Social media, particularly Twitter, is awash with ‘listicles’ such as the ‘top four trends’ or the ‘five best ways to….’. So in the spirit of BuzzFeed, and to simplify the work for our politicians/policy-makers, here is a list of the top nine things that I would like to see happen in education in 2017:
- Educational discourse will be the product of informed viewpoints. Mature and reasoned dialogue will be the key to fleshing out ideas. (Are you with me David Leyonhjelm?)
- High-quality early learning will be accessible to all children. There will be more funding for childhood education. High-quality, well-resourced preschools staffed by university-educated teachers will become the norm, regardless of postcode or parental income.
- Child-centred educational policy will drive strategy. Educational policy will be centred on the needs of the child. Policymakers will realise that providing access to quality education is not only a fundamental right for all children, it makes good sense socially and economically.
- Education will cease to be a playground for political point-scoring and the establishment of ideological supremacy.
- The education profession will reclaim the educational agenda. It will seize the initiative for radical change and ignite a passion for innovative practice.
- Students will have more control over their own learning. We will find better ways of including student voice in every aspect of schooling, especially in the learning process.
- We will have intelligent rather than just standardised testing. Batteries of standardised tests can create a destructive culture of comparison and punitive accountability measures. Instead, we will have intelligent, authentic assessment that improves teacher practice and student learning simultaneously.
- Innovative practice will become the norm, not the exception. Schools will be focused on the art of the possible….
- Collaboration will replace competition!
So that’s my list. What’s yours?
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