RSA Future Schools Network

Horizon Scanning Event

4th February 2008

Next Practice and the RSA Future Schools Network

The radical ambition which inspired the RSA’s Opening Minds Curriculum and its
new academy makes it an ideal organisation to work with The Innovation Unit’s
concept of Next Practice. The Innovation Unit distinguishes between Best and Next
Practice in the following way.

Best Practice looks at and promotes leading educational activity for the benefit of the
education system as it currently exists. Next Practice works with outstanding
practitioners and other interested groups to try to take us beyond the current
system into new territory, both in terms of school-based educational activity and in
terms of the systems needed to nurture and develop such activity.

In a piece of work under development for The Innovation Unit, Charles Leadbeater
writes:

Schools are central to education yet they seem also out of kilter with the way children live
and will work in the future. Operating with rigid years, grades, terms and timetables they
still hark back to preparation for life in the factory rather than in today’s 24/7 service
economy. Traditional schools do too little to encourage individual initiative and collaborative
problem solving; they cut off learning from real world experiences; they focus on cognitive
skills and too little on the soft skills of sociability and mutual respect.

So where are the next practices that have locally anticipated this new world and are
redesigning their approach?

How can a national system encourage and support transition to a new world?

Are the Opening Minds Curriculum schools able to show a new collective approach
to meeting the challenges set by Leadbeater?

Which areas are ripe for development or have an urgent need for action?

Some suggestions for consideration are:

The Role of the Teacher

How do teachers who are aware of these trends satisfy current demands but
help lead the way to the future? What does it mean for the teacher and his/her
skills and mindset if a personalised approach operates beyond the traditional
organising frames of year groups and timetables? How should individual initiative
and collaborative problem solving be understood and orchestrated? What skills
should learners acquire that will equip them for life in a world that expects not
just cognitive ability, but also certain non-cognitive skills and characteristics?

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What is the role of new technologies as the teacher’s role develops? How do
you systematically work with the wider community beyond the school both as an
influence on teaching and an essential resource? What are the training needs of
current and future workforce?

Most radically of all, do these questions lead to a permanent sea change in the
distribution of notions of teaching, learning, power and authority amongst
teachers, students and the wider community? If that were the case, education
would inevitably move to a world where the user voice and user expectation has
not only a louder say but begins to shape its discourse. Again, as Charles
Leadbeater says, ‘the audience [would] have taken to the stage’.

Schools, families and the wider community

Without undermining the importance of the school, there is also a growing

acknowledgement of the influence of family and wider community on the life
chances of young people. 15% of childhood is spent in school, 85% elsewhere.
The recent change of name from DfES to DCSF highlights this, as does the
publication of the recent Children’s Plan. Schools do not exist in isolation.
Children are subject to multiple influences, and have needs wider than can be
met by narrow educational approaches.

There is a need to develop a double strategy here. Both arms of this strategy will
challenge many current models of schooling in profound ways. There is an
obvious need to integrate all areas to do with the care and development of
young people and link those to schooling; hence extended schools, multi-use
sites, wrap-around care, the Sure Start agenda, early years provision, breakfast
and after school clubs. In many local sites this is leading to a resolution at last of
the ‘standards versus welfare’ tension and a new understanding of the type of
interdisciplinary action needed to make a real difference.

But where will this go next? If user voice is being developed in a new type of
interaction between pupils, parents and teachers regarding classroom experience
are we prepared, and do we have a strategy, for the impact of users’ voices
extending to the whole gamut of children’s provision for students and families?
Will young people and their parents want a say in the whole design of their
extended provision? In a recent New Statesman article Matthew Taylor argues
that the old approaches to collective provision for people are no longer fit for
purpose. He says:

The old collectivism is dead or dying. Its characteristics - hierarchical, bureaucratic,

paternalistic - are no longer suited to the challenges or mood of the times. The
institutions of the new collectivism must be devolved, pluralistic, egalitarian and most of
all self actualising.

So the challenge here is exciting. If our new approaches to teaching and

curriculum are going to encourage independent, confident students and if our
extended school-integrated thinking is intended to do the same for parents and
communities, at what stage do we make the leap to a new concept of
collectivism in our education provision?

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 New forms of organisation within and between schools

The buildings of The Industrial Age of schooling had high and large windows that
let in light but allowed no one to see out. Schools cannot afford to exist now cut
off in this way. The challenges of a networked age need networked solutions.

How should a school organise itself internally to encourage the type of

collectivism needed to meet the social and digital demands on it? Without strong
and confident and systematic connections beyond its own boundaries, how can it
construct a successful 14-19 agenda, an Every Child Matters agenda, and a
community-wide approach to communication?

What does this mean for leadership and governance?

A 21st century approach to curriculum and assessment

The new curriculum and timetabling flexibilities proposed by QCA are broadly
welcomed in many parts of the education community. In light of Leadbeater’s
comments are they radical enough? Is it a case of fine tuning the current system
rather than real radicalism – or good first steps towards radical solutions?

What should the balance of content to process be? How do we best utilise our
collective subject knowledge? How does the Opening Minds approach meet the
challenge of developing and assessing collaborative working between students?

There remains a balance to be struck between content and process in terms of

skills of teamwork; a sense of independence as a learner and citizen; an ability to
take initiative confidently and to never be passive as a learner.

The Challenge

Are the schools that are currently interested in the Opening Minds Curriculum able
to individually and collectively develop answers to the issues above that make a next
practice contribution to the debate?