live. It has also enabled human beings collectively to acquire an infinite amount of knowledge, skills and understanding – although not yet an infinite amount of wisdom.>>>
Chapter 5
PRESENT SHORTCOMINGS
An achievement but …
Given what I have said so far about our education system it would seem reasonable to ask whether anything about it needs to change very much. If children and young people are acquiring such a vast amount of knowledge, if, as I believe, standards are higher in schools than they have ever been, if our behaviour and values are better, and if human achievements are so incredible should we not be content with what we have? Should we not keep things more or less the same as they are, make some gradual adjustments when required and carry on in the direction we have been travelling? >>>
The achievements brought about by education have been beyond anything that could have been imagined until recently. No one looking into the future two hundred years ago could possibly have foreseen the incredible advances in medicine, the developments in transport and communications, the comfort of our homes, the infinite number of goods and services we can purchase or the huge range of job opportunities available to us. No one could have foreseen, either, the decent, ordered, tolerant and caring society to which education has contributed enormously. But there is more we can achieve and we can begin the endeavour of achieving more by addressing some of the shortcomings and frailties that exist in the way we educate our children at present.
Not everyone will agree with the shortcomings I identify. That is to be expected as they are based on personal views which may or may not be shared by others. >>>
Chapter 6
EXAMS
Two routes
The adverse effects that GCSEs have on learning and teaching were considered in the previous chapter. I argued that they take up too much time, they can lead to cramming, they reduce the pleasure of learning and they leave little room for deviation from the syllabus. Unfortunately they are also a serious shortcoming of our education system in other respects and this is the theme of the discussion that follows. >>>
Job selection and work preparation
Job selection
Before deciding whether our preoccupation with GCSE grades is a useful way of selecting or preparing people for employment we should take a brief look at what is perhaps the most controversial debate in education: the nature, nurture debate. The reason the issue should receive attention will become apparent. >>>
The examination system we have at the moment is not the best way to select young people for employment. It perpetuates the mistaken belief that grades gained in subjects studied at school indicate the natural aptitudes, or lack of them, which make people suitable for certain types of employment when actually they have the potential to do anything. >>>
The future of exams and grades >>>
My hope is that we move away from our obsession with examinations and grades, away from the belief that there are significant differences in our innate mental capabilities which account for substantial differences in attainment and away from our ideas about the role of schools in selecting and preparing young people for employment.
We should bring GCSEs to an end. They are not useful for selecting pupils for future courses and occupations and nor are they useful for preparing pupils for work. They are a time-consuming distraction from fulfilling the many essential purposes of education, they cause too much cramming of knowledge and they do too little to encourage an intrinsic interest in learning. We should constantly remind ourselves that learning history or physics should not be about producing good answers in an exam it should be about understanding and assimilating knowledge that pupils can store away and keep returning to as adults because they find it interesting. The time for rigorous assessment is later when people start work and society needs to know they are competent to do their job.
As well as bringing GCSEs to an end we must reject the notion that innate ability determines whether we will be practical or academic, or even artistic or sporting. Instead we must have the highest expectations for all pupils in all areas of the curriculum and fully absorb the idea that motivation and endeavour will improve their learning whatever this may be.
Chapter 7
PURPOSES
Six purposes for individuals and families
I have indicated what I consider to be the number one purpose of education for the individual but the five other purposes are not placed in any order of priority. They are all essential and should be achieved to the greatest possible extent. I have included the family with the individual because most people’s individual lives are closely connected with their families and the purposes I set out will often therefore serve the wider needs of the family.
The six purposes relate our learning needs to the needs we have in life. If these learning needs are met it would be my hope that as individuals we would have acquired the diverse learning necessary to live our lives well and be equipped for most of what this involves – whether it is looking after our families, earning a living, occupying our leisure time or interacting with other people. >>>
Purposes for society
Education serves our individual needs and whilst doing so it serves the needs of society as a whole. This is because non-subsistent societies are based on the economic and social interdependence of the individuals who belong to them. >>>
Chapter 8
THE FUTURE – LEARNING AT SCHOOL >>>
Not enough time is given to thinking skills and nor is enough time given to learning practical life skills thoroughly – another shortcoming in the system. There should be nothing unusual about pupils going straight from a lesson where they have been thinking critically about various political issues to a lesson where they learn how to iron a shirt. Fortunately, and long overdue, more time is now being given to cooking and financial education, both of which have been neglected in recent years, but more time also needs to be found for other practical life skills.
