1: If you had the power to transform one thing about education overnight, what would it be?
End the system of timed, written exams at the ages of 16 and 18. It’s so 1950s, and a horrendous waste of public money, and that’s even before we get into the educational and psychological reasons against.
2: Imagine you were 17/ 18 again and sitting your A levels or equivalent. By which of the following methods would you like your knowledge assessed and grades decided?
A) Timed written examinations
B) Coursework
C) A practical demonstration
D) A formal presentation followed by a q+a?
Well it can hardly be option a now, can it? I actually like the options of b combined with d, and of course elements of c if the course of study warranted this.
3: In your view, what is the most significant development in education over the last hundred years?
Probably the assembled initiatives and items of legislation from the 1960s focused on Higher Education. Some of these paved the way for the expansion of Universities and Polytechnics, while at the same time you had the visionary Open University concept, which harnessed the dominant technology of the day (TV) and massively widened opportunity and participation.
We need to apply that same level of enterprise, initiative and good natured willpower to the current era.
4: If you were a contestant on Mastermind, what would be your specialist subject?
Narrowing that down is really tough, but I’d probably pick something a bit left field, like “Jaguar cars from 1945 to the present”.
5: What’s your favourite book, film or play set in/ around an educational setting?
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury from the 1970s- a great campus novel, one of the best written of post-war British novels, and also a fine BBC tv adapted series starring the late Anthony Sher (the series is not of my era either, I’d hasten to add- I caught this on BBC4 when they re-ran it some years ago).
6: What, for you, is the definition of a ‘good education’?
A process founded on the validation of each individual, and which engenders in each learner a sense of self worth and self knowledge. Among other things, I suppose the foundations would include competence and confidence with number, fluency and flair in speech and writing, an emerging sense of what one is good at and where one’s talents lie, a love of the natural world, personal self esteem and respect for others, and- to borrow the phrase originated by Hemingway and co-opted by US educationalist Neil Postman- a built in c**p detector, so one has the confidence to judge and call out good from bad, truth from lies, honesty from deceit, and so on.