Dear Parents & Carers
Our students could be forgiven for assuming their futures are set in stone; with reports referring to a lost generation, and the prediction of £350 billion in lost earnings for them. It seems that the optimism which is slowly taking over the country due to the vaccination programme has not yet leaked into education. I think this is wrong. In fact, I think the whole foundation of these reports and opinions is flawed. I am not going to make light of the last year; most of our kids have spent two terms out of the last three largely at home, and the one term they had in school last autumn was disrupted continuously. However, nor am I going to let any one of our kids here believe that they are helpless victims of circumstance, or that they are destined for a poor deal compared to previous generations. And I’m certainly not going to allow them to believe that what has happened over the last year will prevent them from taking charge of their own futures, or being masters of their own destiny.
I believe the key flaws in these reports are firstly, they assume the purpose of the education system is to maintain the status quo. To that end, comparisons tend to be based on what has happened in the past and not what may happen in the future. Secondly, there seems to be a real assumption that learning must all be crammed in before exams, and once they are done, we somehow slam the door on any new knowledge or skills – this leads to an implication that learning is only for grades, which is nonsense.
When I get the opportunity to speak to our students, I will be telling them that there is no better time to be young. Coronavirus is a terrible thing for sure, but the impact has been to force them into habits of independence, self-motivation and resilience, which very few generations before them have experienced. Coronavirus has also taken away the appetite for the status quo. People want all this to be over, but very few people want everything to go back to the way it was. This whole experience has taken a huge eraser to the rule book of ‘how we do things here’ and rubbed the pages clean. It is the young people in our society who will rewrite them and what an opportunity that is.
And when it comes to learning, I will tell them that the purpose of the school system is not to teach them everything they will need to know for life, but to create young brains that are capable of learning all the things they will need to know, pretty much all of which will be learnt outside of school settings. Our job is to open minds, not close them, and if they go into the world having fewer Shakespeare quotes at their disposal than previous generations, that will not make much difference to them. I am not arguing that grades are not important; they serve to open doors so are vital. But grades are protected by whatever scheme the Government creates to ensure the pieces of paper our kids get are not lacking when compared to others, so let’s concentrate on learning. Let’s open minds to all learning and see it for what it is, training young brains to thrive in the future. The answer to the question, “Why are we learning this? When am I ever going to need it?” is and has always been, “I don’t know if you’ll use it or not, but your brain needs to be able to learn and this is how you train it. Don’t panic, you will not run out of space in that head of yours.” Our role in education is to train brains to learn rather than teach everything they need to know, and this pandemic hasn’t changed that.
It is the creative minds, the open minds that will take over this world. The ‘how we do things here’ rule book is well and truly overdue for a rewrite, meaning the ground for innovation and creativity has never been more fertile. Our kids have been forced to learn differently but they are still learning, and moreover they have developed skills that many generations before went without. Forget these doomsday statements on education which concentrate on going back to exactly how it was and only associate learning with grades. It’s rubbish. How about focusing on the sought after skills that our kids have had to develop fast, on the learning that they have done, on the fact that all kids can learn given the right environment (we have definitely seen that through this pandemic) and that all kids are great at something, mostly many things. And how about focusing on their futures, which are yet to be written and which will be played out in a world which is ready for new ideas and change.
Dealing with teenagers always gives me a pang of envy, filled as they are with youth and energy, with their whole lives in front of them; things which are sadly in my rear view mirror nowadays. This is now even more the case when I look at the opportunities this generation will have with a blank rule book to fill, with their new skills, and with a touch of optimism. All they have to do is keep their young minds open for learning, whatever that learning may be and have faith that they still are, even after all that has happened this year, masters of their own destiny.
With best wishes
Andy Perry – Head Teacher
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