Training Blog

Lot’s of things are coming together for me at the moment. This post is an attempt to try to mash them together and see what comes out…

1) I’m reading the Cluetrain Manifesto. If there was ever a book that says what I’ve been thinking – this is it:

Many people in today’s world seem to assume that official authorisation is required to learn new things

At some point you’ve got to break down and trust people both inside and outside your organisation.

Does your organisation have any genuine passion to share? Can you deal with such honesty?

Organisations don’t know who their customers are any more.

The Net is next to impossible to understand unless you’ve experienced it for yourself.

I could go on, but I’d probably end up quoting from every page…

2) Through Twitter interactions with Tony Parkin, Doug Belshaw, Eylan Ezekiel and a host of other people who have been pushing the boundaries for years, I’m re-engaging with my passion for schools and teaching. We’ve been saying for years that networks fundamentally change the dynamic of education. That classroom walls can be broken down, that learning is a wider process than that of knowledge transfer from teacher to student. Yet, with all the thinking and fantastic practice that is going on, we still haven’t really changed the underlying organisational structures that our schools are based on.

I’m not saying throw out the baby with the bathwater. But the trouble is, there just isn’t the critical mass of networked people in each institution. What would happen if they all got together to create a new way of doing education?

3) A similar situation is happening in corporate learning. There are individuals within L&D teams across the country (and the world) who are connecting, learning how to learn and trying to demonstrate how training has to change not just just to keep up with society but to make training better. What would happen if they got together to create a new way of doing corporate L&D?

4) We keep having conferences. Teachmeets are becoming some of the most valuable CPD events for teachers. Yet very little real change is happening at a structural level.

5) We have a choice. We either stay inside the current structures and try to change them from the inside or we leave them.

6) Let’s assume, for the moment, that leaving is not an option, so how do we change the current structures? We have to play the game. Use the accepted methods to communicate and make change happen. That means engaging with the regular media and lobbying government (or the management).

7) So here’s a proposal. I’m focussing on schools for now:

Education policy conference

(Thanks to Eylan for his significant input on this)

Purpose: To look at education in its widest sense and propose recommendations for government.

Participants: A mix of ’stakeholders’ (eg. teachers, policy-makers, industry leaders, parents, techies, kids!)

Method:

1. Prepare the ground with a series of prompt statements (see below) – publicised widely and discussed in various media spaces.
2. Raise the issues of assessment, curriculum, the place of school in society and the home, infrastructure and ethos.
3. Participants to contribute to a conference wiki under those headings.
4. Participants to come prepared to a day’s conference to discuss, agree, and map out a 5 year plan towards creating a 21st century education system.
5. The final statement must have three aspects – it must be written for a policy audience, must show stages of development, and must be simple to sum up.

Prompt statements

• The National Curriculum should stay But Ofsted should go
• Testing must be rigorous but results should not be published
• Schools have a moral and societal obligation to help shape children’s lives to be healthy and respectful of authority
• If teachers choose resources / suppliers then those choices should be accountable to the community
• Classrooms should only be used when absolutely necessary
• The government should appoint a Chief Education Officer, and an independent advisory board on education
• The Open University is a model of highly effective, scalable education that could be replicated across schools and universities nationwide.

So, what do you think? Could this work? Would it make any difference? Only if it had a high enough profile.