        Phone: 0131 558 8137 |
|
SCPO Briefing Paper 4/6
Education? Education? Education? "The Scottish Executive and the Education, Culture and Sport Committee of the Scottish Parliament have formed a unique partnership to consider the future of school education in Scotland. Working in parallel, we want to encourage debate on education in all groups with an interest, locally and nationally." Cathy Jamieson, Minister for Education and Young People, launched this "National Debate on Education", to run between now and the end of June, in parallel with an invitation from Parliament's Education Committee which wants "to develop its practical vision for Scottish education, to inform its scrutiny of all education issues in future and to bring into the public domain the wide range of positive thinking about education that exists in Scotland": "the Committee sees its debate feeding constructively into the Executive’s debate, but also being independent of it, and hopes that people will respond in different ways to the two" (though it is not clear how that will work). Recognising the churches' historic and continuing interest in education, and our range of current involvement in schools, this Briefing Paper aims to introduce the two strands of this debate and to stimulate discussion within churches as part of the national debate.
The Executive have produced a briefing pack (summarised here) and video for anyone wishing to stage an event as part of the debate (these can be obtained from the National Debate team on 08457 581750 or on the internet at www.scotland.gov.uk/nationaldebate). The suggestions for discussion are grouped around the following questions: (1) Why? - Why we educate children and young people (2) What? - What children learn, and what takes place in schools (3) How? - How learning and teaching are delivered (4) Who? - Who can help children and young people to learn (5) When? - When learning takes place. (6) Where? - Where education takes place. (1) Why?: Education is important for a number of reasons – to support and encourage children and young people in order to help them live a happy and healthy life; to help them develop and achieve their ambitions; to prepare them for a creative and productive working life, and to prepare them to be citizens of a changing world. These are only a few of the reasons why we educate young people. It is important to look to the future to develop an education system which meets all of these needs, for all of our children.(2) What? To prepare for the future, we need to think about what children should learn. The balance between learning about individual areas of knowledge and learning the skills with which to apply that knowledge is important … To be sure that we are helping young people throughout their time at school, it is important to measure how they are progressing. It is also important for young people to be able to display what they have achieved … What are the top 5 things that all young people should learn at school? These might be: particular subjects (which ones?), and skills, attitudes and behaviour, such as to be able to read and write, to understand numbers and arithmetic, to be creative and enterprising, to have self discipline, to be flexible and able to adapt to change, to have ambition, to respect themselves and other people, to have positive attitudes and expectations, to know how to look after their physical and mental health (3) How? How do children learn? There has been much research in recent years about how the brain functions. We should be helping children to be creative - not just in the arts but in everything they do. We all function best when we are fit and well - mentally and physically. How can we get most benefit from research into learning, and how can we help children with their mental and physical wellbeing? … Different countries around the world have different education systems, and there may be good things in other countries that we could learn from.(4) Who? At the moment, children generally learn with one teacher at primary school, with different teachers at secondary school and sometimes with classroom assistants or other helpers. Who ought to be involved in helping children to learn in future? What skills will these people need?Parents and other carers are often a child's first teacher. Parents' views on what they want from their child's time at school are different now from in the past, and may well be very different again in the future. Young people may have different family structures, and parents' working patterns and lifestyles may be very different from times gone by. The relationships between parents and their child's school could develop in different ways in the future – and parents may wish to know more or different things about how their children are doing at school. How can parents help their children learn? What support do they need? (5) When? Children and young people spend at least 10 years at school. This is longer than many people spend working in one job, or living in one place. The changes that take place in a young person over that decade are probably the most significant of their lifetime. Different people are ready for different experiences at different times – and so there may be ways to organise learning, as well as by age, that help every young person with their learning. The age at which children start school is important, as well as the age at which they leave. The transfers from pre-school to primary school, from primary to secondary school and from school to the rest of their life can be daunting for young people. There may be different ways that we can help children and young people take on these challenges confidently. (6) Where? Most children and young people go to school – a building with classrooms and corridors. Providing a safe, purpose-built and stimulating environment is important in helping children to learn – that learning environment might look very different in the future. If you could design a school for the 21st century, what would it look like? What might it offer that schools do not offer just now? Would it be more than somewhere to learn? Who might use it and when? (B) Education Committee Parliament's Education Committee aims at "provoking debate in more depth on key issues about the future of education"; their paper (copies available from SCPO) outlines six themes, each with a key question, and an overall key question: Is there a need in a rapidly changing world for radical change in the education system? Theme 1: Coping with Change and Uncertainty Key question - How can the education system help children and young people to cope with high levels of uncertainty and the rapid pace of change? This section includes possibilities for new means of funding, managing and governing education. What should the roles of parents, teachers and the local community be in governing schools? How should their roles relate to the role