Mick Waters Keynote transcript 2007
Edited version
- - - And in England the curriculum starts from a relatively secure base. We have at least got a curriculum, and we know it’s relatively good because lots and lots of people keep coming to have a look at it and we keep getting asked if they can copy it. But we do have to look again at our curriculum because we live in a changing society, it is a different society from when our national curriculum was invented. We have greater than ever expectation for our young people. The way in which schools operate is changing enormously, the role of schools is changing. We’ve got new ways or organising the workforce, new ways or organising buildings, new ways of organising leadership, and unless our system has that capacity to re-engineer and change itself, then we won’t take advantage of what the future’s got to offer. And the curriculum is at the heart of schooling. You have a school because you believe there are things that it’s worth the young people experiencing, and therefore the curriculum needs to be endlessly looked at.
Now I can do an hour and a half on how society’s changing. I’m not going to do that because you’ve had people here talking about the future of technology, the future of the world, the way in which the brain is understood now compared with a little while ago. But when you add it together as a picture of the changing world you realise that the curriculum has got to move and it’s got to shift and it’s got to adapt. Our children are growing up in an amazingly shrinking world. The economy of the world is so different. The taxi driver bringing me here yesterday talked to me about what this area was like when he was a child compared with me. There’ll be parts of Scotland living an entirely different life from what they did thirty years ago because the industry has changed. A map of industries of Scotland from the 70s will be a history map now. And we’ve got to see a global economy and the way it’s working. Technology is changing amazingly. You know, we take it for granted now don’t we, so many little aspects of our lives. Taps that come on as you put your hand near them, towels that dispense themselves. I don’t know about you, but if I walk towards a door and it doesn’t open I get mildly irritated. I’ve got to pull it myself, you know, it’s a real nuisance. We have food packaging, we have luggage storage, we have things done in so many ways that are different. But of course the big technological change is the web, because what the web does is gives people access to information and knowledge in a way that it’s never been there before, and that challenges, challenges the professionals’ authority. Authority of professionals, medicine, finance, law and education was built on knowledge. We have our authority because we had the knowledge. In teaching we tried to give it away. In law they sell it. But actually we are trying to give our authority to children through the knowledge we have.
And we decided years ago that you gave knowledge away in tablets, in order, and we knew how to manage it. The web is threatening all that. The web is threatening it because children can get to knowledge in any order, and they learn things we haven’t taught them yet. It spoils it. We can’t do it in order anymore. In fact, in England we’ve done a survey and we found that lots of children in Key Stage 2 are going on holiday to places in Key Stage 4, and … now there is a law coming in to stop this, we cannot have it! You know, if you were in Glasgow you should go to Ayr on your holiday first before then venturing further south and then venturing to mainland Europe, you cannot keep doing things in the wrong order, right, otherwise learning won’t work.
And then we cannot any longer because of the web keep fobbing children off through teenage and upper primary with, “This’ll be good for you when you’re grown up.” “Do these calculations because this is what grown-ups do.” “Measure this room, work out the dimensions. Work out the carpet size, work out the cost, because that’s what grown-ups do.” Children know that grown-ups come in and they have a laser gun and they wave it around and they say “That’s the area there.” And then they get a calculator and they say, “That’s a quote for your carpet, do you want it or not?” They don’t play the game any more, but underneath they still need the concepts and the methodology to understand how it’s working through the technology.
How many of you stand at your car putting petrol in and doing that calculation, which is if I buy thirteen point four litres of petrol at ninety-four point nine pence per litre, how much change will I get from a twenty pound note? [Laughter] That’s a real calculation that grown-ups do, it really is. If you’re like me, when you get to the kiosk you face that challenge of answering the question “Pump number?” [Laughter] “Ah yeah, pump number, that’s a good one.” “It’s the grey one.” That’s a funny number, “the grey one,” isn’t it, but never mind. And what we do is we take it for granted, we’ve got to move our thinking on to youngsters to get them to see that underneath all that there are processes and operations happening that they could understand.
Now this is a fleeting visit to where society is changing. The move of people around the world, the gap between rich and poor. The knowledge of the brain, our changing picture of childhood, all mean that we need to think about the curriculum in a different way.
