The three presentations will be made available online (probably through Slideshare) but they are aimed at different audiences – so a quick run down below for those who want to start filling in those new Christmas calendars!

BCH is appearing three times at the BETT show – a free trade show for anyone interested in new technologies for education, held at London’s Olympia. Be great to meet some of you – and there’s also a brilliant freebie for anyone who visits us there!

The first is on Wednesday 14th January (3pm) , which will share some of the early developments of a toolkit to support strategic thinking and planning for educational change. The session will be particularly of use to education leaders involved large scale investments in education, such as Building Schools for the Future and Primary Capital Programmes. The toolkit builds on work from Futurelab and the evidence developed as part of the DCSF/Futurelab  Beyond Current Horizons The presentation will share some of this background before showcasing some of the developments of the toolkit that brings together a number of resources to support educational visioning; collaborative workshop techniques, and that uses a range of evidence to inform strategic planning. A quick 30 minute burst of how BCH may be of use to you in the New Year (on the DCSF’s Policy into Practice stand)

Second is a presentation on Saturday 17th January (12.30), also on the DCSF’s Policy into Practice stand. This presentation will provide more detail about what the programme is trying to achieve and present some of the emerging findings. In particular, it will present some of the current and emerging socio-technological trends and the implications for realising the goals of the Children’s Plan as well as the potential impact on learners, teachers, industry and learning institutions in the future. Particularly of use if you want to understand why long-term futures thinking is of use in education.

The third presentation is also on Saturday 17th January (2pm), in Seminar room C of Olympia. This presentation is more geared for teachers as it will introduce and share the ‘Innovations Handbook‘, the new, free resource from Futurelab that aims to help teachers and school leaders to develop innovative approaches to learning and teaching by offering practical tools, advice and argument to support changing practices. The presentation also talks about Beyond Current Horizons but the focus will be more about how emerging trends challenge current practice. In particular, by presenting both ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ and the ‘Innovations Handbook’, the aim is to offer visions of long-term futures whilst providing the tools for teachers and schools leaders to shape their schools’ near term futures.

And finally – there may be a brief outline of BCH at the BETT TeachMeet – but more importantly that event will provide a great opportunity to hear, first hand, some of the amazing work going on in schools at the moment.

Despite many invites the attendees comprised a CABE enabler and some teachers who had been involved in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) process – the three local authorities invited could not attend that day – although they are seen as key users. Local authorities are not only involved in BSF (an obvious case of long term education planning) but extended schools, general ICT procurement which could influence curriculum design, and overseeing curriculum implementation.

The day had two main conclusions. The first was that scenarios were not seen as a useful tool when it came to planning, and the second was the need for case studies.

To my mind the first is counter intuitive; although I have spent a lot of time investigating scenarios recently so may be biased. I would have thought that seeing possible futures would have broadened thinking, and certainly testing ones plans in a variety of situations would ensure robustness.  Yet the concerns expressed are far more immediate, they need something practical for next year, possibly even five years into the future, but they are not looking 20 years ahead. Is this because all the measurement factors are immediate? Is this because they feel they’re recipients rather than leading the process so they don’t need to think about the “big picture”? My conclusion is I need to talk to more people but I do hope that with the CABE now supporting school involvement those in, or about to start, the BSF process feel more empowered.

Case studies, the second conclusion, would illustrate how stakeholders could broaden their thinking, use the tools that are to be provided, and inspire them. Which is evidently lacking when faced with a toolkit to help without examples of how and why it works. I can understand the need for explanation, but am now faced with the challenge of creating them. So if you know of any examples where the testing of robustness of long term plans has been essential, or where there was real involvement from all the stakeholders, let me know. Thanks.

The majority of organisations that I have spoken with have, at most a 5 year vision, many a 3 year strategy and all a 1 to 2 year plan – so having conversations about 15 year futures is difficult and often the first conversation is about justifying why long term futures work is important and why it is worth investing the time to talk about it.   In the world of education where there are so many competing time pressures – with such a range of timescales – I thought it useful to state some of the specific values of long term futures thinking.  I’d be please if others added to the list (I will as the programme develops).

1. Who is education for?

The ‘formal’ education in England lasts from 4 – 19, that’s about 15 years of formal education.  Young children making the most of the ‘back to school’ shopping trips for stationery and daps getting ready for the first year in Reception class will be leaving secondary school in 2023, potentially leaving university in 2026 and entering the world of work.  If one of the aims of education is preparing the young for the world and for work then having an idea of what they’re being prepared for might be quite useful!  Investigating the sorts of changes that might occur, socially and technologically is important then in informing the sorts of skills, knowledges and aptitudes that we need to foster in formal schooling.  Having an understanding of the possible future of work and employment similarly could inform the curricular needed, the qualifications understood by industry and the options young people will have.  Preparing young people for the world outside of formal education means that we need to be informed about what that world will look like when they leave formal education.

