Fighting The Status Quo By Graham Hills

MANIFESTO CHALLENGE | DEVELOPING A CAPABLE POPULATION

Fighting the status quo In part two of his essay, Professor Sir Graham Hills argues that we must free education from centuries of tradition and teach our children capability from nursery through to college and university

There are fewer subjects more emotive than education. Rightly so, as the quality of education will shape the future lives of our children, and indeed, the health of our society as a whole. In my first essay for the rsa Journal, I set out the case for the resurgence of generic and vocational skills to sit on an equal level with the more traditional academic subjects (“In from the cold – the rise of vocational education”, rsa Journal, November 2004, p22). I argued that we will need the know-how skills as much, if not more, than those of the know-what. We can see from the controversy sparked by the sound recommendations in the government’s report “14-19 Curriculum and Qualifications Reform” produced last October by Mike Tomlinson’s Working Group on 14-19 Reform, arguing for a new diploma giving greater weighting to the vocational topics, that it is not easy to implement these proposals. My view, which is set out below, is that the best and fairest way to promote a good education, apart from a greater focus on skills-based learning, is to free the system from central control. More specifically, I argue for the introduction of a bursary or voucher system to ensure that all young people have equal access to the schools of their choice, from nursery to secondary school; and I suggest that mandatory grants for undergraduates should be reintroduced to make the system more equitable. My first essay also sought to make a virtue out of flexibility across the spectrum of knowledge, from academic to vocational studies, with greater emphasis on the latter. I discussed the New Learning Paradigm, propounded by thinkers such as Sir Alistair MacFarlane, which divides knowledge into two categories: Mode 1 (factual, intellectual knowledge, based on a world of hypotheses and theories) and Mode 2 (thinking concerned with the application of academic knowledge to useful purposes). I also argued that the didactic procedures of Mode 1 knowledge should give way to the more conversational styles of Mode 2 thinking, so that professors and teachers

would then be valued less for what they know and more for what they are, as individuals, role models and friends. The essay argued for the simultaneous education and training of young people to become more capable citizens. By singling out implicit, personal knowledge as the proper goal of education, values and experience were pushed up the ladder of educational achievement at the expense of explicit knowledge of facts and figures. The culmination of this reordering of priorities leads to a new perspective of knowledge between the two extremes of Mode 1 and Mode 2. The next question is how to make sure the right changes happen in education policy. As I mentioned in my first essay, an rsa report (Education for Capability) written almost two decades ago, already argued cogently for the type of educational reforms set out above. Sadly, in the last 20 years the report has, like so many others, gathered dust while its call for change has gone unanswered. The obstacle to implementing its recommendations was not a lack of belief or will but the establishment’s stubborn loyalty to the time-honoured process of grading people in terms of what they know. Looking at today’s position there are key questions that need to be asked: why are secondary schools locked into a rigid national curriculum? Why do British universities look more and more alike? One answer to these questions might be that recent governments have insisted that there be accountability in education and have, therefore, created systems of testing and so forth which create conformity and uniformity. This is supposed to prove that the system is fair to children from all social backgrounds. But uniformity is a denial of the great variety of pupils and teachers. Diversity is not just desirable; it is the only means of continual evolution. It is then the role of teachers to guide their students into a future better assured by as many options as possible. That attitude is most noticeable in the alternative qualifications of

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words by P r o f e s s o r S i r G r a h a m Hi l l s

