Spent an afternoon at Channel Four's brutalist offices at Horseferry Road in London last Friday - not as a bleary late-night tv presenter (the last time I was there in July 1997), but as someone with something to think and say about the future of education. Well, I do (see the 'Education' category on this blog). But I was more interested in the attendee list, which would bring me into contact with some actual teachers and headmasters, as well as the usual policy hucksters and education entrepreneurs. So I was delighted to fall into conversation with Dave Harris, the Principal of Serlby Park, which he describes as "a 3-18 Business & Enterprise Learning Community", but which in his conversation is revealed to be a quite inspiring response to the collective demands of a ex-mining town. And I'm even more delighted to find out that our conversation at the table was audio-blogged by our facilitator.
Our topic was Lifelong Learning, but as you'll hear, we strayed into why health clubs are a clue to intrinsic motivation, whether lifelong learning really meant lifelong earning (and a life sentence of "keeping up to speed"), and the possibility of a Big Brother-style show that could show how subtle and processual quality education actually is.
Congratulations to Steve Moore at Policy Unplugged for setting it up. And we're all wondering what Channel Four's educational millions will now be spent on...
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