Constructing Modern Music

A view from inside a cardboard model castle of the dragon that threatens it with Gary Stager looking on.
From inside a cardboard model castle – the cardboard dragon that threatens it, with Gary Stager looking on.

Music?

More of a noise really, but made by hand crafted instruments made using servo motors and BBC Micro:bits.

All part of the summer institute, making and programming, that was Constructing Modern Knowledge (CMK), held in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA from 9-12 July 2024.

I went to be amongst friends and like-minded educators such as Cynthia Solomon.

Richard Millwood and Cynthia Solomon enjoying the morning ‘sermonette’ by Gary Stager – a rabble-rousing, amusing and thoughtful reminder of the value of what we were all there doing.

CMK is the invention of Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez, bringing together teachers who want to explore constructionism in the best possible way, by making.

Each morning, Gary would remind us of the origins of his pedagogical paradigm and re-inforce its precepts in an entertaining and informative way, reminding each of us of our evangelical duties!

A slide from Gary’s morning presentation quoting the late Edith Ackermann: “Learning is less about acquiring or transmitting information or existing ideas or values than it is about collectively designing a world that is worth living in.”

Another important aspect of the summer institute was the huge, ballroom-like space for us to work in, with one long wall filled with table after table of equipment, spare parts and tools for participants to exploit in making their projects.

The cavernous space used for CMK, with tables on the left extending the full length of the room filled with equipment and materials.

In the evenings we enjoyed a baseball game, a meal in an Argentinian restaurant, where the food was supplied on swords, and a pajama party!

Josh Burker and Richard Millwood enjoying the baseball game between the New Hampshire Fisher Cats and the Binghamton Rumble Ponies at the Delta Dental Stadium (you can just make out the emblematic molar on a pole over the entrance to the top left!)

We had impressive guest speakers in Stephen Wolfram, Tricia Tunstall and Melissa Walker as well as drop-ins from Eric Rosenbaum, Dan & Molly Watt and many other friends.

BUT we also had European football!

Richard Millwood (Eng-er-land!), Pauline Maas (The Netherlands) and husband watching the Euros semi-final soccer game between England and The Netherlands.

Like me, everyone I spoke to was committed to creating powerful learning experiences by handing to learners ownership & responsibility over their learning through project work. This means creating the conditions for “hard fun”, leading to meaningful & fulfilling outcomes. Gary and Sylvia’s insight was that we need to do that, not just talk about it in order to be better teachers employing the method.

In my case, I really wanted to understand how to use servos too, so on the first day, when we brainstormed project ideas, I proposed a mechanical orchestra, and luckily, two others (Timothy Patterson and Angela Buffington) wanted to join me.

We made individual instruments which each employed Micro:bit & Hummingbird driven servos to make sounds, and then attempted to coordinate them by using the broadcast radio communication between micro:bits.

We did it!

Here is the code for Tim’s instruments, using MakeCode:

Angela’s code ended up in MicroBlocks, as we scrambled to get everything working, it made the debug loop quicker with its direct coding model:

My code was for the four ‘tuned’ glasses, again in MicroBlocks:

And finally the ‘conductor’ code, in MicroBlocks:

We invited guests to obtain a ticket:

A design based on the baseball ticket:

And, ta-da!, the performance:

All in all, best summed up in Gary and Sylvia’s colourful words:
“CMK 2024 was a powerful refutation of the cruelty fuelling the latest explicit instruction craze.

Concepts in Computing – a taxonomy under review

This concept map is derived from a list first developed as a spreadsheet in 2016 by Miles Berry, in the context of Project Quantum. That project produced a mass of multiple choice questions for computing, and to make them searchable, they were tagged with a unique topic code (hence the numbers on each). The project’s output was delivered as part of Diagnostic Questions by the company EEDI, which I worked for in 2019.

On reviewing new computer science questions made by teachers, I found many topics that were not covered by the taxonomy. The outcome of my work wouldn’t be so clear in a spreadsheet, so I constructed the concept map above using Cmap, and my additions are shown in red.

I was a little surprised at the omissions, but it isn’t an easy task to get right. I had the great good fortune to be critiquing it through a form of practice – the development of tests by teachers.

But, since then I have often wondered about this categorisation, and in particular, question its completeness and its hierarchy.

Sub-program

I am particularly surprised at the relegation of sub-program (in all its forms) under a heading of ‘modularity’.

Seymour Papert held a different view of the sub-program.

