Monday was the first day of the Forum. In attendance are over 750 expert ‘education’ delegates from around the world and 75 Ministers with responsibility for education and ultimately responsible for the development of over 1 billion children. The opening address was from Ed Balls leading with the query as to whether the minister numbers were within the expert delegate numbers -– you can answer the question yourself!
He introduced Gordon Brown – the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre is after all only a few yards from Number 10 and is also currently hosting the Iraq enquiry – from the tenor of his speech he certainly knew which meeting he was addressing! A key point was the announcement that the Universal Home Access Project is to move beyond the pilot phase – it is expected to impact over 300 thousand households with a spend of £300 million – and the indicators from the pilot phase were extremely encouraging with significant engagement from both the learners and their families.
In a train of thought later echoed by Lord Mandelson was, according to Brown, the significance of education in the future prosperity of the country – with promises to continue to invest in education at all levels. Knowledge creation and investment in the knowledge economy is fundamental and skills are the new global economy. They both (Brown and Mandelson) reinforced the importance of Higher Education – not only for what it brings through research and the education of UK citizens, but also as an industry in its own right, bringing many millions of pounds into the country each year. It was clear that HE will be both enabled and expected to continue to gain funding through the ‘sale’ of both research and education. A key ‘watch this space’, announced by Brown, is the establishment of a task force led by Lord Puttnam to develop the use of new technologies – more will come on this over the coming weeks. Read all about it on the DCSF website.
Mandelson went on to say that HE must change and move towards a different delivery model – based more on technology and anytime, anywhere access and less on the need to spend three years geographically based ‘on campus’. Brown: “Technology is pervasive and must be used to enrich and enable, to tailor education to meet the diverse needs of individuals and engage parents in the process – no pupil must be left behind”. “We must use technology to re-imagine education” – and I hope to see more of this at BETT 2010. There was more mention and reinforcement of the targets for parental reporting (2010 for secondary schools and 2012 for primary schools). There was a significant change in language – a move from an expectation to a guarantee that online reporting will take place. There was also emphasis on technology empowering teachers and not replacing them.
A nice quote from J K Rowling used by Brown: “We don’t need magic to change the world, we carry the power within ourselves already”.
Mandelson went on to talk about digital literacy and the ‘Digital Britain’ roadmap – whilst industry is doing much to improve the infrastructure we will need public investment as well and we need a new paradigm for Public Private Partnership and Investment.
Such was the importance of education – stressed repeatedly by Brown, Balls and Mandelson – it was difficult not to remember an earlier time and place and the battle cry ’Education, Education, Education’.