the baccalaureate. Sadly, the Tomlinson report did not go as far as recommending a move in this direction, as had been expected. Finally, when all these reforms of the curriculum are in place, there will still remain one overriding aspect about which too little has been said. Learning and teaching are intimate human activities, which depend for their success on the personalities of those engaged. The teacher as role model is the key to the successful development of every individual. It is imperative that we ensure that only the best and brightest of teachers are presented to the young. Teaching needs to be the most rewarding and the most rewarded of the professions. Given these recommendations, there remain practical considerations of how to implement them. Put another way, how can we challenge centuries-old traditions and procedures and persuade people of the need and advantage of radical change? In as much as the Mode 1/Mode 2 debate allows a new approach to knowledge and skills, equally fresh thought is required about their organisation. This is the realm of politics, where all reforms are born. By common consent the quality looked for across the spectrum of education is capability – a rounded, comprehensive, attainable goal for most young people and one most likely to benefit them, their country and its economy. It does not imply academic brilliance or exceptional dexterity, but rather a willingness and ability to solve problems. A reminder of our unwillingness to recognise ability as capability is to observe again that this has never been the target of formal education, being always overshadowed by the traditional quest for academic knowledge, regardless of its value and values. The blueprint of academic procedures is the syllabus, the agreed range of subjects and topics to be learnt and examined. It is argued here that this is often a hangover from Victorian times. There may be subject areas in which narrowness is the necessary price of specialisation but for the majority of students, premature specialisation is a serious handicap. The closing down of options is unnecessary and unwise. What would replace subject specialisation? Simply a wider range of subject options, including the 20 or 30 topics of current interest, all ready-made and formulated on the internet. However, it is one thing to soft-pedal the Mode 1 knowledge base of facts and figures, but another to replace it or infuse it with other characteristics of Mode 2. Mode 2 is the home of implicit knowledge, of experiential knowledge, of skills and of competences. It is therefore close to capability, to know-how,

to technology, to design and the many other generic skills, the knowledge content of which is incidental. But how can Mode 2 be taught and examined as part of the grading of the young? The answer is again simple. It cannot. It does not belong to the academic world of the graded intellect but to the useful world of intelligence – the ability to do and to be. It cannot be overemphasised that the purpose of education is not to grade the young by their ability to leap over hurdles of intellectual attainment but rather by their ability to mount, in their own way and in their own time, a sequence of gently rising steps, each the result of a succession of the virtuous cycles of learning described in my first essay. Mode 2 can be acquired only by practice, by training, by experience under the eye of someone who has already mastered the arts, crafts and science of whatever skill is involved. Its home is not the classroom with its implied authority but rather the seminar room, the laboratory, and other social spaces where the spoken word is more important than the written word and where argument is invited. The Socratic world of rhetoric has therefore to make a comeback if the rational articulation of capability is to be fostered and cherished. The transition from Mode 1 to Mode 2 is summarised in the New Learning Paradigm, in which small group tutorials, laboratory exercises, case studies, and skills and competence training form the basis of learning. The harvesting and management of explicit knowledge is then best left to the personal computer, the internet and the web. Students respond to this method of learning. It is user-friendly, uncritical and patient. We should banish the bogeyman of the student glued to a monitor screen. The idea is to use the internet efficiently, that is, as little as possible. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the new generation is being asked to acquire as little explicit knowledge as possible, commensurate with developing the widest range of skills implicit in capability. The learning process therefore begins not with the acquisition of knowledge but with its application. Problembased learning is here to stay. The case study is its vehicle. It begins with the phrase “Once upon a time”. If the proper study of man is man then it is only through narrative literature that we come close to the values and the morals of humankind. This engagement with human values reaches the zenith of its intellectual fruitfulness in the mediation of the New Learning Paradigm by teachers prepared to share their values with their students. It is a shoulder-to-shoulder relationship rather than

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The best and fairest way to promote a good education, apart from a greater focus on skills-based learning, is to free it from central control

