An important article in the Guardian newspaper entitled “The awful truth: education won’t start the west getting poorer”. The article challenges a number of assertions which seem to have become accepted ‘facts’ over the last few years.

Anyone who has written proposals for the European Commission will know the mantra of the Lisbon Agreement. By the year 2010 Europe will be the most advanced knowledge economy of the year. Now quietly forgotten , this bombastic policy goal was based on a number of unproved assumptions. First was the nature of the economy itself. Yes, we may have a greater proportion of knowledge as capital in the production process than in previous times and the numbers involved in service industries have increased but the capitalist economies remain relaint on production as the primary source of wealth and indeed of employment.

And whilst the number of occupations and jobs requiring higher skills and knowledge levels has increased, there remain many low skilled jobs, especially in the growing services sector.

There were two main ways Europe was to achieve its preeminent status in world economies. The first was through implementing ever higher levels of technology. Once more the link between technology, productivity and economic growth are contestable and difficult to measure. technology can increase productivity and lead to growth. however, there have been a number fo studies showing that the implementation of new technologies has actually reduced productivity, at least in the short term. And if technology merely reduces the workforce, this can inhibit economic growth and stability.

There has also been a long running assumption that higher levevls of education and qualification will also lead to higher productivity and higher wage levels. Botha re unproven. And as the data quoted in the Guardian shows real wage levels in teh UK are actually falling.

In fact it is some of those occupations lauded as the jobs of the future that pay rates have fallen most dramatically in comparative terms. Computer programmers pay has been steadily falling for the last five years in the UK.

The Guardian also points out how so called knowledge jobs are being deskilled “They are being chopped up, codified and digitised. Every high street once had bank managers who used their discretion and local knowledge to decide which customers should receive loans. Now software does the job. Human judgment is reduced to a minimum, which explains why loan applicants are often denied because of some tiny, long-forgotten overdue payment.”

The Guardian quotes Brown, Lauder and Ashton who call this “digital Taylorism”, after Frederick Winslow Taylor who invented “scientific management” to improve industrial efficiency.”

And of course with Globalisation and new forms of communciation many of these jobs are simply being shifted or outsourced to workers in other countries, especially to lower wage economies. At the same time, countries such as India and China are rapidly expanding their education systems, with a dramatic growth in science and technology graduates.

In many ways this is a perfect storm, hence the title of the Guardian article. it certaibly adds focrce to teh growing debate about the Purpose of Education abd challenges the idea that educations hould merely focus on so called employability skills. Secondly it may lead us to rethink what sort of jobs we want in society? I am interested in the survival of the craft sector in gemrany, depsite the assumption in the UK that such jobs had no future. Indeed its eems that thsoe countries with strong apprenticeship systems, valuaing handicraft and applied skills and knowledge may be better placed for the future than thiose such as UK which went down the road of developing a mass higher education system for the knowledge society.

As the UK Government attempts to pay for ever more diverse campaigns emerge against attempts to cutback public services.

One of the most interesting has been against cuts in libraries. The campaign has gone viral through Facebook and Twitter and gained the support of prominent artists and public figures. Of course part of the reason for the strength of the campaign may be nostalgia, another may be that the move to close libraries has upset many of the middle classes who voted for the ConDem coalition government in England.

The Government’s arguments seem to be threefold. One we cannot afford libraries. Two, why should they be a public service and why can’t they be run by the private sector or by volunteers. And three that they are out of date in the internet age.

The first two are predictable responses from aright wing government committed to reducing public services. But the latter is interesting as is the response. To some extent I guess this is based on nostalgia or on a feeling that a paper based book represents something different and more than a digital artefact. Partly it is based on a social inclusion agenda. But partly it is focused on the idea of libraries as a physical and social space, analogous to the role of pub. Even when information can be found through a simple Google search, even when we can chat directly with our friends over VOIP connections, even when our friends are measured in terms of connections om Facebook, we still value public spaces. And the library is a public pace lined to knowledge. Of course it is not the only one – we have schools and universities. But these have various restrictions and exclusivity based on age, income or qualification. In the UK libraries have represented one of the few public and social spaces linked to knowledge which have been open to all.

And as such people are instinctively opposed to their closure or privatisation.

I am very happy to see the launch today of the Purpose of Education web site, initiated by Doug Belshaw and Alec Stewart.

The recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have shown the power of social media for not just discussing politics but for mobilising. And the student protests in the UK against increases in university fees and the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance have shown a willingness by young people in the UK to act around education. However, it is clear we need a wider debate about the whole purpose of education, especially as technology is opening up new possibilities for learning.

The new website aims to kickstart that debate. “We’re going to initiate the debate, grow the community and inform key decision makers about the outcome of this movement to improve education for all. Our 3-year plan provides more information and will be updated as the movement gains momentum.”

And the site is inviting 500 word blogposts, suggesting a focus on the questions posed by Keri Facer in a keynote to the JISC Innovating e-Learning conference 2010

What is your vision for the good society?

What is the part that education can play in achieving that and what is the part that others need to play? Who are these others? What is/what should be their relationship to education?

What are the building blocks we have in our schools and universities already that could move them towards that role?

What are the building blocks outside formal education?

What are the impediments to change and what causes them? And are there good reasons for these?

What can I see of merit in the ideas of those who disagree with me?

Do the ideas I suggest draw on the expertise and insight of others?

Do the ideas I suggest offer enough benefit to outweigh the disruption that they would cause in their realisation? how would we get there?

The first blog of the new year looks at what I see as something of a contradiction for those of us wanting to change and hopefully improve education. Lets look at two trends from 2010.

In terms of the use of technology for teaching and learning we saw limited technical innovation. OK, the UK saw an increasing trend towards providing Virtual Learning environments (mainly Moodle) in primary schools. Applications like Google docs and Dropbox allowed enhanced facilities for collaborative work and file sharing. However neither of these was designed specifically for educational use. Indeed the main technical trend may have been on the one hand the increased use of social software and cloud computing apps for learning and on the other hand a movement away from free social software towards various premium business models. Of course mobile devices are fast evolving and are making an increasing impact on teaching and learning.

But probably the main innovation was in terms of pedagogy and in wider approaches to ideas around learning. and here the major development is around open learning. Of course we do not have a precise or agreed definition of what open education or open learning means. But the movement around Open Educational Resources appears to be becoming a part of the mainstream development in the provision of resources for tecahing and learning, despite significant barriers still to be overcome.  And there is increasing open and free tecahing provision be it through online ‘buddy’ systems, say for language learning, various free courses available through online VLEs and the proliferation of programmes offered as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) using a variety of both educational and social software. Whilst we are still struggling to develop new financial models for such programmes, perhaps the major barrier is recognition. This issue can be viewed at three different levels.

1. The first level is a more societal issue of how we recognise learning (or attainment). at the moment this tends to be through the possession of accreditation or certification from accredited institutions. Recognition takes the form of entry into a profession or job, promotion to a higher level or increased pay.
2. The second level is that of accreditation. Who should be able to provide such accreditation and perhaps more importantly what should it be for (this raises the question of curriculum).
3. The third is the issue of assessment. Although traditional forms of individual assessment can be seen as holding back more innovative and group based forms of teaching and learning there are signs of movement in this direction – see, for example the Jisc Effective Assessment in a Digital Age, featured as his post of the year by Stephen Downes.

These issues can be overcome and I think there are significant moves towards recognising broader forms of learning in different contexts. In this respect, the development of Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks are an important step forward in allowing access to both technology and sources of learning to those not enrolled in an institution.

However, such ‘progress’ is not without contradiction. One of the main gains of social democratic and workers movements over the last century has been to win free access to education and training for all based on nee4d rather than class or income. OK, there are provisos. Such gains were for those in rich industrialised countries – in many areas of the world children still have no access to secondary education – let alone university. Even in those rich countries, there are still big differences in terms of opportunities based on class. And it should not be forgotten that whilst workers movements have fought for free and universal access to education, it has been the needs of industry and the economic systems which have tended to prevail in extending access (and particularly in moulding the forms of provision (witness the widely different forms of the education systems in northern Europe).

Now those gains are under attack. With pressures on econo0mies due of the collapse of the world banking system, governments are trying to roll back on the provision of free education. In countries like the UK, the government is to privatise education – both through developing a market driven system and through transferring the cost of education from the state to the individual or family.

Students have led an impressive (and largely unexpected) fightback in the UK and the outcome of this struggle is by no means clear. Inevitably they have begun to reflect on the relation between their learning and the activities they are undertaking in fighting the increases in fees and cutbacks in finances, thus raising the issue of the wider societal purposes and forms of education.

