Dialogue Café Telepresence: Innovating Education, 6Th July 2011 Fiona Pronay (Young Foundation)
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SIX/ Dialogue Café TelePresence: Innovating Education, 6th July 2011 Fiona Pronay (Young Foundation) Brett Wigdortz presents Teach First - Teach first is a social enterprise, a charity. - Household income is the most significant factor determining pupil’s achievement. This is true for many countries but an especially strong factor in the UK. - In order to change the problem of educational disadvantage the quality of teaching is most important. - Teach First’s mission is to address educational disadvantages; this is done by getting top graduates to join Teach First. Graduates with high abilities, such as an exceptional knowledge in their teaching subjects or critical thinking, are selected with the goal to make them classroom leaders. Leadership is the focus of the whole programme. - Teach first is a value based organisation. Growth is one of the charity’s visions and each year more graduates are being recruited (2011: 800 graduates). The cores of the leadership programme are the following 3 A’s: Achievement, Access and Aspiration. - After 2 years of teaching the participants become Ambassadors. - Teach First’s budget consists of one third of school fees, one third of money from the government and one third of money from the private sector. - Teach First is not franchised in other countries but there is Teach For All, a global network of independent enterprises which connects similar organisations worldwide. - The goal of Teach First is to achieve a social change movement. Chris Sigaloff, Teaching Pioneers and Kennisland - Kennisland is a think tank with the aim to make Holland a smarter place and to create a knowledge society. - Chris Sigaloff states that in Holland it is difficult to get into the educational system as an outsider. She emphasises that learning is the basis in order to make changes, however, schools are not the best examples of learning and making changes. - She points out that good teachers make the difference and are important for change and improvement. It is therefore unfortunate that teachers have a very low status in society and only very little influence. - Teachers feel that their job is only to implement changes made from above (ministry of education) and that all of the innovations come from above (top-down system). - Education Pioneer is a national company that asks teachers what they would want to change. It asks teachers directly and the teachers have the chance to come up with propositions. The next phase is the selection phase. After that the chosen pioneers get a budget to work on their project. Furthermore a support system with workshops and coaching help bring those projects into life. Finally a big public event is organised to present the projects. - Education Pioneer works to increase the innovation capacity Discussion: - Following the presentation on Teach First and Teaching Pioneers the participants from Brisbane commented that schools will be faced with interesting challenges in the future. It will be interesting to see how schools will embrace new technologies and how they might struggle to move on from traditional ways. Being in education will never be the same as the system is in a constant change. - Ada Wong (Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture) agreed that teachers play a very important role in order to bring forward improvements in education. She also addressed the issue of how far the government supports the programme. As a responds to Ada Wong’s question Brett Wigdortz emphasises that the government is very supportive and even wanted Teach First to train all teachers which has been declined by Teach First. - The participants from Lisbon addressed their need for qualified teachers and stated that the educational system in Portugal is very centralised. Simon Tucker presents Studio Schools - Simon Tucker described the Studio Schools as a radical new model school, a flagship and a concept that will be franchised. - He stressed that there is very strong evidence from academia that there are a number of non cognitive skills which are required from employees by future employers but which are not addressed by traditional schooling. Traditional schools address them only marginally and rather in after school activities. - The concept of Studio Schools relies on project based learning in order to get young pupil those soft skills. The students are aged 14 – 18 and the schools are rather small with around 300 pupils. - The idea is that students learn everything based on projects and not according to subjects. In those learning projects knowledge is gained by finding solutions to real life problems. Every student works with a local employer and gets paid for his work. - Studio schools are publicly founded and autonomously led. - In the process of trying to set up schools the Trust experienced that it is very easy to set up a school if you have the money but even though they had 200-300 reports and an exact plan the government first did not want to give them the money. - Now, where they have set up those schools and the government has given the money, the government is not interested to spent more money to evaluate the programme. Discussion: - Ada Wong explains that the government in China does not believe that there are students that have to learn differently and that soft skills are important. She says that it is important to convince the government that the teachers from the Institute of Education in China are not the only teachers. Simon Tucker made the point that in Studio Schools the stuff are not only trained teachers but also coaches. - Chris Sigaloff adds that it was very interesting to see that many of the projects handed in by the teachers taking part in the Pioneer first programme were trying to find solutions on how teachers can learn from each other and how they can learn from the civil society around them. .