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Now to the main problem: secondary education. Whereas admission to a nursery or primary school is mainly on the basis of need and locality, the same is not true of secondary schools, at least in England. Scotland has shown that secondary education does not require a selective examination. Similarly, streaming and further selection are not common elsewhere in Europe, but the English system, devoted to such principles for so long, will need time to evolve into something more generous. Here, then, the bursary or the voucher takes on new significance. It is social justice that since all are required to pay national taxes all should be entitled to receive national benefits. Because it would be perverse if independent education was seen as deliberately subsidising state education, independent schools should not be excluded from the bursary scheme. All pupils attending public or private secondary schools would be entitled to a voucher for each of the age cohorts from 12 to 18. Those envious critics who would see this as a new and extended form of the assisted-places scheme should be reminded that levelling up is always a cheaper option than levelling down. Distasteful as privilege sometimes is, vouchers for all are the best leveller of educational provision. The need for a level playing field is most evident in tertiary education – higher and further education – the financing of which has agonised successive governments. Only a fraction of school-leavers were admitted to British universities until recently. Most pupils dismissed the idea of their aspiring to a university place. The inquiry chaired by Lord Robbins in 1962, which produced the “Report of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education”, concluded that many more young people could benefit from further or higher education and should be offered a place. This required the establishment of 10 or more universities, to the outcry of those who believed that there was no reservoir of talent to justify this. Forty years on the target is now 50% of school-leavers and the applicants keep coming. To the question “How is this new open-doors policy to be paid for?” the answer again is simple – that those who benefit should contribute. But how is it to be done? The mere mention of fees, including top-up fees, raised hackles at all points of the political compass, from students and universities alike. Botched and different outcomes for England, Scotland and Wales strongly suggested that there was to be no solution to this problem on traditional lines. Only the bursary or the scholarship, considered and then rejected during the Thatcher era, held out some hope of equity. Free higher education for those lucky enough to be admitted therefore remained a manifesto pledge of successive Labour governments. There is now a consensus that those that benefit should pay something, perhaps on the Marxist principle of “from each

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the eyeball-to-eyeball stance and greatly to be desired. It is the transition from the closed mind to the open heart. If, then, we believe that we have discovered the best of syllabuses and the optimal combination of knowledge and skills, we have to repeat the question of how this break with tradition is to be made. We know from experience it cannot easily be done. Although the protagonists of these reforms are sympathetic to the needs of students and students learn best from those whom they admire most, it remains that antagonists may also be well intentioned even if they are conservative, risk-averse and likely to have a low opinion of every generation of students except their own. These will only be persuaded by example that there really are better possibilities than the status quo. There will be other thoughtful people who applaud the present arrangements that, after all, produced them. They believe that John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-90), author of a famous lecture series entitled “The idea of a university”, was right – that intellect is the supreme human achievement. They may fear that all will be lost in another comprehensive-school fiasco and that the privileges they or their offspring at present enjoy would be absent in a more open system of knowledge and learning. The independent schools will not easily yield the splendid traditions of learning and grooming they have nurtured for a century or more. The overcoming of these obstacles therefore requires that the majority of those involved are sure of a win-win outcome. The instrument of the all-embracing, all-benefiting reform is, of course, the bursary, the scholarship or the voucher, to be spent in any and every kind of school and university. It is, in effect, a cheque underwritten by government to cover the basic cost of the educational provision for every pupil and every student at every level of formal education. The voucher could be a national financial entitlement to nursery education for all under-fives, spent at public or private institutions, an incentive for both to perform at their best. For primary schools the same principle would apply but it might be thought that minimum and maximum class sizes should be clearly specified. There might nevertheless be arguments for village schools or special schools of smaller size. Good sense would prevail. The outcome would be close to that at present, the difference being in the governance of the schools, which would be free to recruit and reward their own staff. Regulatory bodies would have the first but not the last word. The value of the primary school voucher would be uniform and not lightly varied. It would enable primary schools, singly or otherwise, to budget ahead and, in all matters, to manage themselves.

