#LDNeduconf
Session 1 Welcome from Munira Mirza, Deputy Mayor for Education
Wisdom begins with wonder -
How do we prepare children in London to live and work in a global city?
There are more outstanding schools in London than anywhere else in England
What can we learn from the American perspective? Joel Klein CEO of Amplify
London and the U.S are joined by a critical challenge. The greatest issue we face is the growing gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. Will the american dream become a memory under our watch?
The best cure for poverty and social mobility is to ensure that we educate all of our children, especially those with the greatest challenge to the highest levels. We must not loose our focus for doing things deeply differently.
In the 1950s 60% of the US workforce were high school dropouts. Now it is only 6%. We are loosing the race between education and technology. The economy we are educating our kids for is vastly different from the one we have today.
Lots of jobs today that used to be done domestically are now done globally. We must educate our children to a different level. UK are spending more than almost any one else but failing to keep pace with Singapore, Korea, Australia, New Zealand etc. This is the nature of the challenge. If we don't, we will find a constant hollowing out of the middle class
Key Challenges
1) Blame Game - Time spent blaming is time wasted
2) Pupils with vast challenges- Different pathways to success. Poverty and family circumstance can never be an excuse for the failure of the school system.
3) We are not being remotely bold enough!
3 bold things that can change the game in education
1) Competition and choice. Competition is nobel, not destructive. We who are fortunate insist on choice. Why isn't this the case for the under privileged. US K-12 schools are never looked at globally because they were a choiceness system. US universities are globally admired because they are built on choice and competition.
2) Professionalisation of teachers. No school system is better than its teachers. We have to move teaching from a trade union model to a true professional model. As long as there are no consequences, as long as the discussion is not about education we are playing a game with who has the power.
3) Innovation in education. Every other sector in our economy has undergone a massive transformation, it is time for K-12 to do the same.
Graduation rate had been stagnant in NYC for over a decade and improved 2+ points per year. Doubled college readiness rate.
If we fail to educate our children for the 21st century we will fail. The future depends on taking our game to a different level. This won't happen with small bore, incremental change. The 21st century won't be nearly as forgiving as the 20th century.
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Andreas Schleicher
If the UK had seen the change in schools that London has, we wouldn't be worried about the PIZA rankings.
People are at the top end of the skills gap are seeing life's opportunities growing and those at the bottom are seeing opportunities falling away. The world economy doesn't pay you for what you know, but what you do, with what you know.
Spending on student represents less than 20% of the success seen on the PIZA rankings. Quality of teaching is more important than class sizes. Learning must be central.
Modern learning environments are social and collaborative. How good are you at mobilising knowledge and connecting the dots to other areas of learning. High performers support the professional in pedagogical innovation. Teacher in Finland are required to complete a masters level research dissertation, why? Because we want teachers to remain inquisitive. In Sweeden, leaders challenge teachers every day. How do we know that? How do we know what other teachers are doing?
Teachers need to acquire strong technical skills. The Le@rning federation is an excellent example of this.
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Dame Sue John
There remains massive challenges in London. If we don't work together to move educational creativity forward we will not achieve. We have a track record of innovation in London, but we need to be bolder. We must harness the capacity of other sectors, including business, the arts and technology.
The so called soft skills such as resilience, team working and collaboration are in fact hard skills.
There is a need to measure our impact on the world stage. If London is so much further ahead than the rest of the country then we must measure ourselves against the world not the UK.
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