In MicroWorlds, Papert held that:

“The idea of programming is introduced through the metaphor of teaching the Turtle a new word.”

(Papert, 1980, p. 12)

Papert’s idea suggests the sub-program a more dominant concept than selection and iteration, which with sequence, are held to be the three key algorithmic ideas in the English and Irish curricula, which have little mention of the sub-program as an algorithmic idea.

Parallelism

In a similar way, there is no sign of parallelism – the concept that two or more sequences of instructions may be executed at the same time. This is surprising since this is a major feature of beginning programming languages such as Scratch (and all its derivatives) and MakeCode. Parallelism features strongly because of the way it can simplify the programming of complex behaviours, such as those found in games with multiple independent graphics, that children love to make. Parallelism can bring its own problems of coordination too, but these are rarely noticed at this level.

Much is made of the challenges children face when moving from jigsaw languages like Scratch to text languages like Python, but the focus of concern is on the change of environment and the need to be accurate with syntax and grammar, rather than functionality. The loss of functionality that children suffer when they don’t find it easy to program games in Python as they could in Scratch, can so often lead to a return to Scratch programming – for its greater sophistication! This challenge is identified in the work of the Pytch project lead by my Trinity College Dublin colleague Glenn Strong.

Some of the problem is the way in which technology is a moving target. Scratch appeared in 2007, and although parallelism was in many programming languages around before that, it was not considered a beginner’s topic.

So it probably is a good idea to review the concept map regularly, and I intend to do so at conferences in China, Spain and New York – if my proposals are accepted – in the coming months.

Morse Code MakeCode

Before Christmas, I was working with four schools in County Mayo, Ireland, and challenging the students to use MakeCode to make a Microbit lighthouse showing the actual sequence of flashing lights that the lighthouses round Mayo use.

Tomorrow all four schools are gathering in Atlantic Technological University in Castlebar, county town of Mayo, to show off their work with artist Bryan Duffy and their digital skills combined.

My rôle will be to extend those digital skills, and I intend to do that by introducing Morse code:

  • You are on a small boat out to sea
  • Your engines have failed and the waves are getting bigger all the time
  • You can see the lighthouses and you want to send a message using the only technology you have left – a powerful torch
  • How do you say ‘help’?

We are working in four groups of students in rotation, mixed from each school.

I will start by introducing Morse code and asking them to simulate the torch just by raising and lowering their hand – can they send messages? can they read them?

Then we will move to coding the Microbit in MakeCode, imagining it to be the torch and automate the sending of a distress signal.

Finally we will write our own message to be sent from the Microbit and challenge the other groups of students to decode afterwards.

Here are the two sheets that will support the workshop:

The sheet to explain Morse Code and propose an activity to make it real
The sheet to ‘copycode’ the program to automate an SOS signal from the MicroBit

I’ll update this blog after the workshop and tell you how it went!


Update:

Well it was a great day.

I left the house in Essex at 5am to fly to Knock West of Ireland from Stansted and collect a hybrid hire car from the redoubtable Pauline on my way to Castlebar.

We set up in a lovely hall in Atlantic Technological University, with ample space to spread out for our four group workshop rotation day.

The Morse code MakeCode workshop went well, despite the difficulty of talking in a noisy space – ironic given the topic of using morse code to communicate!

Students were inventive and quick with sorting out how Morse code worked, planning messages and then sending them across the hall with arm movements for dots and dashes in the absence of torches.

Explaining Morse Code and how to signal with your hands

Having acquainted themselves clearly with the concept of Morse code, the students then went on to use laptops, programming in Makecode to automate the sending of an SOS distress signal.

It gave me a chance to introduce them to sub-programs in Makecode as a way of structuring the work. Some were too enthusiastic to read my notes and coded it in a linear way, with a long ‘tower’ of jigsaw pieces. They quickly saw how much tidier and easy to adapt it was by using functions, which they readily understood.

Explaining the functions used in the program to transmit morse code from a Microbit

As the day progressed, the tower of decorated cubes, one made by each student in the four schools, was assembled on stage, directed by artist Bryan Duffy.

Artist Bryan Duffy masterminds the construction of a lighhouse tower of cubes

We placed one microbit at the top of the lighthouse tower, broadcasting a secret message to everyone:

Microbit broadcasting morse code message

One teacher and three students managed to work out what it was broadcasting – can you?

The four schools stood for a group photo with the tower on stage.

