We can be leaders again in education

This is hardly an easy question to answer, but an important one to ask nevertheless if Scotland is to realise its own ambitions for economic growth and social prosperity. It demands an answer. While Scottish education has a worldwide reputation for strong performance, consistent standards and inclusiveness, it now faces unprecedented social and economic challenges in preparing young people to become the best they can be as individuals, job creators and employees of tomorrow. At present, there are serious questions over the preparedness of education leavers for the world of work, and over the extent to which their knowledge and skills will be used in jobs, many of which have not yet been created.

But how can we plan for an unknown future? Whilst this is a cry of every generation, it has an anguish as never before. We are unlikely to know what the jobs of tomorrow, let alone 2025, will be. Some are predicting that 80 per cent of the goods and services we will be using at the end of the next 100 years have not been invented yet. That surely provides a sense of the scale of the issue but also a tempting insight into the prizes which could be Scotland’s if we get the skills, business and learning agendas right in the short term. Whatever we do now and in years ahead, other parts of the world will forge ahead without worrying too much about us, unless we give them cause to pay attention.

As is often the case, perhaps history contains some valuable lessons for us as we consider this question. The term “world-leading” is long synonymous with Scottish education dating back to the exceptional parish system. It remains clear that Scottish immigrants, with perhaps a basic smattering of education, were better prepared for the social, economic and commercial challenges of the new world than many from other countries. Scotland’s “world-leading” status was to be cemented during the 18th-century European Age of Enlightenment when, again, “world-leading” and “learning nation” became bywords for Scotland as it excelled in synergising social policy, science and commerce.

Today most, but sadly far from all, recognise that Scotland cannot seriously trade on that reputation any longer, and as emerging economic powers simply rewrite the rules, Scotland must act fast and meaningfully to position itself in the global marketplace. We must start to debate seriously the sum of our ambitions. Central to that debate is the world of education, skills and learning.

That is the brief for a new 16-month-long project being launched this week in Edinburgh with business representatives, educationalists, academics, young people and policymakers. The Goodison Group in Scotland is taking this brief forward, in partnership with the Scottish Parliament’s think tank, Scotland’s Futures Forum. The aim is to stimulate wide public policy and political debate and to help businesses and educationalists, in equal measure, develop a shared understanding of the complex issues that surround learning, education and skills in the 21st century and to provide fresh perspectives on how Scotland can regain its world-leading title. The findings will be presented at the Scottish Parliament in 2012.

The project will hear and collate the views of teachers, parents, professionals involved in early-years work, those who work in the public sector, those who constitute SME businesses, the ever important to business over-60 age group and, of course, young people. This project community will be taken through a scenario-planning process to create new narratives, dialogue, stories and research.

My PERSONAL reflections and starting point to this work, looking backwards, suggest to me that there are three clear lessons which must be taken seriously.

First, 21st-century learning should be fundamentally different from today. We should have no reason to expect it to remain the same. I fear that we have too easily confused learning with education. We have heavily invested money in incremental reform of the Scottish education system, trying to ensure students are suitably supported through the system. And yet we fail to recognise that the onus is not on the learner to adapt as to how he or she learns within educational structures. Rather, our learning institutions must adapt to how they support personalised learning, recognising that learning is different for every individual. The individual learner is, indeed, central to all our policies, systems and structures of support.

Over the next decade, my sense is that the most creative, exciting and embracing innovations in learning will take place outside the education system. And that has big implications for educational institutions as they try to respond and reconcile bottom-up developments in learning with the traditional top-down hierarchy that is currently in place in Scotland. This area will redefine the learning and skills debate in the coming years.

Most of my age, just passing 65, fail to comprehend how differently our grandchildren easily absorb information through media and experiences beyond our comprehension. I know our young folk, with a mental dexterity most certainly denied to me, will navigate this labyrinth with ease. Their world is, and will become even more so, different to ours in the ways in which they absorb the information and consequent learning they need.

Second, history tells us that significant learning cannot progress without the basic needs of the human condition being met first: food, shelter, happiness and health. Sometimes in Scotland we forget that, and when we talk of universal access to education, we mistakenly assume the same starting point for all. I fear that policymakers, despite good intentions, do make false assumptions based on the best of legislative intentions. The progress of some in their own personal development is frequently humbling to those of us fortunate in other beginnings and opportunities. My close involvement in the development of the “world-leading” Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework emphasises to me vividly that all of our experiences in life, positive or painful, qualify each and every one of us for attention around what we can do, not what we cannot. We must remember that the overall purpose of education and learning is not simply to enhance the skills of people in the workplace but to enhance the quality of life.

Third, I see the historic debate between business and education becoming an outdated dichotomy in the coming years. Ongoing financial crises – sadly, they will not end in 2012 – competition amongst EU countries and new global trade rules will ensure that successive Scottish governments will have to make even more serious use of training and skills development as levers to ensure economic sustainability. In my view, and at long last, Curriculum for Excellence shows the right direction of travel.

What brings the Goodison Group in Scotland and Scotland’s Futures Forum together in an exceptional partnership is a clear sense of duty to explore different thinking for a different age. I suspect we will explore a few blind alleys, and in the language of today some “wicked thinking”, but we will be the better for it. Civic voices do need to be raised in the years ahead, not in an attempt to drown out those with democratic legitimacy, but rather to offer ventilation and evidence to those with the burdens of elected office and those who aspire to such offices. If you have thoughts as to how Scotland can become a world-leading learning nation by 2025 and, indeed, if you regard that as a legitimate ambition, I and my colleagues would be pleased to hear from you. Please e-mail [email protected].

l Sir Andrew Cubie CBE is chair of Goodison Group in Scotland and a former chair of CBI Scotland.