Welcoming the Cambridge Primary Review

Having a keen interest in Primary Education (I have been a school governor for more than a decade) I was naturally interested in the most comprehensive review of the area for forty years and so jumped at the chance to go to the public launch of the debate at the RSA.

The Cambridge Primary Review is broad in scope (hence the report's title), thoroughly researched, well presented and makes some specific actionable recommendations.

On the evening, the report's author, Professor Robin Alexander, introduced the report eloquently and convincingly and justified the enthusiastic round of applause from the packed audience.

The other panellists brought different perspectives to the debate that stressed the scope of the review and the quality of the evidence behind it.

It is a long report, the full version is around 500 pages, and so we were only presented with some headlines and this is my summary of that summary.

Teaching, not testing, raises standards.

The curriculum needs to be extended well beyond the current narrow focus on English and Maths. Arising from this is the need to change the method of assessment (i.e. get rid of SATS) and the way we deploy and train teachers, including the need to have some specialist teachers in the Primary Sector just as there are in the Secondary.

Every Child Matters is still important.

There is a need to focus more on speaking, communication, chatting, debating and dialogue. Children need to learn how to talk more.

The debate on the report has started but well intentioned and well argued though it is I suspect that the powers that be (i.e. politicians) will continue their recent trend of ignoring authoritative research when it is not completely in-line with their own thinking.

I am also concerned, as a Change Management Consultant, that the review has not made a compelling case for change and so it is easier to ignore.

I hope that I am wrong on both counts and I will be doing what I can to promote the report and it's findings, starting with this blog.

LIKE 2 - The Economic Crisis and the Age of Uncertainty

The talk at the RSA was billed as "The Economic Crisis and the Age of Uncertainty" and promised a debate on the recent failure of finance experts and the validity of the wisdom of crowds and offered us four leading commentators, Don Tapscott, Andrew Keen, Dan Hind and Professor Lord Eatwell.

What we actually got was four speakers on various aspects of the topics who tended to promote their won point of view rather than respond to others'. That said, there was some debate and some contention and it proved to be an interesting event.

Don Tapscott, the author of Wikinomics, opened with a keynote presentation which summarized the theory behind his book. As usual in these events, I made just a few notes of the points that grabbed me, either as truisms or as something to stew over.

Top students do not attend lectures as their professors are not the experts and the real experts are on the web.

We have moved to an era of mass co-operation where the web has lowered the cost of collaboration to the extend that the traditional role of an organization has gone, i.e. self organization is the new paradigm.

The four principles are Peering, Openness, Sharing and Acting Globally.

The three respondents then spoke in turn before some sort of debate started. Again, some interesting points were made.

The economists and statisticians built the guns (the CDOs etc) that the bankers fired that killed the economy. Who is the victim of this crime and who is looking for the culprits?

Kids playing with the new technologies may look smarter but there is nothing to show that they are, e.g. they are not solving any of today's problems.

Governments also play in these markets and are limited by what they want to do (e.g. they want London to succeed as a financial centre) and by what they can do (limiting availability of mortgages would be very unpopular).

How do we educate the public to recognise experts, particularly when the media likes to present the uninformed view of "the man in the street"?

The main area of contention that arose was between Dan Tapscott, who thought that openness and transparency could cure many of the problems, and Professor Lord Eatwell who said that openness does not solve complexity. Professor Lord Eatwell is right!

Also as usual at these events it is the conversation that follows in the bar afterwards that makes the evening great by cementing some of the ideas and exploring others with other people excited by the topic.

I was very lucky to meet up with some members of the foundling London Information and Knowledge Exchange (LIKE), some of who I had met at previous Gurteen Knowledge Cafes. The six of us went down to the RSA bar where a lively conversation was had. We were joined for the last part by Dan Tapscott which gave him another opportunity to tell some of his stories without really listening to what we had to say about them.

The RSA bar closed at some unreasonably early hour so we moved on The Coal Hole on The Strand where firm plans were made for the development of LIKE. I am sure that I was allocated some actions and I wait with interest for the notes from the meeting to find out what they were!

So, even though the debate element of the main event was somewhat limited, it proved to be yet another excellent Knowledge Management evening and the prospect of the new LIKE network is really exciting too.

More meetings

It has been a busy couple of weeks for evening meetings, so much so that I have been to busy to write about them until now, and even then I am cheating about writing about three at the same time.

The latest Kingston Area Travellers Association (KATA) meeting was the usual friendly update on anything to do with public transport in the Kingston area.

Most of the talking was about buses (timetables, routes, vehicles, stop, incidents, etc.) because of the interests of the people there and that is where most of the action is at the moment.

Of particular interest to me was the news that the 65 and 371 routes (the two I use the most) are both going to get new vehicles in the Summer.

I have managed to avoid BCSA Executive Committee meetings since resigning as Secretary some time ago but I still get invited (because I run their website and do a few other useful things) and I finally relented and went to one.

The subject matter of the ExCo meetings are fairly dry, e.g. budget and arrangements for the AGM, but there is wine too. And sandwiches.

I came away from the meeting with just one minor action (which I have not done yet), which is something of a record for me. Normally I weaken quickly when asked to do something boring and volunteer quickly when there is something interesting to do.

Public Services, particularly Education, are a passion so I was seduced by the prospect of a talk on The 2020 Challenge for Public Services by Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP. It was a big let down.

The speech was well informed and packed full of historical context and examples but the vision for the future was blurred at best. All we got was "we must move power into people's hands."

This government's record on devolution of power is a mess: we have regional government for Scotland, Wales and (to a lesser extent) London, but not for the regions; some powers have been devolved where this makes no sense, e.g. choice of hospital; other decisions have been devolved to avoid making politically difficult decisions, e.g. abolition of grammar schools; and where powers have been devolved it is almost always to bodies like local authorities which are no more responsive to citizens than central government it.

There are lots of questions on moving power into people's hands that could have tackled but, like a typical politician, difficult questions were avoided and the vacuum was filled with spin and waffle. Not impressed.