RSA Campaign for Schooling fit for 21st Century

The RSA is considering a major new initiative in the form of a campaign for schooling fit for the 21st century.

An Education Campaign would be based around a Charter for Schooling, and have the ambitious aim of stimulating local action in education by engaging teachers, parents and students in a vision of 21st century education. Your comments on the idea of such a campaign, and the charter itself would be enormously valuable to us, and you can give them by responding to a short survey that we have drawn up.

 Click here <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vOm2QjSpLOeqwAEJgB_2fPrg_3d_3d>  to complete the survey  
 
The results will feed anonymously into a consultation report that will form a crucial part of this stage of the project. We will publish the results on the RSA website once complete

Here is a draft of the Education Charter as it currently stands.

A Charter for Education in the 21st Century

1. The primary responsibility of a school should shift from achieving exam results to making sure that young people enjoy learning and exploring ideas, and are capable of carrying on learning throughout life

2. Schooling is not just about transmitting subject knowledge. Education in schools should seek to foster the emergence of wisdom in young people

3. No child’s experience of school should be defined by failure. Every child must enjoy success at school and schools have a responsibility to actively support all young people to fulfil their potential however they are intelligent or talented

4. Schools should reduce the attainment gap between rich and poor students through working alongside other local services and the wider community

5. Schools should not be sites of conflict, but be intelligent communities where young people can learn to be happy and build relationships with peers and adults that are characterised by respect

6. Students should work in partnership with their school to design their own learning and shape the way their school community operates

7. Schools should engage parents in children’s schooling

8. Schooling should be made relevant and disengagement prevented through the use of practical, real-life learning

9. Teachers should not be ‘deliverers’ of a set curriculum, but instead act as creative professionals and curriculum developers

PEN Comment: Its a great pity the RSA has confined its thinking to the schooling paradigm. Its hard to concede any way schooling as we know it will be fit for the 21st century and these draft statements take us little further in any paradigm shift. Nonetheless, here is another platform on which those of us with differing views can voice our opinions.