VIEWS & OPINION Changing things for the better by harnessing


children’s imagination Comment by SAL McKEOWN, journalist and editor


Society needs to give tomorrow’s workforce the skills and mindset to survive, thrive and enjoy challenges. The world is an uncertain place with political upheavals, economic crises, and threats from new technology. Just as automation made certain manual jobs redundant, AI will make many office jobs obsolete. Yet to look at the current school curriculum you would think it is all just business as usual.


The Institute of Imagination (iOi) recently brought together educators, creators


and researchers at an event hosted by The LEGO Group, looking at issues including migration, exclusion, climate change, mental health and pressures on our young people.


Poverty was a key theme: not just material poverty, but poverty of aspiration and of narrowed horizons. ‘We want children to engage with the world around them, give them the ability to figure things out, to come up with options and alternatives and importantly, the will to never give up,’ said Michelle Dorion, co-Founder of the Institute of Imagination who grew up in Guatemala during a civil war.


Launched in 2012, the iOi has provided free programmes for over 140,000 children. CEO Martin Allen Morales said: ‘Unlocking the innovator and entrepreneur within each child, and their imagination, should be a child’s right. We understand the power of creativity, so now, more than ever, we must scale our reach and be a force for change within the education system.’


We know from the World Economic Forum, the Edge Foundation, employers’ forums and the OECD that we live in a small and increasingly competitive world. Collaboration, creativity and critical thinking will be more important than spelling and handwriting. Sadly, the curriculum is not designed around competencies such as resilience and problem solving but initiatives such as iOi are showing how it could be done. Where schools lack resources, iOi provides materials, lends iPads and takes practical steps to promote what these days is called ‘levelling up’. Initiatives such as iOi’s Schools Programme are a glimpse of the future. They focus on children aged 5-11 and from the most disadvantaged areas across England. They broadcast free workshops live into school, complete with resources and cross-curricular links.


Children work collaboratively on projects such as Save Make Reinvent. They might be painting with natural inks made from fruit, vegetables and other waste ingredients, building a junk bot from recyclable materials or using animation for digital storytelling. Another project called Imagine Me Imagine You looks at resilience and self-regulation through the lens of engineering and design, using levers, cams and linkages to explore the neuroscience of laughter and using digital tools and coding to explore emotions and facial expressions.


These projects are creating a buzz for teachers and pupils alike. One boy from St Luke’s primary school in Newham said: ‘I think we are engineers when we use CAD. We are film makers when we use stop motion animation and we are coders when we use micro:bit. It’s like work experience in the classroom!’


Book your FREE place: www.ioi.london/schools


Planning for the future of education Comment by FELICIA JACKSON, Chair of the Learn2Think Foundation


Exactly what education should look like, and its purpose, remains heavily contested. Is it to prepare a workforce with necessary skills, or is to prepare children to become active members of wider society? We know that the quality of education has been linked to better wages, better health, wealth and even happiness. With a world in the process of being upturned by AI, what will ‘quality’ look like? It seems more than anything that children need to be taught to question the status quo, to think more broadly, to become critical thinkers.


Rishi Sunak recently suggested that what is holding back the entire UK economy is an ‘anti-maths’ mindset and he launched a review of how maths is taught in April 2023. There is little question that numeracy is helpful to navigating the world - but to set such a limitation on how education should evolve seems to be missing the point. How does fear of an ‘anti-maths’ mindset connect to the challenge of how we teach children to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world?


Sunak’s concern is that there are not enough trained maths teachers – that is true but part of a wider systemic problem where the UK’s educational system has been underfunded and under supported for years. The role of teacher as guide and mentor of future generations is sorely undervalued. Recently announced government plans to pay


24 www.education-today.co.uk


foreign teachers £10,000 to come and work in the UK suggests that there is in fact scope to reflect their worth.


There is a growing problem with attracting and retaining teachers in the UK system, with many citing poor pay and growing stress as factors for leaving the profession. All within a system where parental expectations and demands, governmental targets, Ofsted inspections, even public pressure, all combine to make teachers carry the brunt of social expectations without support. Recently announced government plans to pay foreign teachers £10,000 to come and work in the UK suggests that there is scope for funding when it’s the government’s idea.


In 2018 the OECD launched its Future of Education and Skills 2030 project, intended to help education systems determine how to teach children to ‘understand and appreciate different perspectives and world views, interact respectfully with others, and take responsible action towards sustainability and collective well-being’ That includes preparing students ‘for jobs that have not yet been created, to tackle societal challenges that we can’t yet imagine, and to use technologies that have not yet been invented.’


It’s Learning Framework provides a set of guiding principles which is focused on ‘helping every learner develop as a whole person, fulfil his or her potential and help shape a shared future built on the well- being of individuals, communities and the planet.’ This has a far greater purpose than fixating on particular issues in education, such as the anti-maths mindset.


June 2023


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