All-in-all a very satisfying day as we re-assembled the tower in the Mayo Education Centre next door, where the staff happily decoded the message, with some coaching!

Many thanks to the four principals – Adrian Ormsby at the Clogher School, Dermot Walsh at Cornanool School, Farnan Harte at Ardagh School, Kevin Munnelly at the Quay School – for trusting me with their students. A pleasure working with Bryan Duffy – a powerhouse. Most of all, a privilege to be working with the almost 100 students who worked tirelessly, noisily, enthusiastically, politely and generously.

Lighthouse coding

A lighthouse lit up at night time on an isolated rock in a rough sea.
Blackrock Island photo by Helen Geraghty Munnelly

This November, I have had the pleasure of working with colleagues Dermot Walsh, Farnan Harte, Kevin Munelly and Adrian Ormsby. They are the principals at Cornanool, Ardagh, Quay and Clogher primary schools respectively in Co. Mayo, Ireland. They formed a Digital Creative Cluster project to combine digital technology in an art work made collaboratively across the schools.

In truth the privilege was the chance to work with their energetic, imaginative and polite students.

Student at Ardagh school designing an art work of a light bulb incorporating an LED
Student at Ardagh school designing an art work of a light bulb incorporating an LED

My goal was to establish the competence to use Microbit and LED technology to include in a work of art to be developed.

Over two sessions, we:

Given a free rein, the art produced included many spaceships, cars, light bulbs and signet rings, as well as a couple of lighthouses.

Artwork of colourful lighthouse with LED from Ardagh School
Artwork of colourful lighthouse with LED from Ardagh School

This inspired discussion with the principals and raised the idea to focus on the flashing lighthouse, with its symbolism of identity and function of communication, as an exercise to make a dynamic Microbit project.

Could students code the Microbit to simulate a lighthouse?

We explored the LEDs on the Microbit and discussed the pause function in Makecode and decided we could, but after some introduction, it was left as an exercise for students to complete after I left.

So last night, I slept restlessly with troubling thoughts of unfinished business. I’ve learnt to get up and do something when this happens, rather than lose sleep in fitful discomfort!

So this is fruit of my feverish night mind – a simple Microbit program that I could have offered as a solution.

The challenge to you, is to run my program and study its output, before you inspect the code, while imagining you are:

  • Out to sea on a clear Christmas night off the western Irish Coast.
  • The battery is flat on the GPS.
  • All you can do is spot stars and lighthouses.
  • Where are you and which direction are you heading?
  • What has this to do with Christmas?

You can find out by downloading my program, unzip it and drag the hex file into a new project in Makecode, run it there with the emulator or download it to a Microbit and then imagine you are seeing the lights on the Microbit as objects in the landscape before you.

If you want, you can print my poster for this challenge on card, cut out the window to see the microbit display having fixed it to the back, and mount it on the wall in class for students to look at and attempt to work it out. Email me with their answer to the challenge and I’ll send the fully commented code.

Can you answer the questions, before you read the code?

Can you answer them after inspecting the code?

Merry Christmas to all the learners (including principals and me) in the four schools and all my colleagues, friends and family!

Hints to help:

UPDATE: Here is the fully commented code which explains everything I hope!

Computers in Education Society of Ireland Webinar: Knowledge Creation

I joined this panel on knowledge creation, responding to the Irish Department of Education and Skills report ‘Digital Learning 2020: Reporting on practice in Early Learning and Care, Primary and Post-Primary Contexts’.

I was asked to respond the following eight questions, and here are my prepared answers:

1. Who or what triggered your interest in the educational use of technology?

My first contact with educational technology was the arrival of microcomputers in 1978/9 – the secondary school where I taught Mathematics and Computer Studies took receipt of a Research Machines 380Z computer, and I took it home every weekend to learn how to use it and how to exploit it. To upskill myself I wrote a computer program in BASIC to make a snooker ball bounce around the screen – when I showed it to children, I was surprised at their enthusiasm to engage with it , even running to the cupboard to find a protractor to hold against the screen to estimate the angle they should fire the ball! The rest is history.

2. What is your primary motivation behind your educational use of technology?

To make the abstract concrete!

3. Describe in your experience effective educational use of technology in formal education.

To enhance the expressive and evaluative power of learners.

4. Describe in your experience effective learning outcomes from the educational use of technology in formal education.

Deeper and broader insight into knowledge coupled with useful skills and the character to persist with learning using technology as an augmentation of learning capacity – competence.

