In the QI edition of The Idler, Lloyd and Mitchinson present a five-point manifesto for educational reform.

One: play not work

Schools should be resource centres, not prisons. Teachers should be returned to their original roles as facili-tators, not bureaucrats or drillmasters. The more "work" resembles play – telling stories, making things – the more interested kids will become.

Two: follow the chain of curiosity

Ask a kid what he wants to learn, and he's unlikely to say: "a broad-based curriculum that offers the core skills". Real learning is obsessive. It happens through watching, listening and practising something that really interests you. Encourage children to follow their own curiosity right to the end of the chain, and they will acquire the skills they need to get there.

Three: you decide

The QI School isn't compulsory and there are no exams: only projects or goals you set yourself with the teacher acting as a mentor. This could be making a film or building a chair. From age seven onwards, our core subjects might be: philosophy, storytelling, music, technology, nature and games.

Four: no theory without practice

If you're lost in wonder looking at, say, a lettuce, you will want to have a go at growing it, too.

Five: you never leave

There is no reason why school has to stop dead at 17 or 18. The QI school would be the ultimate "lifelong learning" venue – a mini-university where skills and knowledge would be pooled and young and old could indulge their curiosity.


Yes, it does sound awfully familiar, almost like, some sort of autonomous, student led education, if only someone had thought of it before....

He added: "All parents have to strike the right balance. TV is great - children learn from TV.

"And, as parents, we all have to plonk our children down in front of the TV from time to time to make dinner.

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Last time it came up on 5Live, the silliness was "Well, you need qualifications for a decent job".... coming from a radio DJ and a newspaper columnist, who earn far more than I do in jobs which require little more in the way of qualifications than the ability to spew words into either the mic or the word processor.

This time...


"Surely, at school.. in the office.. we all need standards to make sure we’re making progress and the trouble with this conversation to some extent is that we’re hearing the stories of the parents who are doing the right thing, how do we make sure that we’re keeping tabs on those who aren’t doing the right things?"
- Julian Worricker, Radio 5 Live Report on Home Education


Again, I'd be fascinated to see what standards Julian is subject to to ensure he's making progress.

Gill makes the point that, especially when young, we all make progress without being tested, held up to standards.

Personally, I see this as another part of the mania for metrics: find a number vaguely related to performance that it's easy to derive, define that number AS performance, then measure everyone according to that metric. So what if it only tangentially represents work done, quality, or any useful aim for a person, organisation, or group? Dammit, look at the FIGURES!.

I have seen a number of good managers reduced to bean counters by this mania for figures, good workers neglected compared to bad workers who knew how to game the figures, and, of course, children marked as "failing" in school because they don't produce the right figures to make the school look good, to make the department look good.

The Target Culture is at the heart of the destruction of the NHS: waiting lists are down, because you can wait for months before you're officially on the list. No-one has to wait more than 24 hours for an appointment with their GP... because most GP's won't LET you book earlier than that morning.

Good managers, good parents, good teachers, good headmasters, dare I say, good governments, don't have this mania for figures: they manage through knowing and trusting. Genuine knowledge of what is valuable or worthy is being buried under a mountain of spurious, distracting, deceptive data, that tells you more about who is requesting the data than who it's being requested from.

"Dear Academy:

"Thank you for your response to our request for further information: regretfully, we have been forced to serve you with a compulsory school abandonment order.

"Our main concern is the removal of free recreational areas and the abandonment of unstructured recreational time for the pupils. Your reasoning that such spaces would be unmanageable and lead to bullying and truancy seems at best specious and at worst an admittance that you are unable to properly socialise your students, nor to sufficiently incentivise them to remain in the school without seriously curtailing their freedoms of movement, expression and self determination.

"Indeed, throughout all the reports we have read, you seem to be very reluctant to address the socialisation of the students, arguing that 'What the public wants is maximum learning', and that recreation should take place off school premises 'in their own time in their own communities'

"While we admire your honesty for stating that your school is not part of the student's community, we cannot accept this frankly worrying desire to completely manage every moment of every child's time at your establishment. In fact, many of us believe that such attitudes show a deep seated fear of your students.

"We feel that in treating your students as a behavioural problem, that is all they ever will be.

"As such, we feel that you cannot be trusted to adequately fulfil your responsibilities to give these children and appropriate education for their ages, aptitudes and abilities. We would remind you that education is not merely that which can be taught in lessons or measured in tests, which seems to be the only measure, apart from money, that you presently understand.

"We are seriously considering whether your regime infringes their human rights, leaving the local authority open to prosecution.

"Please turn in your keys to the authority. Return these children to their parents.

"The Public

PS Norman Foster designs a school without playgrounds? Typical."

Outside of my general concerns for the workability, necessity and cost to the tax payer of such a scheme, as a home educator I am concerned that this will lead to home educators being forced to put their children through the same round of national curriculum and SAT's that are among the major reasons for opting out of state education for many home educators.

 

At present, home educators only need to demonstrate to the education authority that their child is receiving, in the opinion of the education officer, an appropriate education for their abilities. Every family is assessed by a professional at regular intervals, as far as his workload and funding permits.

 

In the home education community, we are concerned that the every child matters initiative will be used to bureaucratize this process to facilitate the targets mentality that is prevalent in the information presented so far, and lead to a position where our activities are monitored not by professional members of the educaiton community, but by a bureacracy that sees every child in home education as a potential victim of abuse and neglect.

 

I took my children out of state education partly to stop them being treated as numbers, targets and pawns in bureaucratic games. Every Child Matters may force them back into that role, with myself as score keeper. Please ask the minister what provisions are being made in the every child matters initiative for the families that choose to home educate.

 

I thank you for your swift response, and look forward to hearing from you.