http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html
Give them a laptop and a group of pupils will teach themselves
The academic who inspired Slumdog Millionaire believes all pupils should be given time in groups with a computer to teach themselves.
In 2006, a few colleagues and I worked out a route out of New Delhi into the heart of rural north-eastern India, avoiding all major urban areas. Two colleagues then drove along this route. Whenever they encountered a primary school, they stopped, administered tests in English, maths and science to the children and conducted a brief interview with the teachers.
We then totalled the marks for each school and plotted the result against its distance from Delhi. The unmistakable downward trend was traced to the attitude and quality of teachers in remote areas.
There are, and always will be, even in the developed world, places where good teachers do not want to go. How will learners in such areas get an equal opportunity? These areas are not necessarily geographically remote. They may be remote in other ways, for instance, areas in big cities that are socio-economically remote, areas that are religiously or ethnically remote.
This is where computers come in. Laptops were created for rich company executives; Microsoft wrote PowerPoint for corporate presentations; LCD projectors were invented for corporate boardrooms. We teachers borrowed this technology, at atrocious prices. The salespeople found a new market and sold to the richest schools in the world. But the richest schools already had good teachers and, mostly, good students. They judged the corporate technology to be over-hyped and under-performing. Countless people have said that educational technology does not deliver. But it was being tried in the wrong place.
I decided to modify and develop technology and take it to some of the remotest locations I could find. Would it survive, and if it did, what would it do for education?Ten years ago, aided by the industrialist Rajendra Pawar, we started to install computers into brick walls in public places in hundreds of villages and slums in India, Cambodia and Africa. The media called this the "hole-in-the-wall" project.
The computers were designed to be used by 6- to 15-year-old children, free of charge and free of any supervision. In the first five years of the experiment, we showed that groups of children can teach themselves to use a computer and the internet, irrespective of who or where they are; irrespective of what language they speak and of whether they go to school or not.
Ten years later, a girl in rural Maharashtra is studying aeronautical engineering following her encounter with the computer in the wall. A village boy who became a genetic engineer in one of India's premier laboratories found the subject by reading the New Scientist at his hole in the wall.
What else could children learn on their own, apart from the use of computers? In Hyderabad, groups of children showed significant improvements in English pronunciation, with just few hours of practice on their own. They used a computer and a speech-to-text program that had been trained in a native English accent.
In the tsunami-hit village of Kalikuppam in southern India, children with access to a hole-in-the-wall computer taught themselves basic biotechnology, reaching a test score of 30% in just two months. They had started with a score of zero. If Tamil-speaking children could teach themselves biotechnology in English, on their own, how far can we go? A 30% score may be impressive, but it's still not a pass. We decided to use a local woman, working for an NGO, to help us go further. She had no background in biotechnology, but she took on the role of an untrained friendly mediator to encourage the children, using their desire to impress each other and their adult friend. Two months on, the scores in Kalikuppam rose to over 50%, close to what is achieved by trained subject teachers in the posh private schools of Delhi.
I brought these results back to Britain. By chance, Vikas Swarup, whose book became the film Slumdog Millionaire, revealed that he had been inspired to write his story by the hole-in-the-wall experiments. Following that, in an Education Guardian article, I made an appeal to British grandparents to give an hour of their time to talk, using Skype, to children in the slums and villages of India. Within days, 200 volunteers, of all ages, many of them retired teachers, had come forward.
In the following months, 40 of these "eMediators" had over 200 hours of contact with children in India. They read them stories, played games with them, and chatted about their two countries. A child development expert, Suneeta Kulkarni, is measuring the effects of this on the children's English communication skills.
Two years ago, we decided to try the same approach in the UK and have been working with three schools in the north-east. In Gateshead, 10-year-olds working in groups were able to answer GCSE questions they would normally encounter six years later. I asked if they could have done this more quickly if they had not shared a computer but worked on their own. They said they could not have done it at all that way.
