THINK TEAM!

Once again today Michael Gove has suggested that we are letting young people fail, particularly those who come from deprived communities.
Michael Gove consistently fails to recognise what schools and teachers have achieved over the last ten years; transforming learning and outcomes for vast numbers of young people. Instead of building on these successes he constantly runs the system down and argues that academies, free schools and an academic education are the best way we can build a better educational landscape.However, if you read the McKinsey Report, analyse the PISA data and listen to people like Ken Robinson it is increasingly obvious that to prepare for the future, to compete on an international stage and to access the opportunities created by the knowledge based industries, we need to create learning pathways that ignite and inspire our children and young people to become brilliant learners. And, the challenge isn't simply about what we put in the curriculum or how we test and examine it but how we create brilliant, passionate and compassionate learning places which engage young people as learners, particularly those who see school as marginal and increasingly irrelevant.

We can do this and those of us who have seen it happen and know how to do it need to work together to share ideas and strategies and to continue to think team and to build co-operative, collaborative approaches that engage teachers and inspire young people to really understand what they are capable of, to dispel the nonsense about genius and to enable every child reach their extraordinary potential.

We must share and network the things that work and stop doing the things that don't!