2. Informing immediate actions

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the main criticisms of big investments such as BSF is that they’re too short-sighted in terms of investment, essentially rebuilding current schools, rather than really investigating what education and schooling is for at the beginning of the 21st century.  In the same post I mentioned cones of uncertainty – that if we can think hard about long term futures (where our thinking is less certain), as we regress that information in time to shorter term futures, our cones become denser with information and more certain.  The final step then, having investigated the wide range of possible futures, is to make decisions that take into account the preferable futures, probable futures and possible futures so that our immediate actions and investments are as fully informed as possible.

3. Creating preferable futures

Throughout BCH we talk about futures, rather than the future.  This is because our collective actions got to create the future we will inhabit – there is no set future that we’re all mindlessly stumbling towards.  The notion of agency then, the ability to act in the world, is a really important reason to think about long term futures.  Which parts of the evidence BCH is highlighting do you welcome?  Which parts make you shudder?  Then what are you going to do about it?  What actions or investments must we put in place to ensure that the future that is realised is the one that we want?  Having a good understanding of possible futures can inform our actions to create the desirable futures.

4. Systematic thinking informing current actions

Ahh, you say – but you’re not telling us what will be in 2025, you’re making observations of what could be.  How can we make reliable decisions now based upon observations rather than statements of fact?  The short answer is that BCH is a systematic approach to looking at evidence, trends and opinions in understanding a whole range of probable, possible and preferable futures.  It is not about future gazing but about creating informed stories of the future upon which we can test current plans and policies.  Linking back to point 2, if we use a systematic and reliable approach to thinking about the future we can be much better informed about the decisions we need to take now.

5. Rapidity of change

Almost every education/technology conference I go to and most of my RSS feeds remind me of the speed of change, how practices and tools change with new developments, new possibilities and new demands.   Moore’s Law continues to hold true; Web 2.0 tools are being created more quickly that bring a new set of tools to my browser each day; personal communication devices are being developed with more functions etc etc.  Yet balanced with this are the arguments that education is not bringing about the ‘transformation in practice’ that is called for.  We need to be aware of what things are changing quickly and which are remaining constant.  At the heart, we need to ensure that we’re aware of what we want to remain and what changes we want to take advantage of.  To me this is about developing  an understanding of the shared values of education – being clear about its purpose and therefore how different changes might help us realise them.  Starting with the Children’s Plan as a central way of doing this, we can question how the aims of the plan can be realised in different futures, and of course which aims will be challenged.

Other suggestions?  Add a comment or use one of the engagement tools.

Long term futures work is not about predicting the future, but systematically investigating a range of futures so that short term actions are more informed about possible, probable and (through discussion) preferable futures. This systematic investigation is about understanding current and historic data, looking at trends and considering how those trends may develop. The forecaster Paul Saffo says that it is not predictions, but about mapping the ‘cones of uncertainty‘. As Saffo explains, uncertainty is cone-shaped because as you project further into the future there are more surprises. The longer the term the more uncertain or the less specific you can be.

Take your own work. You can be pretty accurate in statement one of what you will be doing in the next 10 seconds; statement two of what you will be doing in 10 minutes might have a little more uncertainty – the phone might ring, your coffee cup needs refilling or you’re back on facebook again. (Was your statement one right by the way?) 10 days time – your diary may suggest something but you can be less confident that it is 100% accurate, and the further you go, the more uncertainty there is. 10 weeks, 10 months, 10 years, the range of possible futures on the extremes of the cone become further from one another.

But BSF is about building the appropriate spaces for learning for the potentially the next 50 years. The level of investment in such infrastructure will surely not be around at this level again before that – so how can we ensure that the decisions being taken now will be relevant to the range of possible functions, learners and aims that the institutions may need to be cater for?

The answer, of course, is that we can’t. We can’t be certain that today’s decision is appropriate for tomorrow’s needs – there are too many factors that influence education: it’s expected role in society; numbers of pupils; types of learners; the aims of education; sorts of resources etc etc. But what we can do, is ensure that the decisions we make are as informed as possible. That we’ve investigated as wide a range of possible futures as possible to ensure that, not only are we prepared for a whole range of possibilities, but that we are actively working towards the preferable future that we want.

The Beyond Current Horizons programme is attempting to look at these long term possible, probable and preferable futures. The BCH blog is the scrapbook of developments that may be useful to provide insight into some things that may challenge the way in which we currently think about education (in terms of its aims, processes etc). Towards the end of March 2008 there will be a large collection of data and analysis, tools, and future scenarios that will also be of use in helping to inform more immediate decisions and strategies.

Long term futures work is about making visible some of the possible futures, detailing the cones of uncertainty, so that from longer term visioning and systematic thinking, we can develop richer and more informed nearer term visions, near term strategies and more appropriate immediate actions. By telling stories of our preferable futures, we can begin to ensure that our immediate actions go to creating and shaping the future that we want. To become involved in BCH please contact me or sign up to the blog and newsletter – all involvement is welcome. After all, the more informed our thinking can be, the better our use of the incredible resources of BSF.