In another school, with the help of a young teacher, Emma Crawley, we are evolving a model that could have far-reaching implications. The children work in groups of four, each group with a computer connected to the internet. They are given selected GCSE questions to work on. They usually get the answers right. Two months later, they are tested again, this time, without a computer, and each student by themself – as in a normal exam. The children show near perfect recall of the answers. Is this learning? I think it is.
I now believe that groups of children, given the appropriate digital infrastructure, a safe and free environment, and a friendly but not knowledgeable mediator, can pass school-leaving exams on their own.
The new model is straightforward. We call it a Self-organised learning environment (Sole). It just means a "cybercafe" environment for children – light, comfortable, safe and inexpensive. Children work in self-organised groups of four or five. They have the freedom to work as they please, or not to work, if they so please. Order is maintained by the children themselves. Sessions should be timetabled, just as playtime is. Each session is driven by a question designed by teachers.
On a recent visit to Turin, I asked 10-year-olds, "Who was Pythagoras, and what did he do?" Twenty minutes later, every group had right-angled triangles up on screen. One group was beginning to examine the equation of squares – they were heading towards the theory of relativity. In a school in Gateshead, nine-year-olds tackle Sats questions with confidence and ease. Crawley says it's too good to be true, but it is true.
Now we need to build Soles in every primary school. Teachers need to be trained to design simple questions that will evoke curiosity and interest while gently nudging a group towards the curriculum. Then, they can sit back and admire as learning happens. The teachers have to learn to let go. In the language of physics: "Education is a process of self-organisation and learning is its emergent property." I continue to try to find the guiding principles of the "physics" of education, but the method is ready for use.
Sugata Mitra is professor of educational technology at Newcastle University. • sugata.mitra@newcastle.ac.uk
Proposals to register children educated at home would subject families to the misguided whims of local authorities
A country's social conditions tend to reflect the character of its formal education system. It is therefore surprising that the legal position in England and Wales is one of the best in the world for families who home educate. The government's proposed changes, however, could put an end to that.
Its attitude is typified in the way it would deal with unregistered families. Non-registration would not be unlawful, so the state would not punish parents. Instead it would punish the unregistered children: it would empower local authorities to issue school attendance orders, and statutorily ban them from even considering the quality of education actually being provided. The government further proposes that having received parental notification of a decision to home educate, a school should hold a child for 20 school days. Such a measure would serve no educational purpose and would delight bullies.
Never before have parents whom there is no reason to suspect of being abusive been required to undergo state checking before being allowed to spend time raising their own children in their own homes.
According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the aim of the bill is to ensure that children can "receive the best education possible". It will "deliver the building blocks for a world-class 21st-century schooling system that meets the needs of every pupil so they can achieve their full potential".
To meet such cynicism with cynicism would be a mistake. At the core of all educational issues is the fact that humans really do have amazing potential. Take our ability to read – a skill which illiterate adults with sufficient motivation can acquire after no more than 100 hours' study. And as growing numbers of home educators are aware, it is natural for children to learn to read at one or two if they get the chance – and easy for their parents to teach them. Given a conducive environment, human potential is tangible and awe-inspiring.
The millions of new readers in Venezuela and Bolivia have not reached their "full" potential, but they have thrown off mental shackles. Stuckist school teachers who oppose Hugo Chávez have been outflanked. Ditto in academia – the Bolivarian University in Caracas, founded in 2003, has 200,000 students. Although GDP per head is 36% of Britain's, there are no tuition fees. Successes in Latin America and among British home educators are due to attentiveness, willpower and honesty – and a rejection of what, at bottom, is meanness. Be realistic – demand the possible; it far exceeds what bureaucrats and advertisers offer us.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11796626
Pupils will change at the age of 14 for the proposed university technical colleges
With the school leaving age being raised to 18, report author Alan Smithers says GCSEs will no longer be relevant as end-of-school exams.
Prof Smithers calls for a system to replace the current "untidy mix".
The report by Prof Smithers and Pamela Robinson of the University of Buckingham says that there should be a clearer divide in England between lower and upper secondary school.
Selection
It argues for GCSEs to be taken earlier - at the age of 14 - after which pupils could move on to different types of education, such as academic, vocational or technical courses.
