I received this comment from Mike Chitty and his 'Enterprise and Entrepreneurship in the Community' Blog...

"My eldest daughter came home from school last week with something like 10kg of university prospectuses. She spent much of the week-end browsing the frightening range of courses available. And it got me thinking about whether the compulsory education that she has experienced so far, all 13 years of it, have really provided her with an excellent platform for wealth and fulfillment in her adult life.

And the result of my pondering was:
1. As a premise I believe that education is at its best when it socialises people into the obligations and freedoms of active citizenship, and immunises them against imprisonment by the gilded cages of consumerism. So why does so much (enterprise) education appear to be about the development of the next generation of employer fodder/entrepreneurs/snake oil sellers?
2. Is this because we are failing to teach the real meaning of ’social enterprise’ now that it has become embedded in what Todd Hannula describes as ‘agency led mush’?
3. Have we ever properly taught the notion of social enterprise? Is it really more the the pursuit of ‘enlightened self interest’ in the marketplace?
4. To release prodigious human energies and good will we must learn how to help people find powerful narratives that give meaning and direction to their lives.
5. We must help them to learn about themselves at least as much as we should help them learn about the world outside of them.
6. We must encourage them to explore what they love and who they can become in pursuit of their potential.
7. We must educate them to properly understand their own self interest and how this fits with the self interest of others in a mutually sustainable and progressive community.
8. We must help them to become experts in using power in pursuit of mutual self interest.
9. We must help them to build their power in creating the kind of future that they want to see for themselves and for the diverse communities that live on spaceship earth.Perhaps consideration of these statements might just help us to realise ‘the end of (enterprise) education’."

You should visit Mike's blog which is really brilliant and has certainly made me think. It's at http://localenterprise.wordpress.com/
Chris

We are on the edge of a radical and important transformation but one that may be lost unless we are very careful...

More than ever we need schools to connect more powerfully with young people, their families and the communities they serve. The research suggests that a great school can achieve great things but it's impact on a child's life only amounts to around 12-15% of the child's success. A great family and a great mum has a massively more important and influential role accounting for up to 30% of a child's success. And surprisingly a great community, an aspirational community, also matters hugely to a child's success. Sadly, while it helps, going to a great school is not the only answer to the problems we face and we must recognise that the answers to the real challenges we all face in raising standards and achieving world class outcomes for our children lie in tackling poverty, deprivation and poor parenting and in building equality and equity at the heart of everything we do.

Happy to discuss.
Chris

We certainly live in interesting times with schools increasingly moving centre stage and the end of national prescription and national control...

We need to re-imagine and redesign learning for this new age.
What do we need to do?

• we need to rethink learning time, understanding that more is better;
• we need to rethink our learning places to connect with other provision;
• we need to re-imagine our spaces for learning building on creativity, imagination and enterprise;
• we need to develop collaborative and team based approaches to learning at the heart of our provision;
• we need to build learning webs, learning hubs and learning satellites since small is definitely beautiful;
• we need to rethink teaching and formal learning to maintain excellence and academic rigour;
• we need to develop informal and fun learning to connect with young people's interests and potential;
• we need to create learning places young people love and help them shape provision to better meet their needs;
• we need to create learning places where young people have high self-esteem and feel in control of their own learning.

It's all about brilliant learning in brilliant learning places!

Discuss.

Chris

It's another interesting time for education...

We need to rethink/re-imagine:

• how we learn;
• what we learn;
• when we learn;
• where learning takes place;
• who learns from who;
• how we monitor, evaluate and assess learning;
• how we fund learning;
• what we measure in terms of learning.

Chris