5. What is your philosophy of education?

To recognise the ‘engine’ of learning that every child has, but which is sometimes diminished by a lack of opportunity to exercise free choice and effective action! In other words, I am learner centred.

6. In your experience how is knowledge transferred?

Through expression (a kind of performance of competence) and evaluation (a check on the validity of that performance). Expression of competence may be in many modalities and media, but primarily internal thinking, natural language and formal (computer executable) code. Evaluation (of expressions) (internal check, natural social interaction and formal computer outcomes)

7. What pedagogy best supports the educational use of technology and why?

One that recognises the particular support that technology offers in such a learning model.

8. Formal education in the 21st century should look like….. because….

Something which has designed democratic responses to all the needs a learner has. Because I think that learners must increasingly take charge of their learning.

[ Updated for spelling and minor enhancements, 19/12/2020 ]

Computational Thinking in Primary

@AttyMassNS "At the recent [CESI] Conference, we mentioned our plans to explore decomposition and patterns/generalisations through Damhsa/Irish dancing. Integrates with/comhthathú le Seachtain na Gaeilge" March 2018
@AttyMassNS     “At the recent [CESI] Conference, we mentioned our plans to explore decomposition and patterns/generalisations through Damhsa/Irish dancing. Integrates with/comhthathú le Seachtain na Gaeilge”     March 2018
I was delighted last November to be asked to write this  Research Paper on Computational Thinking for the Irish National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and now it is out.

I couldn’t do it on my own, so I invited a team of colleagues and friends in the Computational Thinking for Life group at Trinity College Dublin to help:

  • Nina Bresnihan, who had been conducting literature review on this for her PhD;
  • Dermot Walsh who had been looking at professional development in his PhD as well as being an innovative primary practitioner and
  • Joy Hooper, formerly working to advise both New Zealand and the UK on technology enhanced learning and also an experienced primary practitioner.

We were advised by friends and colleagues Stephen Powell and Glenn Strong and also consulted with Jane Waite, Dave Smith and Amanda Jackson – key players in the UK’s efforts to bring computing to the Primary level. I felt pleased to have such an experienced, knowledgeable and willing bunch to call on.

As well as benefiting from their collective wisdom, the result is a chance to exercise ideas I have been developing since completing my PhD in 2013, but material from the PhD also gets an airing. I hope it is helpful.

The Learner at the Centre of Educational Design

These are the slides for a talk I gave at the University of Hyderabad back in January 2017, after an invitation as Visiting Professor there to discuss the design of a new Education Department and Masters Programme. They were particularly keen to solve problems relating to the legacy of the caste system and how it affects education. I offered my PhD theses, and spent time elaborating them, including this one offering an analytical framework for educational design which took a learner-centred view to inform the process.

Educational design is often, quite naturally, made to fit the organisational needs of the institutions and society providing education. The analysis presented here is intended to support the designer in taking a learner-centred approach, echoing the work of Donald Norman in user centred design. By posing eight questions that we imagine a learner may need to answer in order to have a complete educational process, the design challenge can be broken down in order to identify where an educational design is at fault, which in turn acts a focus for creativity and development. This talk describes this analysis and outlines each question’s detail.

Here is a printable poster of the analysis: The Learner at the Centre of educational design

A response to Secret Teacher’s breakdown

Dear Secret Teacher,

I found your report in the Guardian moving and important – recognition and acceptance that we have a problem is vital to recovery and I wish you well with yours.

I, like you, subscribe to Hargreaves’ “unconditional positive regard” and I am an unreformed “new romantic”, tempered with a little “lion tamer” and “entertainer” when needed!

Nevertheless, I was troubled by this paragraph:

“They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. At last I can admit that, yes, I do have a mental health problem. I don’t know what it is about me but, without my daily dose of antidepressants, I stop being the man I should be. There is a chemical inbalance in my brain that needs this but I have stopped wondering why: I just accept it. I have depression and, like my asthma, it’s something I have to learn to live with.”

I rewrote it in my own words as though speaking for society rather than as an individual:

“They say the first step to improvement is admitting there is a problem. At last society can admit that, yes, it does have more people experiencing mental health problems. We don’t know what it is about society but, without daily doses of antidepressants, people stop being as functional as they should be. There is a chemical inbalance in their brains that needs this but we do not need to wonder why: we just accept it. They have depression and, like asthma, it’s something they have to learn to live with.”