At present in England's schools, Prof Smithers says, there is a system in which a form of undeclared selection takes place.
Options are chosen at 14 and exams are taken at 16. This determines pupils' future pathways but in a system which, he says, does not want to be seen as selective.
"We've got a bit of a hang-up about differentiating. It's a hangover from the 11-plus," says Prof Smithers.
He says it means that "selection is fudged so we don't have clear pathways in the later years of schooling".
In particular, he argues, it means that there is a lack of clear routes into technical and work-based training.
"Hence we have to import so many skilled workers from abroad," he says.
Earlier this week, former education secretary Lord Baker also argued the merits of a transfer at the age of 14, the starting age for the university technical colleges which he is promoting.
These will be aimed at providing high-quality vocational training for teenagers.
The report for the Sutton Trust looked at how other countries structured secondary education and concluded that England needed to make a distinction between lower and upper secondary school, proposing that this boundary should be at the age of 14.
This will raise questions about how pupils would be selected for different paths at this age - with any admissions system likely to be controversial.
But Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said that "effectively we have differentiation by default: all too often children's choices are dictated by the school they happen to be in, not their own talents and interests".
School isn't compulsory in Britain. Parents can, if they wish, educate their children at home, encouraging them in a sustained way to think for themselves. Successive education acts state unambiguously that the duty to ensure that children are properly educated falls to their parents. Those responsible for achieving the goal have a right to choose the means.
Parents can change their minds too. If their child attends school (other than a special-needs one) they can withdraw him on the spot. Once they tell the school in writing, the school is obliged to butt out.
The government rejected the NASUWT's advice to the Badman enquiry that it should criminalise home education altogether. Nonetheless, in a bill to be debated in the Commons this week, it proposes a compulsory registration regime which most home educators fiercely oppose.
Its attitude is typified in the way it would deal with unregistered families. Non-registration would not be unlawful, so the state would not punish parents. Instead it would punish the unregistered children: it would empower local authorities to issue school attendance orders, and statutorily ban them from even considering the quality of education actually being provided. The government further proposes that having received parental notification of a decision to home educate, a school should hold a child for 20 school days. Such a measure would serve no educational purpose and would delight bullies.
Parents would be forced to seek permission not to delegate their responsibilities, and made to satisfy local authorities that their annual plans are "suitable" – a de facto ban on more autonomous styles of education. Families would be subject to compulsory inspections. The presumption would be that parents are not fulfilling their duty unless hey can prove otherwise. As Ralph Lucas asked in the Lords debate, "What have these people done?"
Originally the government conflated educational and safeguarding issues on the presumption that all home educators are potentially not merely non-educators but also abusers. Perhaps riding on what it believed was the prevailing wind, Ofsted even told a Commons select committee that parents should be checked for criminal records before being allowed to home educate.
Never before have parents whom there is no reason to suspect of being abusive been required to undergo state checking before being allowed to spend time raising their own children in their own homes.
According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the aim of the bill is to ensure that children can "receive the best education possible". It will "deliver the building blocks for a world-class 21st-century schooling system that meets the needs of every pupil so they can achieve their full potential".
To meet such cynicism with cynicism would be a mistake. At the core of all educational issues is the fact that humans really do have amazing potential. Take our ability to read – a skill which illiterate adults with sufficient motivation can acquire after no more than 100 hours' study. And as growing numbers of home educators are aware, it is natural for children to learn to read at one or two if they get the chance – and easy for their parents to teach them. Given a conducive environment, human potential is tangible and awe-inspiring.
A few governments are genuinely nurturing such an environment right now. In Venezuela, a state programme taught more than a million adults to read in a year. The country thereby became the second in Latin America, after Cuba, to achieve full literacy. In 2008, 30 months after the election of Evo Morales, Bolivia became the third. Given the opportunity to expand their horizons, people grasp it.
