The aims of education
Within the BCH programme, the investigations of possible, probable and preferable futures are made so to understand the implications for education: how it’s organised, who will be involved, the aims, processes etc, and how these may be challenged in the light of socio and technological change. But how can we be sure of the what ‘education’ is for now, let alone think about how it will change in the future?
There are many ways to think about the broad aims of education: those set out in the Children’s Plan; the broad range of aims set out in the Big Picture Curriculum; the aims of the Every Children Matters agenda, or the detail within the National Curriculum. All of these set out a mixture of aims of education.
But then there is the nuance of how these different aims are valued to a greater or lesser extent by different parts of the community. For example, the relationship between the economic drives for education (preparing people for future work etc) and the social/personal drives for education (enabling people to reach their potential). But this is not an easy seesaw to balance, and the difficulty in articulating the ‘aims’ of education becomes more complex as the detail of the discussion becomes more granular.
One of the Powerleagues we have set up is there to prompt discussion – and capture the outcomes – around this subject. How do you prioritise the different aims of education? And if not prioritising them, how do you ensure that the education system meets the demands of all of its stakeholders? An interesting front page of the National Schools Partnership highlights that 45% of the population have a direct relationship with schools: in 30,000 schools, 1 million people are employed, there are about 10 million pupils and about 15 million parents. And that is schools alone: the figures increase when other educational institutions are taken into consideration, and they increase again when you consider who else have a direct, yet different, relationship with schools: future employers, those reliant upon the workforce etc.
So the question that emerges jumps up and down to be answered is how can these people, who have a direct relationship with formal education, be involved in articulating what they expect of schools and of the education system. How can their voices and expectiations be collected, collated and used to inform the development of the education system that is appropriate for the society that we want?
Million Futures and Powerleague are great sites for our programme and ‘engagement’ with a wide range of people. But where are the vehicles for a wider ‘Public Understanding of Education’ or the methods to create a public debate about education? Answers on a postcard…
