SKILLS, CHARACTER AND KNOWLEDGE MATTER!

Research from DfE, OFSTED, OECD, PISA suggests that we need to develop a new approach to learning to create world class outcomes for our children. Everything points to the fact that to help young people achieve and succeed we must recognise that character is at least as important as intelligence and in a conceptual age where we are surrounded by information young people need skills, character and knowledge to succeed!
We have come a very long way since I started out in this wonderful profession and together with so many wonderful colleagues we have achieved so much. and don't believe those miserable individuals who constantly run down what our students are achieving and who tell us that things are easier than they were when they sat their exams back in the annals of history. The world has changed so much in the last forty years. We live in a global 24/7 learning network connected by twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and we are saturated by so much great stuff from TED, Edutopia, TES! Your phone brings you all the information and knowledge in the world full of truth and facts and bias and bigotry. Technology has changed learning forever and it is important to remember that technology isn't the icing on the cake. It needs to be part of the learning infrastructure and without it we are letting our students down and failing to engage with their digital connected world.

We face an interesting challenge as educators and there is a massive chasm between the teacher and the tester, between those of us who believe education is about creativity, imagination, problem solving, critical thinking and teamwork and those who believe it is about passing tests.MWe live in amazingly brilliant times where the extraordinary happens on a regular basis. Where ordinary people do extraordinary things because they have been taught they can rather than being taught that they can't! We are gardeners, designers, storytellers and orchestrators of learning. We need to help our students make and create beautiful things that matter to them!Research and books, like Martin Seligman’s ‘Flourish’, Martin Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’, Daniel Pink’s ‘A Whole New Mind’ and ‘Drive’, Matthew Syed’s ‘Bounce’, Carol Dweck’s work on ‘Mindset’ and Angela Duckworth’s work on ‘Grit’, all outline very clearly that we need to spend more time learning, making and creating and just as much time developing character as we do developing functional skills and academic and vocational excellence.