An Entitlement for Every Child!

A colleague left this message on the blog which made me think about why those of us who have dedicated our lives to creating great provision with brilliant outcomes haven't cracked it!
"Many teachers like my self have worked within the constraints of a diminished comprehensive principle and continue to have an effect but let's not fool ourselves that the school system is fair." Of course, the system isn't fair but if there are so many of us who passionately believe that every child matters, and that those who are the hardest to reach and the hardest to teach matter more, why can't we create a curriculum and an offer for those young people that creates passionate learners with the skills and competencies they need to be successful and get work. Our young people certainly aren't born any different from young people in Finland, Singapore, Korea, India and China and these communities aren't generally actually any better off than we are and they have pockets of poverty and deprivation that are, in some cases, much worse that we have. So what is it?

Is it actually about poor parenting, unstructured pre-school and a lack of challenge and expectation in primary education? Is it about poor teaching, badly trained teachers and low expectations in secondary schools? Is it about a curriculum that fails to engage and inspire teachers and young learners? 

We need to understand that teaching and learning is a co-operative and collaborative enterprise; a passionate enterprise which we need to bring alive for our young learners. We need to ensure that every child is a reader, writer and is numerate by the time they are eight. We need to build challenge, enterprise, innovation and creativity into our learning programmes and we need to make young people love the hard stuff; maths, science, physics and languages, from the earliest age. We need to build character, respect and self-discipline through the curriculum, sport, the arts and out of school activities. We need to make mentoring, coaching, volunteering and the world of work part of an entitlement for all. And we need to achieve brilliant outcomes!

Please let me know what you think!

Chris