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- - - One of the things that we’ve done in England, to try and get people to see curriculum in a different sense. Now what I’m going to do is talk to you about a thing we call a big picture. - - - It’s very complex; I’ll build it up and you can see what you think about it, and as I stop I’ll give you a moment to talk. It begins from three very, very simple but straightforward questions. What are we trying to achieve in learning? How can we organise the learning we want children to experience? And how do we know if it’s working? In schools we set about trying to secure some things for which we are accountable. Schools should be accountable, and these are some of the things that pertain in England. We want attainment and good standards. We also want children to be able to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, to demonstrate good behaviour and be where they should be. To take part in their society, civic participation, and at the end of it all when they get to nineteen, be involved in education, employment or training. In England we’ve got a massive problem with a group of people called the NEETs (not in employment, education or training). And if at nineteen you find yourself not engaged, after all that work that’s gone on in schools, we certainly do have to think about some questions. But they become the bottom line. Any business has a bottom line. You put investment in the top and you want to see what comes out the bottom. In education it’s not profit in money terms, it’s profit in societal terms and for the benefit for the individual. So they become the bottom line upon which we might build things. But if we’re going to make it work, we’ve got to know what we’re trying to achieve, and we did loads of work on the aims, and thousands of involved people came up with these three aims as a consensus around which we could agree. Now I know in Scotland you’ve got four, because you know, you’re a third better than us. You can do it better. I understand all that. You’re good at this. But we came up with these three, and millions of words lead us to three headings:
we want children who are successful as learners,
confident as individuals and
responsible as citizens.
And they can take their place in society having explored some of the meanings to that. We also have a thing called the ‘every child matter’s agenda. The government says we want these five outcomes for every nineteen year old. And my argument would be, if they have outcomes we’re seeking to achieve, there must be things we’re aiming for. So they go on this picture. And then linked to that, comes this notion of a focus for learning in something that we’re trying to achieve. And we’ve done a lot of work in trying to redress the balance between knowledge and understanding, the learning of skills and the learning about yourself. Personal development. Developing attitudes and attributes that will help you as you grow and develop. And somehow, we’ve got to get those in balance, because over the years in England, one of those has been valued to a greater degree than the other two. But they become the things that we’re aiming for and the premise would be that if you work then on the organisation, you’ll actually achieve the bottom line. And so I’m just going to talk through the organisational bit. The first thing to look at is this thing called the components which I just went through: lessons, routines, what children do in events, different environments, using different ways of working. And then there’s a whole thing called learning approaches – we just put a few on here. How do you keep learning that’s in touch with human development. So we know about early years. We know about adolescence. How can we make the learning really work between those ages? How do you get deep and immersive learning so that children quarry into learning, really enjoy a subject or really enjoy a piece of learning as opposed to lily pad learning across the top until you’re taught to dip in. What about really using a range of audience and purpose. We know the power of audience for children. We really know that when children go on work experience, they suddenly get the idea about why they’re doing some studying to prepare them for a working life. They change their attitude in the main when they’ve done work experience. So why wait till they’re fourteen to learn about the world of work? We know that children really respond to audiences in all sorts of ways. You know the piece of writing about the future? Wouldn’t it have been lovely if I could have had year 7 sitting in here listening to you? And you think, I made about 500 people laugh with my pencil – from my brain, I made that happen. I wonder if I could make them angry? I wonder if I could make them cry? What the power of authorship could do. So how do you get children to see real audience and real purpose coming across? Then there comes a bit called the whole curriculum dimensions, and this is a list of things that are really fascinating to look at, because they’ve been talked about in the English system for years. Teachers have been told, make sure you do something cultural, do something creative and make sure there’s something global in there as well, and can we have something that’s about community participation? Technology is very important. And if you’re a teacher in England, what’s next? Save the planet – that’s what’s next. Right, so it’s all over the place. I mean Secretaries of State come along and they say things like, a few years ago, ‘every child in this country will have five days a year international learning experience’. And the teachers – I know what they do, they think – five days a year? Is that five new days? Have they taken five days out or is that five extra days? Is it five days in a block or is it five days spread out? Is it ten half days? Is it two hours a week? Is it twenty minutes a day? If I sing Kumbya and have a curry, have I done it? Somehow we have to get past that and we have to get structure into it, and I know one of the things that’s really taken off in Scotland is this notion of learning internationally. And really what we’ve got to get is deep learning about that, not peripheral, superficial learning, really learning about the world in which we live in a different way. So they go on a picture, along with some things called subjects which are very, very important. Absolutely central. But we’ve got to make the subject fit into the aims and what we’re trying to achieve in a different place. And then the premise would be, if you know what you’re aiming to achieve and you’re organised properly, you’ll get to the bottom line. So that’s where the notion of can we check whether we are comes in, and one of our challenges in England is to make assessment fit for purpose. What we’ve got at the moment is a whole range of possibilities but we focus on one more than any other. We focus on testing at the end of key stages. We’ve become obsessed with it as a country. We can’t get out of it now. We’re testing at the end of key stages to the extent that becomes so important because of all the league tables, that beyond that, teachers start doing testing to check they’re children are good at testing. And so we practice testing so that we know whether we’re good at testing. If we’re not, we do more tests to make sure we are. And the testing machine is starting to eat itself, and we’ve somehow got to redress that back into peer assessment, children assessing with each other, children assessing with parents, assessing against what you used to be able to do. Assessing against what you think you want to do. Assessing against things you’ve never even heard about yet. Really, really thinking about how I’m learning within a context. So that becomes the big picture, - - - it’s not one or the other. I have had enough experience in places where children live really difficult lives to know that they experience better English and Maths in a broader curriculum. They learn better when they are well nourished and when they have good exercise and when they join in better, they’re English and Maths gets better. And we’ve somehow got to see that it’s not one or the other, but that’s a big step. I do understand that’s a big step if you’re a struggling school, to think we’ll cast off the cloud and we’ll really go for it. But somehow we’ve got to do that.