Most of these should be learned at home but by including them in the school curriculum teachers can reinforce what parents have taught and cover those that some pupils may have missed. >>>
Raising standards. >>>
My third proposal is that the school-leaving age should be lowered to fifteen and that at this point all pupils should be given a School Certificate which would contain information about their progress at secondary school, their capabilities, their attitude to learning and the development of their character. Since the School Certificate would be seen by society as a valuable source of information young people would wish to have positive comments written about them. They would therefore be additionally motivated to make an effort with their learning and work to the best of their ability.
The School Certificate would also include the results of demanding national tests in functional English, functional maths, computing and thinking skills taken at the end of year 10, the final year of compulsory schooling. These results would be in the form of percentage scores for each subject and a certain percentage would have to be reached to achieve an award of competency in a subject. Attaining these scores would be challenging but there would be an expectation that the overwhelming majority of pupils would achieve them. Meeting the requirements for the tests in functional English and maths would ensure higher standards in these basic skills and the same would be true of computing. Meeting the requirements for the test in thinking ability would have the effect of raising standards in every subject.
Chapter 9
THE FUTURE – LEARNING BEYOND SCHOOL
The future of further and higher education >>>
However, too many students do not go on to use the knowledge and training they receive. They take jobs in which their specialist learning is not required or they switch courses or, having started a course, they drop out of the system altogether.2 When these situations arise the courses the students have taken have not prepared them for the jobs they eventually enter and it thus seems reasonable to say that the system is not fulfilling its central purpose as well as it should be.3
I would suggest that if people do not use any of the specialist knowledge and training they have received then it has not been necessary for them to go to college or university to prepare for work. Some will argue that even if they do not use the knowledge they have gained they will nevertheless have acquired other useful skills that could be applied to any type of employment but I would argue that this should not be necessary as these should mostly be acquired at school. (Chapter 7) As for the idea that a university education, particularly, is necessary to equip people with the analytical skills that are required in white-collar occupations I am not at all persuaded. These, too, should be acquired at school and if thinking skills are to be are given the much higher priority that I have proposed we can be more confident they will be. Learned thoroughly at school they will be useful for all occupations and not only those classed as white-collar. >>>
Rethinking the system >>>
This leads me to the conclusion that we should rethink our whole system of further and higher education. We should rethink old ideas about young people having innate aptitudes for certain types of job – aptitudes that society mistakenly believes are confirmed by exam results. We should rethink ideas about higher education being necessary to expand the mind and equip people with analytical skills which are needed in white-collar occupations and we should rethink the belief that going away to university is important for personal development. As part of the rethinking process we should also consider carefully whether long courses at college and university are really necessary to provide suitable training and study and whether less time spent at these establishments and more time spent on training in the workplace would be equally effective.
If we engage in some serious thinking and rethinking we can move away from some of our current ideas about further and higher education. We will then be open to accepting a clear vision for the future in which the whole system would focus more sharply on providing each student with the training and knowledge required for the specific occupation he or she intended to take up. >>>
… At the age of fifteen I would like to see young people thinking carefully about their future employment. They should be mature enough to do this and if their education has followed the purposes set out previously they will be thoughtful, industrious individuals who are well equipped for the workplace and for adult life. At fifteen they should be permitted to leave school if they wished, provided they had a job to go. Up until the age of seventeen, school leavers would be obliged to spend the equivalent of one day a week away from their job studying subjects which interested them and following a citizenship course which would include community service. Since they would no longer be receiving state-funded education they would be given a credit they could use later to help purchase any future training or learning they might wish to undertake.
To those who might say that starting work at fifteen would reduce the amount of education young people receive I would say the opposite is true. The educational benefits of the workplace are immense and it is here they will learn vital lessons about mature attitudes, responsibility, reliability and using their initiative.
All students who stay in full-time education after fifteen would begin vocational training and study linked to specific occupations or occupational sectors. This would not only serve the purpose of preparing them for work it would also serve the purpose of fostering well-being and fulfilment by initially giving them a clear direction in which to travel. Young people would choose the occupations in which they were interested from a wide range that would cover all forms of employment. … >>>
Chapter 10
GOOD LIVES, GOOD PEOPLE AND THE GOOD SOCIETY
Giving us good lives and making us good people must surely be the essence of education. If education is not about helping each of us have a good life and become a good person then what is it about? By “good life” I mean what I describe below. >>>
The future: better people, better society >>>
We have achieved the civilised and caring society that exists in our own and other countries because people have developed good character and learned good values and behaviour. But we will have an even more civilised and caring society if all of us, at any age, develop more good character and learn more good values and behaviour; if, in other words, we learn to be better people – better individuals, better with our families and better citizens. And we can learn to be better people by being helpful, considerate and kind to others at all times and by thinking carefully about important questions in the way I have just indicated.