of the elected local authority and to the national level? Education is itself a force for change in society. So the debate has to be as much about the kind of society we want as the changes we would like to see in education. What are the goals which Scottish society is now setting for itself, and how should education help to achieve these goals? Are the current links among education, industry and commerce appropriate? Theme 2: Engaging with Ideas Key question - How far should education encourage children and young people to be capable of engaging with existing knowledge and developing innovative ideas as the basis for questioning authority and social conventions? Education is normally held to have a socialising role. This is most often stated in terms of promoting a strong, homogeneous society. It has also often. In recent times, this aim has increasingly frequently been given an economic dimension. Education is seen as critical to national prosperity in the knowledge age. But education is also about promoting citizenship. This has to do with sustaining democratic society. It involves both challenge and dissent. It is essentially about promoting a critical dialogue between the individual good citizen and a listening society. The individual can contribute only on the basis of well-informed thoughts. Therefore education has to engage with ideas and values and has to develop intellectual capacity. Does Scottish education do this adequately? Are these objectives consistent with the current emphasis on assessment? Theme 3: Keeping Everyone Involved with Learning Key question - Is what we are currently doing in schools an adequate proxy for what we think education ought to do? Many individuals and groups feel alienated from society, including from the democratic process itself. Large minorities of young people are alienated specifically from learning and education and children from poor families and deprived communities continue to face greater obstacles to educational success. Despite some attempts to match resources to needs, poverty and disadvantage remain strongly correlated with educational failure. Is this a problem that education can tackle on its own? What other measures should society take to try and ensure comparability of outcome for young people from all backgrounds? Theme 4: Promoting a Sense of Identity Key question - Is there something different distinctive and special about the way that Scotland should respond to change? Promoting a sense of identity is an important possible outcome of education. Acceptance of an identity is a beginning point for personal development, and so promoting a sense of identity is an important role for education. A strong sense of community identity is also essential to building cultural capital – the reservoir of knowledge and capacities which can be passed on between the generations. In a multi-cultural society, the notion of 'coherent variety', or managing diversity in a tolerant respectful and inclusive manner, is crucial. In Scottish terms, this involves regional, Scottish, British, European and global dimensions, but the exact balance among all of these is not easy to find. Culture is partly about shared heritage. What is that heritage? Does education have a responsibility for passing it on? How is the heritage changed by the inclusion of new cultures from outside Scotland, and by the adaptation of old Scottish cultures to a changing world. Theme 5: Developing Necessary Skills Key question - What skills are needed to make sense of large amounts of information, and to bring them together into a coherent response to change? There is always a risk that education is seen in terms that are too narrowly drawn. Is there a danger that in the pursuit of skills we pay insufficient attention to the artistic, emotional and imaginative aspects of individual development? Theme 6: Fitting Structure to Purpose Key question - Are schools the right places for all young people? Are we in danger of creating a system of management founded, perhaps unconsciously, on so-called "principles" culled from outmoded, industrial models? Can we articulate our management thought, comparing it critically with cutting-edge thought and practice at an international level? The Committee conclude "This debate must not just be about what to do next. Scotland needs to look into the future and think about the kind of education system it will need ten, twenty or more years from now. What changes should we be making now to help us meet those future needs?" (C) Theological and Church Context The post-reformation church in Scotland not only pioneered the radical idea of education for all but made it happen in building a system of a school in every parish. Churches retain a substantial input, both formal and informal, into the current educational system, through denominational schools, representation on local authority Education Committees, the contribution of school chaplains, etc; religious education remains, uniquely, a statutory part of the curriculum. Yet concerns have been expressed, in some quarters, as to how appropriate these are in the current context. From another perspective, the concerns have been about how meaningful these continuing involvements are. The expressed hopes of those launching this debate are to get beyond the "usual suspects" defensively going over tired debates, to take a fresh look at education today. That surely creates a challenge and an opening for the churches to develop and contribute a radical Christian perspective. Our approach to education says a great deal about how we see ourselves as people and as a community. Christ, the gospels suggest, was not the best behaved child in conventional terms. From an early age, he asked insistent questions; later, he disturbed the conventional wisdom of his day by putting a child at the centre, and put our nurture and ways of relating to children at the core of the life of the kingdom of God. Although we have frequently failed to live up to that, it is not only in Knox's day, or in a fond Victorian heyday of Sunday schools, that our thinking and practice have responded creatively. Much more recently, the ACTS Education Group developed a "Christian Vision for Scottish Education", rooting such a perspective in a Christian view of persons as "to be valued not only for what they can do or what they can produce but for who they are and because they are created in the image of God". Education must therefore be concerned with the whole person: "aesthetic, political, moral, spiritual, physical and social". It must be "child-focused, family-centred, community-based". On that basis, they challenge "any education policy which expends time and money on competition and achievement at the expense of the 'heart of the matter'" and call for Christian values to "permeate the curriculum and influence attitudes to pupils as well as the role of the teacher".
Home | Links |
Staff | FAQs |