Towards a 2020 Vision

[Stuart Edwards]

Sion Simon, Minister for FE, has stated his ambition to see further education recognised nationally and internationally for its commitment to technology. We have now put together some simple statements on where things could be heading towards 2020 and how that compares with evidence of where the sector is overall at the moment. These build on discussions that we and our partners have had with experts within and outside the sector, with employers and with learners. They cover five main areas:

content and digital resources
blogosphere, social media, web 2
provider and workforce capability
learner experience
employers

Some of us will be starting up specific groups on each of these in the next few days. We would welcome contributions and ideas from everyone.

•Do you agree with the aspects of a 2020 vision? What would you see differently? Where would you go further?
• Do you recognise the 2009 limitations? What would you add or change?
• What key actions need to be taken, or barriers removed, to accelerate progress towards a 2020 vision?

We will run the discussion over the next two months, gathering your views, feeding these back to the Minister and using them to develop our policy making.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Stuart Edwards, DIUS

[Neil Spurgeon]

I am not at all clear what you mean by "Do you agree with the aspects of a 2020 vision?", Stuart. If this refers to the "five main areas:" namely "content and digital resources, blogosphere, social media, web 2, provider and workforce capability, learner experience, employers" then I guess that they are as good as any subdivisions to discuss what an eleven years into the future vision might look like, but surely as Futurologists have proved time after time, looking such a short period into the future is really a pointless exercise, AND I INTEND TO WASTE NO TIME ON THAT AT ALL.

What might be much more useful however, might be to consider if what we currently have is fit for purpose at all, even today - let alone once the journey we are all on, analygous to the Industrial Revolution, is finally completed by say 2050.

Today we have:
1. very effective nursery education teaching children how to socialise and live in harmony
2. primary schools hard at work instilling literacy, numeracy and basic computer applications to the vast majority
3. secondary schools which when they are effective AND happen to suit the learning style of any given pupil try to squeeze 'knowledge' into unresponsive and unexcited children but unfortunately for many pupils when poor can hardy 'excite' their students enough to allow them to become literate, numerate and competent application users - let alone have an exciting school career in subjects of genuine interest to many/most modern teenagers. No change or watering down of the national curriculum can change that, we are teaching a nineteenth century syllabus that has a single purpose, to prepare future research scientists for HEI, and most people do not need and cannot use that education to any meaningful manner
It is clear to free thinking people that Secondary Education is broken and needs urgent replacement
As a result of the failings of 3 above we then intend to split children at the very uncomfortable age of 14 into:
A. the Academically Capable who will continue to undertake A Level study enroute to 'good' universities and good jobs, many of them within that very sector or suimu=ilar and related professions; teachers, historians, broadcasters, journalists, politicians, civil servants etc
B. Apprentices who will end up as tomorrow's craft people taking HNC/D qualifications (sufficient to do the job as apprentices have been proving for over a century) and probably then going on to take pointless degrees in subjects like thatching and media studies, adding nothing to their already quite sufficient skill base
C. NVQ and other 'lower' qualifications - meaningless in their own right but essential so that employees have proof that ex-students can at least "read, write and operate in what they see as the 'real' world", which will fill the majority of 'unthinking' jobs that any service economy desperately needs in order to keep going
D. The new Diplomas to train the majority for jobs which don't exist, cannot exist and will never exist in UK because we have exported all those jobs, the real working, money making, object constructing jobs in the manufacturing economy, to the developing world.

When the shakeout is over (again for the sake of argument let's say 2050) and people like me are dead, my Grandchildren, just being born today, who will then be a few years younger than I am today, will need:
Jobs
Skills
Competence in that order

N.B. WHATEVER we train them to do by 2020, when they will be 11 or 12, will no longer be relevent by 2050. EVERYTHING I learned at school and in my first job are no longer sellable skills, although the ability to read, research and write which I learned in primary school still have some relevance. Like most successful 55+ males still working, I have retrained and retrained over and over again throughout my career as the function and skills I had were overtaken by technology, new systems, process re-engineering etc etc.
What the children starting primary school need now is not new ideas, but the understanding that their nursery and primary education is great and is doing the job it needs to do, but that secondary education urgently needs to be changed and redirected. 11 plus education needs today to be teaching people, all people, wher=ver they are in the economy or in the country, how to learn, how to self motivate, how to grasp opportunities, how to use not just Web 2.0 but also Web 1 as THE primary tool to find out what they need to know, how to chunk it down and how to extract the key messages from it and especially having tested it for bias and accuracy thenhow to use it meaningfully to upskill THEMSELVES. Teaching subjects to post 11 year olds has to be dead, teaching them how to learn is critical and urgent.

FE's function, as ever, will be to continue that process applying the context into which the knowledge and data discovered by the student can be given real meaning, and especially as we already do so well in all the post 16 sector, to use the experience of actually working in industry, unlike so many schoolteachers, to explain in simple, meaningful ways what the students' learning means in 'real world' practical, applicable terms for their future employment. This way, as our youngsters stop being children and start to operate as adults, we in Post 16 Education and Training are, as we always have been, in an ideal potition to mould the 'how to do', with the 'what I know', and turn out adults who genuinely can and do think for themselves, question everything (as teenagers should), but also have enough strength of character to do their own scaffolding from that point forward.

I think I've gone on more than enough so I'll stop but I actively welcome comments, criticism etc to get a real debate going here

[Stuart Edwards]

Neil

Just to clarify, what I meant was the five main areas, content and digital resources etc. The presentation and the individual discussion groups set out short statements for each area. We are inviting discussion and comments around these, with a focus on what needs to be done the make the most out of the potential of technology over the next 10 years or so. 2020 seems challenging enough to me.