We will have a more civilised and caring society if we also teach our children better values and behaviour. We need to continue with what we are doing now but do it better and do more of it – do more and better teaching at home and more and better teaching in school.
At home parents should be gentle, firm and consistent. They must teach their children the two basic principles of human behaviour mentioned previously: that they should not do harm to anyone in any way and that they should always aim to do good. They must instil the difference between right and wrong and, importantly, explain why some things are right and some are wrong. If they do this successfully they will give their children the driver of behaviour we know as conscience which, amongst other things, will help them become honest, truthful and law-abiding. They should teach them to treat other people in the way they would like to be treated and repeatedly remind them of the maxim “do as you would be done by”.
They should make sure their children do as they are asked without making a fuss. As has been suggested jobs should be given to them around the house and they should be trained to ask if they can do anything to help. In their daily interactions, from when they are very young until they are teenagers, parents must constantly encourage them to be kind, considerate, unselfish and generous, to show sympathy and empathy and to be grateful, polite and modest.7 They must teach them to think about the effect of their actions and words on other people and to stop and think before they do anything that might cause harm or say anything that might be hurtful. They must teach them to be gentle, not aggressive, and to see the other person’s point of view when there are disagreements. >>>
Chapter 11
NEW DIRECTIONS, BIG AMBITIONS
The provision of formal education is a towering human achievement. As we have seen it has given us comforts and conveniences in abundance, health care of outstanding quality and a framework of law and democracy. It continues to give us skills for employment so we can provide for ourselves and our families and contribute to society’s economic interdependence. It adds greatly to our well-being by enabling us to pursue leisure interests, by giving us the technology that brings entertainment into our homes and by giving us the ability to read for pleasure and interest. It has hugely improved our values and attitudes and helped to construct an amazing store of knowledge that can be accessed by everyone. All in all education has delivered a civilised, caring society inhabited for the most part by kind and responsible individuals.
But we can do better. We can have better lives and live in a better society and it is education that can deliver this. >>>
Alternative provision >>>
I will propose a number of possible alternatives to our existing system and I would be pleased if they were considered carefully. They all require parents to take an active role in selecting the sort of education they would like for their children and in the case of home schooling an active role in providing this education. In order for parents to conveniently select the alternative provision they wanted it would be necessary either to allocate them government money to purchase their preferred option through a voucher or tax rebate scheme or give them an annual number of hours they could use to educate their children in schools of their choice. The value of the voucher or the total number of hours would be based on current state expenditure and provision. With either of these methods people would be able to try any of the ideas I am suggesting and some much needed diversity would be brought to the monolithic system we currently have. >>>
Two ambitions
We must have two great ambitions for the future: to create a more fully educated society and, even more importantly, to create a kinder, more caring world. The first of these ambitions requires us to teach our children, and teach each other, how to think clearly, make rational, wise decisions and not always follow the crowd. It requires us to teach a vast range of knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare future generations for employment so that they can provide for themselves and their families as well as contribute to producing the comforts and conveniences of modern society. It means we have to give all young people a mastery of basic English and maths and teach them practical life skills so they can manage their finances, cook properly and know what being a good parent demands.
Greater ambition for a more fully educated society will mean pupils learning about well-being and fulfilment which will include knowing the importance of giving and receiving love from those closest to us, finding satisfaction in achieving things and engaging in creative and sporting pursuits. It will mean giving them an understanding that real fulfilment does not come from accumulating material possessions but is found in simple pleasures like watching the waves or reading a book, and the sometimes more difficult endeavour of helping and caring for others. >>>
The second great ambition we should have, to create a kinder, more caring world, will require us to teach our children and ourselves how to be kinder and more caring people. It will require us to put the well-being of others permanently to the fore in our thoughts and actions.
It will mean striving to create a fairer society in which poverty, social deprivation, inadequate housing and damaging lifestyles have been virtually eliminated. It will mean improving education for children from less well-off or disadvantaged homes so that they have good employment opportunities and opportunities for a life with a great deal of well-being and fulfilment. It will mean teaching pupils that everyone’s contribution to the economy should be properly recognised and remunerated. >>>
We should go into the future building on the past and present. We must learn from experience, address shortcomings, be clear in our purposes, extend our thinking and pursue new ambitions. We must be forever learning how to deliver the highest quality education to our children to make certain they become adults with the best knowledge, skills and understanding, the best well-being and fulfilment, and the best behaviour, values and character. If we can achieve this my thought is we can be confident they will inhabit a more fully educated society and a kinder, more caring world.