This is the final of four posts (for now) looking at various barriers to learning inherent in the current education system. Once upon a time, exams were like currency. They were a short hand for your ability, and they were used both by ‘centres of higher learning’ (as my old VC used to say) and […]
Barriers to learning #3 – The factory system
I recently added two posts on ‘barriers to learning’ – the year group and the timetable . This post and tomorrow’s post will extend that idea to look at two larger scale problems – the nature of the ‘education system’ and the exams system. Our secondary schools are like factories. In fact, perhaps battery farms […]
Barriers to learning #2 – The year group
Just like the timetable, arranging students into groups based on when they were born makes sense from an organisational point of view. But not from a learning one. So, what are the alternatives? For some subjects, perhaps grouping by understanding / progress would be appropriate. I’ve heard arguments from both Maths and Science teachers against […]
Barriers to learning#1 – The tyranny of the timetable.
I’ve been doing a lot of pondering recently about the barriers that exist to genuine project led learning of the sort that I think we need to be moving to. The often quoted one is exams, but something more practical, that schools can control is the way the school day is structured. Most people agree […]