according to his means, to each according to her needs”. The vehicle for that to happen is the bursary to meet the basic costs of a higher (and further) education course leading to a first degree. This resurrection of the earlier, postwar mandatory grant is the key to equitable provision. The basic cost of a first degree in Britain is not easily defined or calculated. Subjects vary in cost from, say, mathematics to medicine and it would be invidious to bias the choice of subject by its relative cost. The American solution to this problem is to make first degree programmes more general in content, equivalent in value, less specialist by nature and not requiring expensive laboratories and other such facilities. The concept of the general first degree is not new. It was the normal precursor to professional training in Scotland until the start of the 20th century. It presupposes that the professional studies of medicine, law, accountancy and the like are best studied at postgraduate level where the costs are high but the numbers smaller, hence the opportunity for earning while learning that much greater. Under these circumstances the cost of the first degree is no more than that of any current arts-based subject. A cockshy guess at that cost would be £10,000 a year for three years. There are many reasons for advocating these changes, which would bring Britain into line not just with the us but also with the rest of Europe. The advantages would be to economise on the cost of all first degree programmes and to remove the financial obstacles from the reforms presented here. The reforms themselves have many advantages. First off, they increase the range of options, the extent of choice, and make those options the responsibility of the teachers and the taught. They open the door to the evolution of subjects, courses, degrees and a better balance between knowledge and skills at all levels of education, and are more economic in that the greatest outlay is on the cost-effective, general, first degree. Requiring no upfront fees, except those for frills, the degree forms the only sensible basis of mass higher education. Its flexibility blurs the interface between higher and further education, which can then be allowed to wither, to the great advantage of widespread capability. It removes the pressure on schools to specialise too soon by moving specialist, professional courses into the realm of postgraduate studies, and in so doing raises the standards of scholarship and research where they matter. On the side of the status quo might be that any reform is disruptive of a system already in being, and might open up even greater government intervention. The most demanding yet rewarding objective for the rsa is to free education from top-down direction and open it to bottom-up evolution. Given the choice, students would opt for the subjects, disciplines and skills that best meet their lifelong ambitions. The benefits of a capable society would then be self-evident. There remains the perpetual question of the nature of this capability. To be inclusive the answer will point to a range of capabilities, from the most esoteric subject matter to the downto-earth requirements of manufacturing and commerce.

The way to do this is to bridge the gap between academia and business, between theory and reality – between Mode 1 and Mode 2. From one side, that of traditional education, it is done by incorporating into the syllabuses at all levels the languages, materials and attitudes of business itself. But it also requires a continual exchange of mindsets so that industry is as comfortable with academia as academia is with industry. The best way to connect the world of industry to academia is by peopling it with students. This is the time-honoured and highly successful tradition of the industrial apprentice, of the hospital intern, of the jobbing accountant, of the articled clerk and now of the call centre and software apprentice. Once on a strictly business basis, this kind of work experience has been allowed to degenerate into a grace-and-favour endeavour. The new business basis of the new apprenticeship would be the salary paid to the apprentice or, if the training were separate and at a cost, it would be from the national voucher cashed by companies in exchange for that training. The idea that learning can only take place in a school or university is absurd. Learning and training are solely dependent on the skilled performance of the master wherever he or she is to be found, in the design studio, in the machine shop or at the personal computer. Once we attach real value to real activities, then a variety of markets and market forces will do the rest. ■

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WHERE TO FIND OUT MORE GO On 3 February, Frank Pignatelli, Learn Direct Scotland, and Christopher Clouder, Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, discuss the building of a capable and skilled Scottish population in an RSA Scotland lecture. Contact [email protected] for details HAVE YOUR SAY Why not contribute to the debate on this important topic on the RSA’s web forum? To start a new online debate or join an existing one visit www.theRSA.org/forum RSA PROJECT The RSA recently initiated a project to investigate whether our education system effectively delivers the skills that people need to be successful in the modern world. Visions of a Capable Society is being developed in collaboration with Professor Sir Graham Hills. For further information, or to contribute suggestions or comments, visit the RSA website at www.theRSA.org/projects/visions_of_capable_society.asp FEEDBACK We have already received a number of letters in response to Professor Sir Graham Hills’ first essay on education. A selection of Fellows’ views of both articles will be published in the next issue. If you would like to air your views on the subject email your letters to [email protected]

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