I find this rewrite unnacceptable!

It is not good enough for society to be satisfied with recognition of illness: we must challenge the root cause. In this case, the currently accepted model, that there is a chemical imbalance in brain, is not supported by the scientific evidence, as most psychiatrists will now agree ( see http://joannamoncrieff.com ).

An obvious alternative explanation for society to consider is that ill-health may be caused by the increased complexity and demand placed on teachers, especially if they are child-centred in their approach and subject to ever increasing inspection, parental demands and concerns about risk. I experienced a little of this stress recently as a school governor (my teaching days were in the seventies): we were expected to take responsibility for and annually review over twenty school policies, all with the threat of imagined risks if we were to put a foot wrong – and we weren’t even doing the day-to-day job!

My view is that we, society, needs to take this seriously: that we are placing too high a demand on teachers. When this is combined with teachers’ dedication to every individual child, management by targets & competition and a media habit of blaming teachers for problems in education, it can surely explain the kind of breakdown you report. It is in my view society’s responsibility to find solutions through better organisation of education. Sadly, it is simpler to blame the individual’s biochemistry and hand out unproven chemical ‘cures’ to paper over the cracks. It remains to be seen if it is cheaper or more sustainable.

I hope you do not take my words as suggesting that you were not up to the challenge of modern society and that if only you could “pull your socks up” you’d be able to overcome your condition – I am anxious here to show that the argument that we should “man-up” as individuals to modern problems is ignorant and inadequate. My purpose in writing this is to say we, society, have created the conditions for people to suffer and we should take our collective responsibility seriously. I suggest that for every person like you, there will be many more who aren’t able to recognise a mental health problem, but who are quietly self-medicating with alcohol.

With unconditional positive regard and the greatest respect to all those suffering,

Richard

PS Thanks to @Yorks_Bunny for alerting me to this, and for giving me this link to a Secret Teacher blog from a year ago which also addresses this issue.

The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs

The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs cover

I have recently read this excellent book  about research into the drug treatment of mental health conditions.

My review which offers an overview and my opinion is at the end of this post, but you may find it even more useful to listen to the author speak about the issues in this video made by the Open Paradigm Project.

The book made me think hard, and raised some very serious questions for me about our confidence in the ‘gold standard’ – double blind medical trial research data – which is held up as such a paragon of reliability. It is particularly annoying to think that education research is criticised as not being rigorous enough in comparison, when such a large scale failure of scientific thinking is reported.

The story, which tells of hubris and ambition amongst scientists, corruption from big business and the damage done, especially in relation to children, is enough to make me angry, but it also inspires me to look for parallel concerns in education.

One such concern is about the confusion between the organ which we call the brain and the phenomenon we call the mind. The story of drugs used to treat complex disorders of the mind is one of treating the brain with blanket interference at the level of the neuron and synapse, and then trying to explain the effects at the level of the mind.

It’s a bit like suggesting rain as a solution for society’s ills. Clearly rain has an effect on society’s functioning, but it has an indiscriminate dampening effect which doesn’t explain, predict or cause something like war, for example, although it may make for a temporary cessation if heavy enough. Indeed, it could be that such a break from the routine of war may help peace efforts to succeed. But nobody is confused that the rain is curing society’s problems in the way that ‘antipsychotic’ drugs are foolishly thought to target mental conditions.

These two things, brain and mind, are for me on completely separate ‘trophic levels‘, using the language of the ecosystems of food chains, just as rain and society are. One affects the other but not in simple ways that can explain the function of the mind through specific events in the brain nor vice versa, for that matter.

So, this analysis leads me to be cautious of any scientific report that attempts to relate brain biology directly to teaching and learning, although I have every confidence that hydration is important for our brains to work well and thus we should provide safe drinking fountains in schools, just as I find at Trinity College Dublin on every floor. Did I mention I now work there? 🙂

My review of The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs

A must-read for anyone concerned with the well-being of society

In this book, Dr Moncrieff explains carefully, soberly and with considerable academic integrity, how the world of psychiatry has become distorted by its own desire for recognition as a medical profession, its dubious assumptions about the nature of mental conditions and by the efforts made by drugs companies to increase their business.

Dr Moncrieff explains how the desire for psychiatry to be as scientific/medical as other areas of health has led to rushed conclusions about the link between brain chemistry/biology and complex mental conditions of the mind such as schizophrenia, manic depression and anxiety.

