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…

Element 1. Different ways of organising social groups that (potentially) move away from hierarchical organisation to more collective approaches in making the most of the cultural capital of the group. Particularly, I’m thinking here about the way in which organisations share knowledge, expertise and ideas – not just schools and ‘learning organisations’, but workplaces within the knowledge economy. The three necessary categories for harnessing collective wisdom, according to Surowiecki, are: aggregation, diversity and independence – mechanisms must be in place to bring together the views and opinions of the group; the group needs to be diverse in experience and knowledge, and their views must be able to be shared independently (not altered through peer pressure etc). This relates to BCH’s Challenge 3, which is looking at trends in the production and definition of knowledge. It also relates to BCH’s Challenge 4, which is aiming to understand trends in work and employment.

Element 2. Democracy and citizenship become important topics for discussion in relation to understanding how groups can interact differently in making decisions. Those who advocate developing current democratic practices (based upon majority-rule) to more participatory forms of governance suggest that current democratic practices are more closely tied to oligarchical practices (claiming, for example participation stops when leaving the voting booth). Challenge 5 is looking that the trends in the relationships between state, private and third sector provision of public services – and in relation to this is it interesting to think about the demands from communities and citizens if they become or demand greater participation. Challenge 2 is looking at Identities, Citizenship and Communities and may provide interesting reading in this area.

Element 3. Participation. Within the BCH programme we have various different ways of encouraging engagement with a wide variety of people and organisations. The general model we’re using sees Communication approaches (such as the website, blog, newsletter etc) as a means of sharing information and progress; activities and events (such as workshops, presentations, comments on the blog, Million Futures and BCH Power League) as normative approaches to participation; and finally deliberative engagement with BCH through a Citizens Council, Citizens Panel, expert interviews and facilitated forums. (I’ll return to the Citizens Council and Panel in a later post). Making sense of many different voices and channels of communications is important to this programme both to ensure that it is built upon the values and aspirations of education’s stakeholders (that’s all of you!) and also so that it is informed by the diversity of ideas and expertise that Surowiecki talks about. In an earlier blog post I put a link to a Grupthink question to gather your views – interestingly in his presentation, Surowiecki mentioned this tool. (If you’re interested in participating in any way, get in touch and we can find a suitable approach!)

A fourth element relates to Technological trends. A paper from the Scientific and Technology Subgroup reported on some of the key trends emerging in computing, bioscience and maths that will develop over the next 15 – 50 years. It highlights Birnbaum’s ‘Once-per-decade-disruptions’ with a possible example being ‘large scale socio-technical Systems of Systems’ (page 12 of the paper). The paper is certainly worth grabbing a cuppa and a biscuit and having a read: the possibilities offered by the affordances of systems of systems is worth considering in relation to group dynamics and ways of working together, as is the stark warning about the rate of technological progress in relation to that of our reliance upon and understanding of complex systems.

Although of course, mass participation will not always lead to expected or perhaps desired results. Just ask Mr Splashypants.  (*Update – for more internet memes try this timeline*)