New ideas are needed in education: what is yours?
Problems and Solutions
Education in the UK is facing a perfect storm of crises, including (but sadly not limited to):
> cost of living - putting a strain on young people and families;
> a lingering attendance dip post-pandemic;
> funding for schools has lagged behind inflation;
>... and teaching faces a generational recruitment and retention challenge.
There are also the longer term challenges for schools worldwide, as set out by Lemov et al.: the corrosive effects of Social Media on Mental Health; a growing Mistrust of Schools as Institutions; and the pressure on the Social Contract needed to run schools effectively.
So far, so gloomy.
However, this blog is all about finding solutions and working relentlessly to provide opportunities for young people. So, where to begin?
Firstly, difficult times call for innovative solutions. I already see plenty of optimism and positivity in the North East schools I work with. In particular, the opportunities created by large partnerships of schools, when done well, can be game-changing. There are the financial benefits of centralising and finding efficiencies on the operational side, but there are also the benefits around quality school improvement, recruitment and talent-pathways to develop staff across multiple schools. These are all things that individual schools struggle to do in isolation, particularly under the external constraints as outlined above.
Secondly, there is the inherent optimism in 99% of teachers and senior leaders (I'm ignoring the 1% of grumpsters). Working with young people day by day can't help but galvanise and prompt peers to find creative solutions. Wouldn't it be great if teachers had '20% Google Time' to work on innovative projects that benefited their school and the wider system? As a thought experiment, perhaps consider: what would you do in education if you had the time and resource? Which problem would you tackle first? For me, more CPD needs to have this kind of creative time built-in. We've never needed innovation and collaboration more and teachers are best-placed to develop some of the local solutions needed.
It was in this frame of mind that I read inerest of the joint recruitment of a Chemistry teacher to work across two schools in London, one Independent, one state: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/chemistry-teacher-london-recruitment-crisis-state-schools-b1057751.html
It is this kind of cross-sector solution that I'm most interested in through my role as Director of Partnerships at RGS in Newcastle. Where can we use Collaborative Advantage to become more than the sum of our parts?
The demand for cross-sector and multi-school initiatives is growing, filling the gap that centralised funding has left behind. For example, we have been delighted to with with the amazing Fiona Swift at Westfield school on a Maths stretch and challenge project, which has grown exponentially over the last year. There are now 170 students signed up for next year's Hybrid Further Maths GCSE course (delivered online and in-person) in partnership with the Reece Foundation. In this scheme, students who can't access the qualification in their own setting join others from a multitude of schools across the region to extend their Maths beyond GCSE Maths, thus providing a stronger bridge to A Level Maths and Further Maths. On the one hand, it is sad that such schemes are needed, but a pragmatic solution is required for these young people right now, who only get to be 16 once... of course a longer term government-level strategy would be nice (!), but in innovation must fill the gap for our talented young people in the meantime.
As Marc Randolph, founder of Netflix tweeted recently:
If there are innovators in the North East who'd like to do some reality-colliding of ideas - do get in touch!
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