And that also poses issues for those of us who have viewed the adoption of technology for learning as an opportunity for innovation and change in pedagogy and for extending learning (through Open Education) to those outside schools and universities. How can we defend traditional access to institutional learning, whilst at the same time attacking it for its intrinsic limitations.

At their best, both the movements around Open Education and the student movement against cuts have begun to pose wider issues of pedagogy and the purpose and form of education as will as the issues of how we recognise learning. One of the most encouraging developments in the student movement in the UK has been the appropriation of both online and physical spaces to discuss these wider issues (interestingly in opposition to the police who have in contrast attempted to close access to spaces and movement through he so-called kettling tactic).

I wonder now, if it is possibel to bring together the two different movements to develop new visions of education together with a manifesto or rather manifestos for aschieveing such visions.

This video is important. the cutbacks are not an inevitable consequence of some mysterious economic force but are a deliberate and ideologically driven economic policy – and there is an alternative!

Here is the first in a series of videos we are going to be featuring looking at the present economic and social crisis and the future of educatio0n. In this video comedian Stewart Lee talks about university funding and the arts and refers to government policy as a deliberate strategy to rid us of “troublesome thinkers and artists.”

I don’t normally post press releases on this blog. But I think the ideas in this preview of the keynote presentation at the forthcoming UK Jisc online conference is important and deserves wider dissemination. The text is based on a podcast which can be found on the Jisc web site.

“We need to re-engage civil society in a debate about educational purpose.  These are the powerful words of Professor Keri Facer, keynote speaker at the forthcoming JISC innovating e-learning conference. According to her, we need to stop using qualifications as a proxy for a debate about educational success – “how many people need to get up to Level Two skills, how many people need degrees” – and instead start really thinking about the  competencies, skills and attributes students may need to thrive in uncertain times.

In the context of the row over HE funding the UK has neglected the fundamental question about what institutions are for and instead has focused simply on the issue about how to pay for universities as they currently exist.  Facer puts this in the context of the uncontested idea of the knowledge economy which has dominated the discussions about the future of socio-technological change. “For me the critical issue is that we have been working with one idea of the future for nearly twenty years.  The idea of the knowledge economy seems to imply that if only we make sure everybody is educated enough and ensure that they have enough technological skills then we will have a future where everybody will be economically secure.  I think this is contestable when we look at some of the economical and environmental developments that are likely to come about in the next ten years.  If we look carefully at the lived reality of a future ‘knowledge economy’, for example, it may be one of radical polarisation, inequality and injustice.  This is not necessarily an empowering future. As educators we need to start thinking about the other sorts of futures we may want to support our students to create and inhabit.” Facer encourages the audience to start imagining different futures and to examine the kinds of future lives that are offered by this widespread discourse of the knowledge economy.

She urges universities in their governance to be much more closely tied to the needs and aspirations of their communities and to set in place mechanisms for engagement in real debates about how to build sustainable economies. “If we want to imagine different futures we need to create the right kinds of spaces to be able to debate those, public spaces where people are equipped to get into a serious debate about the sorts of socio-technological trajectories that we will be looking at over the next ten to twenty years.”

I have been in Cardiff for the last three days, attending a workshop organised by the EU funded Politics project. Pontydysgu are a partner in the project which aims to use Web 2.0 and social software tools for people to learn about politics. Although the subject is great there are as ever problems. How can we get young (and not so young) people to communicate between different cultures and different languages. Some of the partners are schools or working in the school and vocational learning sectors. As such the teachers are using the politics resources and (under development) platform to scaffold learning for young people. Other partners, like Pontydysgu, wish to develop the platform and tools for self directed learning by young people. Is it possibel to develop resources, tools and an overall platform which can cater for such different approaches to learning. In some ways it is more difficult to develop the platform for self directed learning, as the resources and platform need to at least assist in scaffolding the learning. And despite progress in such areas as recommender systems and the provision for supporting peer based learning, I think our understanding of how to use technologies for scaffolding learning is still inits early stages.