The assumption made is that a chemical imbalance in the brain requires toxic ‘antipsychotic’ drugs to counter it, and like insulin for diabetes, over a lifetime since it is a permanent deficiency in the brain. This assumption is shown to have little or no evidence to support it, yet is the mainstay of modern psychiatric practice. Dr Moncrieff proposes an alternative view, that the drugs are simply suppressing brain activity, and thus appear to ‘cure’ mental conditions. The trouble is, whichever view is taken, the drugs have toxic effects which are in many ways no different those from the illegal drugs taken for pleasure that we criminalise in society. These effects are downplayed as ‘side effects’ despite there being substantial evidence of long term damage to body and brain health.

Dr Moncrieff shows how drugs companies, keen to maintain and improve their business, have funded research which shows marginal and questionable improvement through their drugs and have suppressed negative reports. Despite contradictory results, this ‘research’ is followed by advertising and efforts to shift the wider society understanding of mental health, so that patients demand ever more drugs to ‘cure’ their sometimes modest problems, now made to sound like serious illnesses.

The distortions to academic practice, pyschiatric prescription and most damning of all, the attempts to treat young children with toxic drugs are revealed by Dr Moncrieff with careful attention to the published record in a convincing manner, providing a solid basis for further debate.

But, most damning of all, is the experience that Dr Moncrieff reports of a refusal in the psychiatric world to engage with these issues or to properly discuss the ethical dilemmas that arise. I found myself intrigued, challenged but ultimately enraged by the failure of the academic/medical professionals to ‘do no harm’.

I recommend this book without reservation to anyone prepared to think hard about these issues, and who perhaps has been unaware of concerns about mental health treatment and the huge cost to the well-being of society. It is then for us to take up the challenges Dr Moncrieff has described and ask how are we and society to respond?

Could Brentwood schools be more like Cambridge University?

Downing College, Cambridge

I have just read Derek Wenmoth’s blog ‘The Wrong Drivers‘ in which he comments on Michael Fullan’s concerns that we are pursuing ineffective school improvement strategies.

Much as though I find it easy to support Michael Fullan’s ideas for the right drivers, Derek Wenmoth’s commentary and Darren Sudlow’s comment, I am not so clear how to overcome the contradictions between a society’s call for accountability and the huge value of open and transparent data as a means of directing improvement in education.

In the UK we are being driven to the mistaken belief that a market should exist for education at every level.  If so, in order for this market to operate properly, the consumer needs to know who is selling the best value product. Unfortunately we don’t fully understand how educational quality is defined, in a way that can allow effective comparison, nor are we clear what price it is to the community (unless we buy private education). The consumer is persuaded to make judgements based on a muddled and (old) fashion-conscious set of beliefs, with narrow and misleading data sets.

This position has encouraged the development of ‘free schools’ (charter schools) based on parental demand rather than community need, but paid for by the community. Recently, one such secondary school is being proposed on the site of the closing Sawyers Hall College, a comprehensive secondary school which is closing this August and of which I am a governor here in Brentwood.

Over the last decade I have witnessed at first-hand the long and detailed deliberation about what our community in Brentwood needs and the extensive efforts to find sponsors for the kind of learning provision identified. One outcome was the realisation that there were too many schools for a declining demographic and so after consultation an agreed, supportive and professional school closure has been carried out over three years with an emotionally moving focus on safeguarding children’s well-being. The new free school proposal takes no notice of this in any way.

In fact the new free school is not needed by the community as a whole, has the wrong mix of values and educational provision and will cause another school closure if successful –  or its own if not – causing further expense and disruption to the community. My concern about this has lead to the formation with four others of the Educating Brentwood group, who are trying to hold educational developments in Brentwood to account (and highlight good practice). For further reading, my response to its unprofessional and poorly reported consultation is appended to this post. I believe the parents who are behind this new school are persuaded that schools in Brentwood are inadequate, and that the only way to improve their children’s life chances is to demand a new school. The basis for this is false evidence of  failure in current schools in Brentwood (the closing school recently received outstanding judgements from OFSTED), naivety and a deep selfishness – ironic when the school is proposed as a church school.

Darren’s call in his comment on Derek’s blog to “make the learning visible to the community” will only help if the institution is seen and trusted as an important partner in whole community development, as Keri Facer suggests, rather than a service to that community.

