PM Burnham tells schools to adapt teaching to local business needs
If this had been policy in the 70s (as it partly was), towns would have produced lots of mining engineers & metallurgists just before pits & steelworks closed. As the yanks say, you should skate to where the puck's going, not to where it is. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Flaming June9This is arseways round. Students may have their own ideas about their future lives. And if local businesses want particular skills, it’s they who should provide the training.
Celestial M Weasel8Ah yes, one of my colleagues did Metallurgy (late 70s/early 80s) at university. 2/3 of them were sponsored by British Steel. In their first year they were taken to "the most advanced steelworks in Europe". By the time he graduated it had shut
Pete Brown6Even the teachers at my school In Barnsley urged me to leave and go down the pit instead of doing my A levels. By the time I’d finished them the pits were all closed.
Terry Watkins3Also - good luck working out where the puck is going. As all those who took "learn to code" as an instruction have now found out.
Maria Gee1That’s why www.classofyourown.com offers a better model
Margot Finn23Good point about mining & hockey pucks, but can we predict the trajectory of future jobs in the same way that expert eyes can predict a puck's trajectory? And what's happened to 'transferable skills' in the new 'skills'-fixated discourse? The 'transferable' addressed the unknown trajectory issue.
Daniel11Didn't the last government just relentlessly focus on improving core skills and had pretty good success - I mean if you want engineers you do just need the kids to math real good
Beth Witham7Insisting kids stay where they are and learn only what's locally valued is how you end up with wicker men
Mark Wallace4Indeed - education should be for life which means equipping us to adapt to the unforeseen. We know exactly what happened when children were prepped for a lifelong job in the town’s major employer, then the shipyard, mine or steelworks closed down.
Translation: Uni is not for the likes of you, and besides we've cut the places and we need people to pick the crops and wipe the arses. (The man delivering this message has an English degree from Cambridge)
Phil McDuff86My hot take is that the people picking the crops and wiping the arses should also be able to study greek literature and Japanese poetry, from their public housing.
On The Threshold10Burnham, a bloke with a Cambridge degree, pulling the ladder up behind him. Considering Burnham has talked about fighting neoliberalism it’s a bit weird how everything Burnham does is dripping with a neoliberal tinge. He is the arch neoliberal, a Blairite.
Kristian van der Vliet2Hang on: not every kid wants or needs to go to Uni and technical subjects are good, actually. Having a dual track academic & technical education would be good and sensible, but it would have to be done properly with equal weight given to each track, and this isn't it.
Sarah Viktoria 🇬🇧🏳️⚧️⚧️🦗2Why should the taxpayer pay for specific workplace training? Business should stop being so lazy and get off its arse and start investing - in people this time. #r4today
Even if the government is right to be betting the house on AI (and I suspect the way things shake out will be different to what we expect), this is likely to have the problem Computing as a subject has always had in schools, ie it’s pretty much instantly out of date. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Dr Jo Kershaw31Teaching “manufacturing” in schools strikes me as definitely Manchesterism (deprecatory) but I wonder what on earth he envisages as the content of the lessons?
Sam Turner8There is literally zero chance that any narrow tech skill taught at 14 will still be relevant 4+ years later when they enter employment. We've known this since the 1980s. The only tech skill I learned that remained useful was touch typing. And machine sewing
Krittika6I’m not liking this one bit, this has “only one [set of people] can afford to learn art, philosophy, science, literature etc and the rest just need the three Rs” written all over it
Lorna5This certainly fits with my children’s experience: my eldest was interested in IT for GCSE until a tech savvy dad of one of his classmates pointed out that the course was absurdly old fashioned and he’d be much better off teaching himself (which he’s been doing)
Doctor Jeff Hawn 🌻🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦1I teach a first year section for history at Uni. A lot of the kids struggle with non linear non binary learning they turn in essays that just summarize events rather than analyzing. It’s disheartening
SinisterBulb1Everyone I know in IT (all generations) taught themselves as home hobbyists. As you rightly say, curricula can’t hope to keep up. Although theres some good stuff happening in primaries these days introducing basic concepts and provoking curiosity
Rose Schmits92Labour keeps making it clear that to them we dont live in A Society, we live in An Economy
The Author, Séamas O'Reilly54I was a tech-savvy teen - my dad was a PC hobbyist who had us building servers and LANs from the age of 12 - and my GCSE classes in ICT (the term IT hadn't been adopted yet!) were hilariously outdated. In 2002, our textbooks still said "one day, five million people will be using electronic mail".
John Oxley38Again, very few of these aren't just a combination of maths, literacy and critical thinking and school is the best part to impart and hone those broad skills. And employers need to suck it up and actually care about proper training, with the incentives set right to encourage it.
Anna Orridge20Yes. And also employers have to train entry level staff. It's a cost, suck it up. You are not going to get somebody walking through the door who knows all your processes and quirks. You want more of those people? Well, put some effort into retention then.
Kittie 🖤🦝19in the early 2000s the jobcentre were always sending me on basic bitch IT courses, but job postings were always asking for people who could use Excel. I once asked if they could send me on an Excel course instead and he was like lol are you kidding, they cost a fortune
Elizabeth Taylor16I’m not an education policy expert so please be gentle with me and don’t jump down my throat. But I don’t like the sound of this announcement. School should be learning and intellectual enrichment, not a job factory.
Leftback13I'm agreeing with the good doctor here. This is little more than "Your next job can be in cyber" except with the magic pixie dust of AI.
Martin Nutbeem7I think you could arguable teach the fundamentals and then go to project based "student as creators" style learning which would fit the ever changing landscape. This would equip kids with a skillset to thrive with new tech. But obviously schools are not equipped for this so it won't happen.
Woodo2Still remember spending weeks being taught COBOL in High School. I don't think anyone I ever knew went on to use COBOL.
Craig2I've seen a few takes like this today, I disagree with them though. Computing at school is foundational. Much of the stuff I was taught in my 1980s Computing O Grade is still as relevant today as it was then. You can never go wrong with a solid foundation in any subject.
How about we make education about the fundamentals of being able to navigate the world and democratic citizenship, and leave workplace training until the actual workplace. Local business needs aren't one thing, and they change quickly (and even more quickly). www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Naomi Waltham-Smith4Education is also for expanding the mind and deepening understanding of the world, for widening the scope of the possible and fostering curiosity. Tell businesses to pay for job training. Their employees will be empowered to do better at theirs if education is allowed to do its job.
🇪🇺 #AgainstLies 🦋2Spot on. Time for politicians to stop trying to train kids for jobs in the 1970s. Educate kids - don’t train them.
I don’t have anything close to a knowledge base that would allow me to evaluate this from and education pov. BUT I am fascinated by one aspect. 1/n www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Nick Harkaway15The notion of Liquid Modernity includes a perception that the axes of the social grid (family, religion, class, trade/profession, sexuality, gender etc) are dissolving and this leaves people feeling dislocated from their identity. 2/n
Ian Simmons9Hmm, as a former teacher I instinctively dislike this. It smacks of training rather than education, forcing pupils down a narrow functional path rather than providing them with adaptable knowledge and skills. Industry always wants schools to provide compliant drones, not creative thinkers...
Jeff1A bit late in the day to engineer local jobs for local people I fear. 🙄
