Transforming Education - A New Manifesto for Education

This will be the first of a series of four meetings we will be holding with Conway Hall on Transforming Education for the 21st Century. With the emergence of the digital age and the growth of artificial intelligence - automation, robotics - bringing changes in how we acquire knowledge and understanding and in work patterns, is the way we prepare people for this brave new world fit for purpose?

Conspicuously absent from any debate about education in the broadcast, print and social media, academia and policy-making bodies is a coherent and holistic set of reforms.

Since 1988, the year which is now considered to be the watershed between the old and new blueprints for education in the United Kingdom, there has been an ideological consensus amongst the political parties about educational matters: the type of curriculum taught in schools, testing and assessment, the breadth of this curriculum and thus the extent of specialisation within the period of compulsory schooling, private education, the comprehensive school system (its abolition), teaching and research in higher education, league tables (both internally as in the comparisons made between schools, and externally as in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)) and forms of accountability.

Here we will set out an alternative vision for education systems, institutions and people in the United Kingdom. Speaking will be:

Professor David Scott, University College London, Institute of Education:

"A New Manifesto for Education"

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David Scott is Professor of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment at University College London, Institute of Education. His most recent books include: Leaton-Gray, S., Scott, D. and Mehisto, P. (2017) The European School System, London: Macmillan Palgrave; Scott, D. (2015) Roy Bhaskar: A Theory of Education, Dordrecht: Springer International; Scott, D. (2015) New Perspectives on Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment, Springer.

Robin Street, Co-Principal, UCL Academy:

“How to be Innovative in Today's Secondary Curriculum”

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Robin Street, deeply into leadership of an ultra-modern teaching institution, will argue that game-changing advances in today’s secondary education are indeed possible within the framework imposed by the educational establishment. Genuine innovation in citizenship, assessment and approaches to educating the whole child are key to this endeavour.

We will discuss and debate if the developments at UCL Academy are really sufficiently transformative, or is a more radical redefinition of “education” required as we anticipate major changes in the way we work and live our lives.