I suggest that institutional leaders must move from building their organisation as a coherent community in its ivory tower, to becoming more incoherent but embedded locally and in solid partnership with all other institutions in the neighborhood, committed to raising mutual quality hand-in-hand. Parents may then believe that their child’s future is solidly safe in the school most convenient to reach, because all schools in the neighborhood are working together to facilitate the transformation of that most precious of society’s assets – the child.

This call for incoherence and embeddedness challenges the orthodoxy of competitive institutions, walled-in shiny buildings, safeguarding policies, militaristic uniform, faux community engagement (seen as a kind of missionary work), technological firewalls and many other outward signs of institutional power, but not at the expense, one hopes, of the value of the family that school offers and the focus on knowledge sharing & acquisition as an end in itself.

What if there was only one educational institution in Brentwood for all learners and trainees of any age and say like Cambridge University, you attended and ‘lived’ in a college that was modest in size, local to you, but part of that larger institution with its comprehensive opportunities?

Perhaps we can learn from the best university in the world – I think the benefits are obvious.

 

APPENDIX

My Response to Becket Keys, Brentwood Consultation
20th April, 2012Dear Sir/Madam

I am respondng as an individual, I am a governor at Sawyers Hall College and the parent of three children.
I am also a Reader in the Institute for Educational Cybernetics (sustainable education systems) at the University of Bolton and a Director of a nonprofit education consultancy based in Brentwood.
My postcode is CM15 9BZ.

QUESTION 1: Should Becket Keys enter in a Funding Agreement with the Secretary of State?
NO

QUESTION 2: Please give reasons
The Secretary of State should not enter into a Funding Agreement with The Russell Education Trust because the impact on other local schools has not been fully evaluated nor publicly shared with the parents whose demand is the basis of the proposal.

As a governor of the closing school in Brentwood, I fully appreciate the detailed care and attention that must be paid to the children and their parents due to the disruption of closing – a process that has carried on over three years. It is vital not to recreate the situation in Brentwood that causes there to be another closure in a few years – it would be ignoring the lessons of recent history and the real need for vocational education that has been established by extensive analysis and consultation over the last ten years.

The Secretary of State should recognise that the proposers of the free school have deliberately misled the public and parents about this, by publishing incorrect information about admissions, overstating the likely continuing admissions at Sawyers Hall College if it were to remain open. In addition they have incorrectly speculated in their publicity to parents on the numbers of children likely to take up places in selective, independent or other maintained schools, contrary to the evidence.

Furthermore they have propagated the popular myth that an academic approach to teaching and learning is in the interests of every child, when it is clear from the research evidence that there is a diversity of learning styles that require a diversity of teaching approaches. The schools in Brentwood already offer clear pathways to academic children, all of them above average in their results. But there is room for improvement, and this is particularly in the area of learning-by-doing. This does not necessarily sacrifice the opportunity to follow academic pathways as the learner matures and gains confidence. There is also a need to improve the mix of vocational education offered in Brentwood as recognised by more than one extensive, professionally run consultation over the last decade. Our country must improve its position as a manufacturing force in the world, but we seem prepared to ignore those children who would be delighted to put their practical intellectual capability into use in learning, and thus develop the high level skills through this route that the country needs.

The company who are promoting this free school, not the instigators and parents who I believe have acted in good faith, have followed a marketing path to make money, with a reckless disregard for Brentwood and indeed the country’s needs. Their credentials to successfully run the school are unclear and are not revealed when asked. The Secretary of State would be ill-advised to risk our taxpayer’s money on such a funding agreement and should recommend to the company involved that they form an independent school and seek private investment, where their record and experience will be examined very carefully by investors before taking such a step.

As a resident of Brentwood, a parent, a taxpayer and a voter – hence an investor of sorts – on the basis of my own due diligence enquiries and their failure to establish any confidence in the proposing company, I can see no merit in the proposal.

Ultimately, I believe they have established an inflated parental demand on false information – a practice that no reputable business in Brentwood High Street would get away with for long.

QUESTION 3: Should Becket Keys adopt the proposed 2013 Admissions Policy without any further changes?
NO
QUESTION 4: Please give reasons
The admissions policy is over-complicated, will confuse and ultimately obscure the basis for admissions. The schools chosen are not all the closest to the site and it is a significant omission to ignore the demands of parents at St Mary’s Shenfield.

QUESTION 5: I would like to suggest the following change(s) to the proposed 2013 Admissions Policy.
The Admissions policy and its catchment area must be rejected and rethought.

Richard Millwood