Day 2 of the national conference began with some breakfast sessions, I was hoping to go the Alan November session but we had to prepare our talk for later with Ray Chambers from Lodge Park Technology College.
It was great to hear from students from the Cabot federation in what they were achieving as part of the federation. The thing I found really interesting although we didn’t get much detail about was their Teachers for Tomorrow programme – where students at secondary level begin preparing to be a teacher. I saw a similar programme in Las Vegas schools about 8 years ago that was having fantastic results – I would really like to hear more about this and how it is working at the Cabot Federation.
The Challenge of Innovation in Four Stories
Sir Michael Barber started by reading (with a real book) – story one which was Winnie the Pooh, yes he read the whole story, the lesson from the story was – real time data is vital… but it’s the analysis of it that really counts, good way to do this, was a creative way to deliver his message.
Story two – ‘The evolution of the bicycle’ – it took three and a half thousand years from the wheel to put two together and invent a bicycle. Michael then talked about how the bicycle evolved from the first through to the penny farthing to the modern bike. – Lesson is there are disruptive leaps… but often the smallest details that make the biggest difference. For example the way you review or some up a lesson makes an enormous difference to how effectively students will retain knowledge. Another example was from John Gray is that one of the factors associated with school effectiveness was that every child had one adult in a school who championed them. Do you have this in your school? Does every child have a mentor? Perhaps they could be given an adult mentor or someone who looks out for them at the start of school.
Story three – Michael spoke about several different cathedrals and the stories behind each one such as ‘St Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow’, Mezquita in Cordoba and Durham Cathedral. The lesson from this is that vision and imagination are nothing without precision and persistence – how does this work in your schools?
Story four – Michael talked about the story behind climbing mountains and the history of significant heights reached over the years such as Mount Everest. What do these achievements tell us? To reach these heights it takes a team effort, you can’t do it on your own and takes time. In addition for innovation to happen sometimes it can be painful, you may have to make sacrifices. The lesson here is that ambition inspires innovation.
Our challenge for education is not just here in the UK it is a global challenge to change education.