It’s time for the government to live up to its rhetoric — and create a truly “world-beating” education system, writes Rose Luckin, director of EDUCATE Ventures
Some of the Department for Education’s guidance for reopening schools next week — such as, that pupils sit facing forward and the need for social distancing in corridors — suggest that little has been learned during the school lockdown. In the scramble to draft numerous guidelines about safe school reopening, the government is missing some obvious solutions.
If we are to return to an education system that caters for all pupils and all needs we need to look beyond how classrooms are designed and examine exactly what the school lockdown has taught us — and where we can find solutions to the myriad of challenges we faced during this unprecedented, unique experience.
What we have learned, principally, is that the technology genie is out of the bottle, and it cannot be forced back in. Millions of educators and learners worked hard to continue teaching and learning during the lockdown and have picked up valuable skills and experience in the use, and potential, of technology in the process. Let’s acknowledge that this is the case, instead of shelving it as an incidental by-product.
Similar efforts have been made by educational technology developers. They have used this time to monitor, evaluate and finesse their products to ensure they are fit for purpose and meeting the demands of users.
Numerous research surveys have shown that the key challenge facing the education system will be helping disadvantaged learners who have been unable to access remote education. All pupils will need to re-engage socially and to be helped to catch up on the things they have not been able to learn at home, but learners from disadvantaged backgrounds will need particular support.
Schools will need to identify each learner’s knowledge gaps as quickly as possible and then support them to catch-up. This is a perfect task where technology can ‘lend a hand.’ For example, through adaptive tutors that diagnose and remediate or online tutoring platforms that provide human tutors who can provide 1 to 1 or small group support. The key point that must not be overlooked is that all learners, no matter what their ability, will return with different knowledge gaps and they will each need support that is tailored to their individual needs. The only way that this can be achieved is through a combination of human and technology-based education.
The situation we now face is one where people will move in and out of self-isolation, families with vulnerable members shield and local areas are further restricted as infections increase. This means that at any one point in time, a school may have some learners needing remote education, while others are at school and being taught face to face. Once again, the only way that this sort of hybrid education system can be achieved is through leveraging technology.
In fact, huge strides have been made in this in the past six months, but you would not know it listening to policymakers in the UK. While schools internationally have begun to understand the potential of technology in teaching and learning, the education secretary has buried himself — and headteachers — in reams of documents and ever-changing guidelines, that appear to have done little to confront reality.
He should, as a matter of urgency, be revising the EdTech strategy launched by his predecessor Damian Hinds last year to recognise the challenges schools now face. The campaign to provide disadvantaged children with laptops during the school shutdown was welcome but long overdue, and not in place fast enough. It has been known for years that there was a huge disparity between families’ ability to home educate children, yet this was not addressed.
He should also be developing a vision for an education system that is resilient to disruptions like COVID-19. A system that is data driven, so that we understand exactly what pupils do and don’t know, and that is available to all learners no matter where they happen to be physically. A system where technology is used to augment our human teaching workforce, which will be highly proficient with both data and technology. This vision must focus on a Future Workforce Model for Education, to ensure that teachers are at the forefront of its development.
All of this must, of course, be underpinned by significant and ring-fenced investment in schools’ technology infrastructure. This must include devices for learners, of course, but also the most up to date fast broadband access in schools and homes, and a toolkit of resources that children can access in every subject. If this is not done now, then when?
The educational vision that we need must be built on partnerships between private and public organisations from the BBC and the big technology companies to the small EdTech developers and entrepreneurs. It must also involve stakeholders from across the sectors. But most importantly of all it must be led by a bold vision that will energise and engage all parties to provide what every child deserves: a proper education to equip them for a fulfilled life.
When I founded the EdTech accelerator, UCL EDUCATE, we worked with hundreds of companies which were designing and developing resources aimed at every curriculum subject, as well as in tracking, monitoring and assessing pupil progress, and promoting children’s health and wellbeing. So, we know the expertise and resources are there.
The multiple surveys and reports that have been published in the last few months provide us with valuable and crucial information about the school shutdown and remote learning experience, what works and what doesn’t and the best practice that has been going on in the schools that have made a success of this difficult period.
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, could do worse than read this evidence and talk to those schools, before embarking on a new strategy for remote learning. If he is serious about making up the learning deficits, narrowing gaps and equipping our young people with skills for the future, then he must listen to those who know.
And getting pupils back to school must be about more than freeing up parents to work, or how pupils sit in a class or organising the one-way system in the corridor. It also buys us valuable time in being ready and prepared for the next school lockdown, which will surely come, and making it better.