Stuart

Neil Spurgeon said:

I am not at all clear what you mean by "Do you agree with the aspects of a 2020 vision?", Stuart. If this refers to the "five main areas:" namely "content and digital resources, blogosphere, social media, web 2, provider and workforce capability, learner experience, employers" then I guess that they are as good as any subdivisions to discuss what an eleven years into the future vision might look like, but surely as Futurologists have proved time after time, looking such a short period into the future is really a pointless exercise, AND I INTEND TO WASTE NO TIME ON THAT AT ALL.

What might be much more useful however, might be to consider if what we currently have is fit for purpose at all, even today - let alone once the journey we are all on, analygous to the Industrial Revolution, is finally completed by say 2050.

Today we have:
1. very effective nursery education teaching children how to socialise and live in harmony
2. primary schools hard at work instilling literacy, numeracy and basic computer applications to the vast majority
3. secondary schools which when they are effective AND happen to suit the learning style of any given pupil try to squeeze 'knowledge' into unresponsive and unexcited children but unfortunately for many pupils when poor can hardy 'excite' their students enough to allow them to become literate, numerate and competent application users - let alone have an exciting school career in subjects of genuine interest to many/most modern teenagers. No change or watering down of the national curriculum can change that, we are teaching a nineteenth century syllabus that has a single purpose, to prepare future research scientists for HEI, and most people do not need and cannot use that education to any meaningful manner
It is clear to free thinking people that Secondary Education is broken and needs urgent replacement
As a result of the failings of 3 above we then intend to split children at the very uncomfortable age of 14 into:
A. the Academically Capable who will continue to undertake A Level study enroute to 'good' universities and good jobs, many of them within that very sector or suimu=ilar and related professions; teachers, historians, broadcasters, journalists, politicians, civil servants etc
B. Apprentices who will end up as tomorrow's craft people taking HNC/D qualifications (sufficient to do the job as apprentices have been proving for over a century) and probably then going on to take pointless degrees in subjects like thatching and media studies, adding nothing to their already quite sufficient skill base
C. NVQ and other 'lower' qualifications - meaningless in their own right but essential so that employees have proof that ex-students can at least "read, write and operate in what they see as the 'real' world", which will fill the majority of 'unthinking' jobs that any service economy desperately needs in order to keep going
D. The new Diplomas to train the majority for jobs which don't exist, cannot exist and will never exist in UK because we have exported all those jobs, the real working, money making, object constructing jobs in the manufacturing economy, to the developing world.

When the shakeout is over (again for the sake of argument let's say 2050) and people like me are dead, my Grandchildren, just being born today, who will then be a few years younger than I am today, will need:
Jobs
Skills
Competence in that order

N.B. WHATEVER we train them to do by 2020, when they will be 11 or 12, will no longer be relevent by 2050. EVERYTHING I learned at school and in my first job are no longer sellable skills, although the ability to read, research and write which I learned in primary school still have some relevance. Like most successful 55+ males still working, I have retrained and retrained over and over again throughout my career as the function and skills I had were overtaken by technology, new systems, process re-engineering etc etc.
What the children starting primary school need now is not new ideas, but the understanding that their nursery and primary education is great and is doing the job it needs to do, but that secondary education urgently needs to be changed and redirected. 11 plus education needs today to be teaching people, all people, wher=ver they are in the economy or in the country, how to learn, how to self motivate, how to grasp opportunities, how to use not just Web 2.0 but also Web 1 as THE primary tool to find out what they need to know, how to chunk it down and how to extract the key messages from it and especially having tested it for bias and accuracy thenhow to use it meaningfully to upskill THEMSELVES. Teaching subjects to post 11 year olds has to be dead, teaching them how to learn is critical and urgent.

FE's function, as ever, will be to continue that process applying the context into which the knowledge and data discovered by the student can be given real meaning, and especially as we already do so well in all the post 16 sector, to use the experience of actually working in industry, unlike so many schoolteachers, to explain in simple, meaningful ways what the students' learning means in 'real world' practical, applicable terms for their future employment. This way, as our youngsters stop being children and start to operate as adults, we in Post 16 Education and Training are, as we always have been, in an ideal potition to mould the 'how to do', with the 'what I know', and turn out adults who genuinely can and do think for themselves, question everything (as teenagers should), but also have enough strength of character to do their own scaffolding from that point forward.

I think I've gone on more than enough so I'll stop but I actively welcome comments, criticism etc to get a real debate going here

[Richard Everett]

Elephant in the room ?

I think there is a major theme missing - and that relates to the critical infrastructure that this all sits on. Without buildings (and wider community settings) containing the critical infrastructure we will not be able to use this technology within or without our institutions. Until we as a sector recognise that it is crucial for our accomodation to include technical infrastructure to support this we will not be in a position to offer the leading edge learning environments that our learners deserve.

Unfortunately the past has encouraged silo thinking so much so that the Learning and Skills Council ignored ICT infrastructure in its Building Colleges for the Future programme - we have to think more holistically otherwise the opportunities (for instance 15% reduction in global carbon emissions by 2020, 24% reduction in capital cost and 36%
reduction in running costs, and an ROI of less than 10 years - let alone the enhancement of quality) will not be acheived.

As I say in my article entitled "The ‘Building Colleges for the Future’ program. Delivering a green and intelligent building agenda" for the New Review of Information Networking "To not address this would be tantamount to
wasting public money" The full article is available at:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a912288330

We MUST learn to work together, and get out of our silos, for the vision to be acheived. That includes leaders, technologoists, suppliers et al all working collaboratively and they need to keep an open mind to include hitherto
unfamiliar experts from different settings and to include them in the design process. In other words, “Planning for a new intelligent building requires a joined up approach that puts integrated infrastructure at the fore”