Curriculum of the Future — Part 3
Co-design is not a one time event, it’s a journey. Imagine a world where users decide what works best. Imagine a world that encourages all stakeholders to have a say in designing the curriculum of the future.
Data is the new gold as the saying goes, only 20% of these young people continue onto university. So why is the current curriculum solely focussed on this group? Catering for the masses throws up an interesting debate.
Following on from 2 previous events that concentrated solely on diving deep into gathering insights, it was time to do something with all that research. Create the right conditions and something magical can happen. The Service Design Academy’s role in this was clear; facilitate (not lead) young people, teachers and partners to collaborate and co-design the curriculum of the future for Arbroath Academy.
The day kicked off with some speedy getting to know each other before mapping out the themes that had been discovered during the first 2 days. The mixture of young people (s2–s6) and teaching staff had all their findings collaborated and digested into 49 areas of interest. The groups picked themselves by choosing what they wanted to tackle for the rest of the day.
Group Forming through the power of the marshmallow challenge was served up next. What occurred during the next 7 mins was radical and rule breaking at its best (things we do encourage here at SDA). Construct the tallest freestanding tower you can with the material provided. With a bag of chocolate buttons on offer, competition was fierce. Embrace failure you say…nearly every structure was stuck to the desk, oh well the SDA team devoured the buttons on the way home, winning!
Marc Stickdorn repeatedly says ideation is cheap, prototyping is underrated. The groups re-defined their problem around the theme of their group. (Skills, Pupil Voice, School Essentials (physical design), Qualifications, Building Relationships and School Experiences) before carrying out some ideation into the problems they were trying to solve.
After an introduction to prototyping and a reminder that the greatest inventor of all time is called ‘Accident’, the groups jumped straight into designing their solutions. The learn by doing approach was infectious and allowed creativity to flow, if you could capture the energy in the room at this stage of the day it would be worth a small fortune. Co-design is a team sport and those rough first drafts to be fair were pretty impressive.Now was the time to test and validate those version 1 prototypes.
Thankfully the lunch time bell rang and a few hundred stakeholders became instantly available to give feedback on the solutions we’d produced. 5 of the groups hit the recreational areas in and around the school and one group stayed in the room and brought stakeholders to see their prototype.
Our invited guests, from meaningful learning networks, donned their ‘critical friends’ caps and each joined a group to specifically ask the, ‘yeah, so what?’ and ‘why?’ questions. Importantly we’d called upon the people who could actually make this happen! Ian Lorimer, The Director of Finance at Angus Council (who holds the purse strings), Education Scotland (project funders), Skills Development Scotland, Developing the Young Work Force, Lynsey Clark from Calderglen High School/SDA student and members of the Parent Teachers Association all took part as we carried out 3 rounds of pitching and feedback.
Combining the feedback from the school community and the critical friends, each group was asked to create version 2 and re-work their original solution.
On completion of version 2 we asked them tell the story through a visualisation tool called tomorrow’s news, specifically asking them to date it, as we want to see how long it will take for their proposed solution to come to fruition.
The results of the co-design day were absolutely inspiring.
- Having an entire week out of the year for teachers and young people to come together specifically to focus on relationship building through clubs, activities and visits outside of the traditional classroom setting.
- Complete classroom design overhaul. Introducing a cosy corner that young people could utilise at times of anxiety and uncertainty.
- A new 13 week block timetable, one that has all theory in the morning and all practical in the afternoons. This would include leaving the school and getting out and about to put into practice the theory you had covered in the mornings. It would involve a whole day being dedicated to the one subject.
- An app for giving young people a louder voice in the school. A ‘we said, you did’ approach to all things in and around the school. This group used the Marvel app to produce a 1st prototype.
- Ways and means of accessing the school curriculum outside of school. Inspired by the Amazon approach of getting exactly what you want online, young people who may miss classes for a variety of reasons (carer, mental health, illness) can pop online and access all the materials they missed that day.
- Re-organising and reviewing the current social and life skills young people want/require for leaving school. Replicating a flat, arranging to pay bills, getting a mortgage, changing a tyre, prepping for interviews in the real world. This would involve the complete re-design of some spaces inside the school for this to be brought to life.
All prototypes and materials are being kept on display for the rest of the school to review and reflect on. The excitement of everyone involved was tangible and they all agreed that something very special had been created by SDA, Arbroath Academy and Education Scotland through the 3 workshops.
That feeling of creating something special should not be lost! Taking action, ensuring that all this work has legs, embedding the powerful student voice and co-creation skills and the drive and momentum are now a priority.
It’s about changing the reality of those coming to learn, grow and develop at Arbroath Academy. The education system has a responsibility to be inclusive for one and all. Let’s remember first and foremost, real change only happens when we’re willing to do things we’ve never done before.
Published today, Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence states every child and young person is entitled to opportunities for developing skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work.
Arbroath Academy are leading the way, we can’t wait to see what happens next to help our children and young people gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for life in the 21st century.