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So our big thing in England is that we’re trying to get away from concern about subject content and I believe in subjects and I believe that we should teach children about subjects, but what we’ve got to do is teach about the nature and the impact of a subject, and a range of subjects, not just these ten or twelve we teach massively in school, but where do these subjects take us. We’ve got to focus on the effectiveness of learning, support schools and settings in building a curriculum which has not been England’s way before, we just sent the thing. We try and help them now and we’re harmonising, thinking and practise. So simple things come along. I do this with parents. They say well how do we make children learn best? You say, well go on then, make do and mend. These very simple things. This is just a thrown together slide. If you do this with staff in a school you can get 50 things within half an hour, and you say, well what should we be doing in school, what should they be doing outside the school with parents, and what do other agencies do. How do we bring these together. But things like a collection, I was in a school in Solihul and said to these children ‘what makes this school good?’ and this year eight child said, ‘I’ll tell you what makes it good, you can bring your collections in on the last Friday of every month, and on the first Friday of every month you can bring small creatures’. Now I didn’t fancy being there when they brought the small creatures in, but he thought this was … and you know, this notion of collection. I’m not saying we should study collections, but there are three main types of collections: there’s where you get a full set, 1-48, and I haven’t got 26, 29 or 31. There’s collections where you are collecting but will never finish – stamp collecting will never finish so you make small collections. Asian stamps, old stamps, new stamps, yellow stamps, you can make different collections within it, and then there are the collections where you just go somewhere and you keep bringing a pebble back from any beach, and they’re your collection that keeps growing for the memories. And children need to understand different collections, because nearly every subject manages itself around collections. The renaissance artists, the impressionists, or you go to the museum and see the Egyptian collection, or you see in chemistry, you see the periodic table of elements. The collections. Countries are collected into continents. Understanding the way things come together is fundamental. Looking after things like plants and creatures. You want a respect agenda, teach them to respect, to care, to organise, to manage, to look after things. I come from the nature table school of thought. I believe you’re better looking at a plant growing, seeing it come into bloom and decay than watching it on a computer or in a book. Get looking at it! Heads tell me, well it’s all very well Mick, but you know, there’s Health & Safety. And I said, well you don’t need triffids, just ordinary plants. And they say, oh they might get a rash. And I say well you might get a rash outside of school. If they get a rash, lob the plant out and say they got it on the way.
Come on, you can’t live your life like this can you. ‘Oh dear me …’ You know, I go round some secondary schools and in England, and I say to the head, ‘is anything living in here?’ you know, surround yourself with living things. And so, you know, little kids doing real things. This is from a secondary school that just does it brochure every month. Gone Fishing, Bulb planting – all part of a curriculum that’s broader than a bag of lessons. And what we’re about, that’s the bottom line, they were the aims, and what we’ve got to get in the middle is real attitude and real engagement with the learning that takes place. So in our website which helps people into our new secondary curriculum, we’ve done what I understand what you’ve done in Scotland, which is help people in through a whole range of possibilities in the top right hand corner: aims, subjects, personal development skills, cross curriculum dimensions, to show people how this curriculum could come together. And every subject has a little video or film in it which is really nice to watch. And I thought you might like to just have a look at one of these which is from a chemistry lesson in a secondary school and watch the teacher talk about how she’s sorted out an aspect of chemistry. This video lasts about three and a half minutes, so just to prepare yourself. Watch this as a little secondary group about how it happened for them. You’ll see the teacher and she’ll comment a bit, and you’ll see the children talking about the work they do. That’s if it comes on.
