On this pleasantly autumnal day, I’ve spent around 7 hours at my desk working hard on behalf of Anspear developing some learning materials for a module that’s part of one of the initial teacher training courses run by the University of Buckingham. It’s a fantastic program aimed at those who have valuable experience in teaching support who want to develop their skills further to become fully qualified teaching professionals.
In the current teacher recruitment and retention crisis, having new trainees is vitally important and I hope that those currently undertaking the course buck the worrying trend of departing the profession in fewer than five years because of its mental health and high-pressure challenges. (That’s an entirely different blog topic that I may venture into on another day!)
The content I’m writing is focussed on Primary school ‘Computing’, and as I’ve been reading, researching and drafting the specific details it has really struck home with me just how outdated aspects of our national curriculum now are.
Of course, there are many educators out there whose practice is innovative and forward thinking, and they are already making necessary adaptions to keep up with the relentless technological evolution in our ever-changing global reality. However, this is not the case across all schools; and to me, this highlights just how necessary Professor Becky Francis OBE’s curriculum and assessment review is.
When the national curriculum was developed in readiness for launching in 2014, artificial intelligence of course existed but wasn’t commonplace within our global conversations. It’s questionable whether even then curriculum approach that is driven by knowledge collection, retention and regurgitation matched the demands of the workplace, but if it did ten years ago; it certainly doesn’t now. After years of austerity within the public services (education included) it’s no surprise that teachers are weary and un-inclined to be creative with a curriculum that doesn’t readily engage its students, nor provide the types of transferrable skills that will prepare them for the future life pathways they will navigate.
I applaud the government’s commitment to closing the disadvantage gap and provide an education for all learners that genuinely levels the playfield in our society. Surely the most constructive step towards this is to embrace the waves of evolving technology that are rolling onto the education shoreline at an exponential rate? Surely it is much more effective for learners to spend less time trying to memorise outdated facts and figures that are now effectively available to them at the touch of a button (or voice command), and instead focus on power skill such as analysing, evaluating, synthesising, measuring and applying? These are coincidently already mapped into the Computer Science program of study and just need to be explored within the generative AI context.
The strongest arguments I’ve heard in defense of embracing AI tools are that of incompatibility with the public exams system. Why teach in a dynamic investigative, exploratory way when the way students are assessed is based on recall and recitation? They would be unprepared and risk failure. This goes against every fundamental principle within an educators’ psyche. I couldn’t agree more.
But, here is an opportunity to change the entire framework so that the way we test students at the end of their education journey is actually reflective of the skills and knowledge they need to be taking out into employment. We can use the flexibility and adaptability that technology offers us to back fill with other lost skills such as oracy and critical thinking that get swept away in in the tide of exam preparation at KS4 and 5. Degree Apprenticeships that promote vocational studies can also get in on the act and their profile will be increased; another opportunity to close the disadvantage gap.
Of course, I am not promoting this concept blindly. There is an extensive list of risks, and so this new approach, whatever it looks like will need absolutely need rigorous safeguarding academic regulation, and policy guidelines to support examination boards and regulators, schools and educators; not to mention the Edtech developers themselves.
Whilst much of this may seem like an ideological pipedream, I truly believe we have a window here where national education policy makers can take a visionary view and take a step towards world leading education advancement.
I spend some of my time inspecting and international schools to gain British Overseas Schools (BSO) accreditation status. I see firsthand through this role how highly regarded our British education system is on the international stage.
Olli-Pekka Heinonen, Director-General of the International Baccalaureate is already presenting a similar message to my humble ramblings. You can read his article on the TES magazine.
Rather than trading kudos on an obsolete, archaic historical model for an education system, wouldn’t be great if we could genuinely earn that accolade for the 21st century and the generations of learners to come?