The millions of new readers in Venezuela and Bolivia have not reached their "full" potential, but they have thrown off mental shackles. Stuckist school teachers who oppose Hugo Chávez have been outflanked. Ditto in academia – the Bolivarian University in Caracas, founded in 2003, has 200,000 students. Although GDP per head is 36% of Britain's, there are no tuition fees. Successes in Latin America and among British home educators are due to attentiveness, willpower and honesty – and a rejection of what, at bottom, is meanness. Be realistic – demand the possible; it far exceeds what bureaucrats and advertisers offer us.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11796626
GCSE exams 'should be taken at 14'
Pupils will change at the age of 14 for the proposed university technical colleges GCSEs should be taken at the age of 14 - after which pupils could specialise in academic or vocational courses, says a report for an education charity.
The Sutton Trust calls for a fundamental restructuring of upper secondary education in England.With the school leaving age being raised to 18, report author Alan Smithers says GCSEs will no longer be relevant as end-of-school exams.
Prof Smithers calls for a system to replace the current "untidy mix".
The report by Prof Smithers and Pamela Robinson of the University of Buckingham says that there should be a clearer divide in England between lower and upper secondary school.
Selection
It argues for GCSEs to be taken earlier - at the age of 14 - after which pupils could move on to different types of education, such as academic, vocational or technical courses.
At present in England's schools, Prof Smithers says, there is a system in which a form of undeclared selection takes place.
Options are chosen at 14 and exams are taken at 16. This determines pupils' future pathways but in a system which, he says, does not want to be seen as selective.
"We've got a bit of a hang-up about differentiating. It's a hangover from the 11-plus," says Prof Smithers.
He says it means that "selection is fudged so we don't have clear pathways in the later years of schooling".
In particular, he argues, it means that there is a lack of clear routes into technical and work-based training.
"Hence we have to import so many skilled workers from abroad," he says.
Earlier this week, former education secretary Lord Baker also argued the merits of a transfer at the age of 14, the starting age for the university technical colleges which he is promoting.
These will be aimed at providing high-quality vocational training for teenagers.
The report for the Sutton Trust looked at how other countries structured secondary education and concluded that England needed to make a distinction between lower and upper secondary school, proposing that this boundary should be at the age of 14.
This will raise questions about how pupils would be selected for different paths at this age - with any admissions system likely to be controversial.
But Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said that "effectively we have differentiation by default: all too often children's choices are dictated by the school they happen to be in, not their own talents and interests".
http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/countries/politics/failing-schools-face-government-axe-$1226697.htm
Failing schools face government axe
Tuesday, 10, Jun 2008 05:47
The worst-performing schools in England and Wales could be closed unless they improve under new government plans.
One fifth of schools are currently classed as under-performing, with 638 failing to attain five good GCSEs, including English and maths, for 30 per cent of their pupils.
Schools secretary Ed Balls unveiled the £400 million National Challenge initiative this morning.
Speaking ahead of the official announcement, he said the scheme would break the link between "poverty and results".
He told the Today programme schools would have between two and three years to turn things around and promised an adviser for every school.
"By the end of the summer term I want local authorities coming back to me with their plan school by school," he added.
Schools minister Lord Adonis has also suggested that pupils should spend their entire pre-university education in the same school.
One fifth of schools are currently classed as under-performing, with 638 failing to attain five good GCSEs, including English and maths, for 30 per cent of their pupils.
Schools secretary Ed Balls unveiled the £400 million National Challenge initiative this morning.
Speaking ahead of the official announcement, he said the scheme would break the link between "poverty and results".
He told the Today programme schools would have between two and three years to turn things around and promised an adviser for every school.
"By the end of the summer term I want local authorities coming back to me with their plan school by school," he added.
Schools minister Lord Adonis has also suggested that pupils should spend their entire pre-university education in the same school.
He told the Daily Telegraph the government was considering trialling "all-through" schools in England and Wales.
The National Union of Teachers' acting general secretary Christine Blower said issuing school closure threats was not the way in which to improve standards.
"The National Challenge should be about saying to teachers that it is a career advantage to work in schools in challenging circumstances not a career threat," she explained.
"Teachers in these schools will have gone the extra mile for youngsters entering secondary schools, who may have started caring little about learning and education. For those youngsters to achieve four GCSEs, for example, may be a huge achievement, nothing in Ed Balls' target recognises that."