Teacher: The project started just post SATS with a year nine group who were bottom set. They had found certain scientific concepts really very difficult and one of those was the reactivity series, the list of metals going from the most reactive to the least reactive, and the process by which a more reactive metal can displace a less reactive metal from its compound. So I turned them into characters. The metal for boys, the non-metals were girls, and the girlfriends would pick and choose and dump their boyfriends to go out with the more reactive ones.
Girls: Hi. We’re girls and we’re the non-metals.
Boys: I’m silver. I think you’re well buff. What’s your name?
Girls: I’m bromide. This is my boyfriend sodium.
Boys: Will you go out with you?
Girls: No way will I go out with you. You’re no where near as buff as sodium?
Boys: I don’t care. I’ll find someone better.
Boys: Ha ha. Unlucky mate.
Boys: I don’t care, I didn’t like her that much anyway.
Girls: Serves you right trying it on with someone elses girlfriend.
Girl: In the textbook it’s just all in your face, but doing this has made it much more easier.
Girl: Calcium [unclear-00.47.25] stuff, sodium, lithium. So you have to learn poems about it and I’d forget the poems. Please Send Lazy Charlie Money [unclear-00.47.37] Let Children See Gorillas. I got confused in what order they got in. When we done the puppet show, we was kind of like acting as well so we was putting them in order, so you learn that at the same time what order they go on. The lower ones would be uglier and the higher ones would be more buffer.
Boy: Have you got a boyfriend?
Girl: Not at the moment my dear?
Boy: How about I take you to Maccy D?
Boy: I’ll take you to Pizza Express.
Girl: MacDonalds is far too childish. I prefer Pizza Express.
Teacher: I allowed about four hours, but actually they took about six to make and really finish off as the kids were really fussy. They really wanted to perfect them.
Girl: I got to make bomboms and hair.
Girl: this is sulphate and she is actually about 17, 18 years old and she is quite posh and everything and has a funny accent and she talks to people and is very attracting to other people.
Girl: My favourite part of this project must be making of and the acting of the puppets. The acting was quite funny.
Girls: It was like we were doing scripts and writing about how we kind of talk to each other. Some people started making the theatre and Miss came in with all the brilliant materials that we could add on.
Boy: What’s your name? I think you’re well buff.
Girls: Yuck. I’m not going out with you. You’re not good looking like Magnesium?
Boy: Boo-boo. I’ve been rejected.
Boys: That will serve you right for trying it on with someone else’s girlfriend.
Teacher: So it’s making it more physical for these sorts of kids. Learning from a textbook does nothing for them. They’re not going to understand it from that. They can’t see the particles. They can’t see atoms. They can’t play with them and hold them. This was one way that they could really show that these things move around and they interact with each other and what reactions really are. So we’ve turned reactions into relationships. We’ve turned it into something that is going on every day in the playground.
Girl: You don’t need a textbook to design a puppet to do a show. You can just like do it by hand.
Boy: Can I ask you a question – would you go out with me?
Girl: Oh of course. Magnesium needs to sort himself out. I’m happy with potassium now. He’s all mine.
Boy: Yippee – I’m the king of the world.
Teacher: Some of them who find just speaking very very difficult. When they’re in character, they would find their own voice. Find a voice for their character and it was amazing to watch.
Girl: Oh you’re too kind darlings.
I just think it’s such a lovely piece of video for all sorts of reasons. Brilliant teacher, doing the most complex chemistry. I bet some of you have learnt something about periodic table of elements today, but actually underneath that, doing things about relationships with children, and you see the pride in the children in terms of what they’re doing, and I think it’s quite fascinating because many, many people tell me that teenage children don’t like doing lets pretend. I tell you, a lot of children are expected to grow up so, so quickly, that they’d love a bit longer doing that. All you’ve got to do is call is simulation as opposed to let’s pretend, and all you’ve got to do is tell them as is true, that in business, there are companies paying fortunes for folks who can think outside the box. People who can invent, people who can live a fantasy life in order to solve problems. And I think it’s a lovely piece of video in terms of showing how different parts of the curriculum come together, but still holding on to then learning about the periodic table of elements. So what repels, what attracts, and what goes from there. So you remember, it was all about that and where that was going.
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