But the point isn't the mistakes. This stuff was cobbled together at short notice and multiple times around the country. Why didn't we have a back-up plan for education? It's not as though we didn't know a pandemic was likely in the next few years. Never mind. How about we have a back-up plan now? If there were a a properly funded and expertly produced bank of learning materials that could be accessed by anyone who needed it, that would reduce the burden on teachers in the future and increase the learning of children next time around. Even in non-pandemic times, it would allow children who are off school with illnees or mental health problems to continue their studies if/when they are well enough, and make it easier to fit back into the classroom later. It would help parents who choose to home school. And when there is a disaster — whether a local one like a school flooding or burning down or a national one like a pandemic — everything would be in place for learning to continue.
I know not every child has the technology to access a resource like this, but schools have been lending equipment and could do that more easily in future if it were built in and planned. People and businesses have donated unused equipment; schools can keep a bank of this and it will be easier in normal times to amass and distribute it more evenly. (Of course, it would be way better if it were properly funded rather than relying on donations, but let's be realistic...)
Good online learning materials are not just a normal classroom lesson videoed on a phone and uploaded. I used to develop online learning materials in the 90s and even with the far more restricted technologies we had then, there were different approaches to how material is delivered to make it engaging. We have many experts who could be gainfully employed making a national bank of materials that cover every school day of every school year. Of course, individual schools teach different things on different days, but while we have a prestrictive, perhaps restrictive, National Curriculum, it is clear what all schools are aiming to achieve in any given term. This wouldn't be something to use if you had two days off with a cold, perhaps, but if you knew you had six weeks at home with a broken leg, of if your school burned to the ground — or if the entire country went into lockdown for several months — it would be truly valuable. We have lots of services we fund in case they are needed. Your house probably won't burn down, but you wouldn't defund the fire service, would you?
I'd also say, make it universally available. If UK educational materials could be accessed by children in remote areas of other countries, in war zones, on boats — anywhere — it would cost us no more but be a generous bit of overseas aid. Not pushed on anyone — not surreptitious colonialism — just available.
It goes without saying that this must be not-for-profit. Pay a good fee for the materials and for their updating and maintenance. Don't try to make money by sub-licensing or making spin-offs. Just provide something we can fall back on when we need to. What do you think?
Latest book, Salariya, 2020 (ebook)/2021 (print)
7 comments:
Lots of good points and suggestions, Anne, and love this vision of learning for all and the idea of al those at home and away from school for nay reason being able to access what would be lost lessons. Or being used to catch up or revise any missed material. Plus IT access being as assumed a right as power or water.
However, I still feel sceptical and feel there would be a few things to sort out first.
For example, the current government doesn't have, imo, a good, sound record at awarding contracts to people who have any but the most simplistic knowledge of what's involved in how their "project" works, out in the practical world.(The NHS Vaccine success story apart.) Could well apply to future governments too.
Also, that the online version of the curriculum could feed into an even stronger drive to only teach markable, assessable facts and processes. Once children wrote stories for the KS2 SATS. The marking-by-teachers was seen as too subjective, so the tests were restructured to fit a markable, IT-based format. (Why else do we have fronted adverbials?)
Additionally, a worry about the people power. HE lecturers have - I believe - already been encouraged to hand over their recorded lectures to the body employing them, for use as future, transmitted course material while at the same time as the lecturers are kept on hourly and/or rolling temporary contracts.
How could such a project be managed, too?
If only there could be a sensibly-funded organisation or corporation, based in Britain, that could be improved or encouraged to act as a central though worldwide broadcasting agency - well, that would be something!
Enough. I'm writing all these niggles while very much admiring your dream, Anne, and wishing it could be true!
The more I read of ... online, back-up plans, Zoom, key stages, the minutae of middle England...., the more I wish I could have done my schooling at Summerhill School. My kids too, if I had any.
Sorry, Andrew, I don't understand. What does what I have suggested have to do with key stages, Zoom, or the 'minutiae of middle England'? This is just a suggestion for back-up materials that can be used in extremis rather than the botched mess we had this time round. It's not buying into any particular pedagogy or 'middle England' anything. The more fun the materials the better — my whole point was that we ended up with a mix that was at worst rubbish that the kids hated and we would do better with something they enjoyed and wanted to do
Yes, Penny, I agree it would be beyond this government to do it without just giving a load of money to incompetent cronies who would spaff it away...
Anne, the kind of material you're talking about does exist, or it did once, as in for example the Schools Council Science projects from the seventies and later eg SCHOOLS COUNCIL INTEGRATED SCIENCE PROJECT (SCISP). This kind of research based, intelligent curriculum and resource design was COMMON when I started teaching, and very little has depressed me more than going into schools after retirement and seeing teachers uncritically downloading and using poorly spelt, badly designed and inaccurate worksheets from commercial sites like TWINKL. I was so cross about one of their worksheets (it contained four serious errors) that I emailed them. They thanked me in an email with love hearts at the bottom. It's not just that there isn't a backup, it's that what is behind the backup is already badly damaged.
Yes, Paul, there used to be good stuff. But if we had a single bank of reliable resources, kept up to date, engaging, accurate, accessible... it would stop all that frantic scrabbling for any bit of rubbish that looks even slightly plausible
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