Anyway, and changing the subject, yesterday morning we moved the workshop to the Wales Assembly, where we met our Regional assembly Member, Leanne Wood and went for a tour of the Assembly. It was a surprisingly good experience in allowing an international group of project partners to relate the work we are doing on education to the broader field of politics as a whole. And I was impressed by the Assembly building. None of that old fashioned privilege and tradition associated with Westminster. Instead it is a modern, energy efficient building (no need for artificial lighting and heated through geo-thermal energy), based on the idea of transparency. Young people were wandering around, interviewing the First Minister for a BBC programme. The sun may have helped to provide a feeling of hope, starkly contrasting to the gloom an despair t5ha Westminster politic engenders today.

Anyway that was the first three days of this week. If you were at the meeting, please feel free to add your comments on what you thought about our work together and the visit to the Wales Assembly.

The UK government enquiry into the future funding of higher education, headed by Lord Browne, former Chief Executive of BP, has delivered its report.

At the moment, the government pays students’ fees while they are university. Once they graduate, and are earning £15,000 or more, they start to pay back £3,290 for each year of their degree.

Browne has proposed lifting the cap on fees with universities free to choose what they wish, with students repaying fees when they start earning £23000. It is unclear how the system would work and what interest rates would accrue on the loans for the fees.

The main motivation of the proposed reform  is to switch responsibility for university funding from the state to students and their families; for every £100 a student borrows to defer the payment until after graduation, the government pays about £35.

The elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge have welcomed the report, as have the research intensive universities. Interestingly the Open University has also supported the report, mainly because it extends loan support to part time students, who are excluded under the present scheme. But the report has been condemned by both the National Union of Students and the University and College Union which represent lecturers.

So much for the technicalities – if readers are interested in finding out more about the proposals, which have yet to be approved by Parliament, see the Guardian newspaper’s reports.

What does it all mean? Essentially it is a further (large) step forward in the privatisation of the education system in the UK. Browne says: “Under these plans universities can start to vary what they charge but it will be up to students whether they choose the university. The money will follow the student who will follow the quality. The student is no longer taken for granted, the student is in charge.” Or rather the students with money (or their parents with money) are in charge.  Higher Education is no longer seen as a right, but rather as part of a market mechanism. University courses become a market driven commodity. The arbiter of quality becomes the ability to monetarise on investment in taking a course. Academic quality counts for nothing. The university system has traditionally been class based, this reform will tweak the system to ensure new money is as good as old.

It is interesting to note too, that universities will be free to charge differential fees for different subjects and courses. But Browne also says the government may remove public funding from all but “priority” subjects, such as medicine, science and engineering in pursuing a”closer fit between what is taught and the skills needed in the economy”.

Browne calls for an overhaul of the careers advice and guidance system to ensure that students receive adequate advice as he says happens in the (private, fee paying) public schools. I know nothing about how careers advice is organised in public schools. But the truth is that for most working class students a spreadsheet of comparative fees will become the most important aid in choosing universities. And how Browne expects better careers advice at a time when careers services are facing cutbacks of up to 40 per cent is hard to see.

Essentially people are now being expected to pay for their own higher education. But why should the government stop there? Already there is talk that individuals may be expected to pay for vocational education. And despite the lack of take off of the so called free schools (free in that they are run by businesses not local government) we can expect to see further moves to cut school spending and privatise the school sector in coming years.

Much of the publicity about cutbacks in public spending in education in the UK have focused on the limitations in student numbers in universities and on the axing of the school building programme.

However, perhaps the most dramatic affect to date is being felt by the Careers Service, usually called Connexions. The Unison trade union have produced a summary of what is going on and it does not make for pretty reading.

Here are a few examples drawn from their survey.

In Luton, trade unions and employees are now being consulted on the Connexions proposals which involves the reduction of 12 full time posts, nine of which are currently filled; early cancellation of contracts with some voluntary sector providers; and reduction in the budget available for resources and other services to support work with young people.

In Thurrock, at least £304k cut from Connexions budget in year with approximately 10 jobs going, leading to reduced time available to provide a universal Information, Advice and Guidance service and track young people so as to support them into Employment, Education and Training

In Norfolk the cuts are more dramatic. “We are losing the Connexions brand and becoming guidance advisers, we are threatened with a 50% reduction in funding and the loss of 65WTE jobs. PA jobs are being cut and the structure for services vastly pared down impacting on delivery. Centres are being closed down so YPs have no access. Guidance will be electronic and phone based and two tiers of working are being delivered – targeted and tailored, suggesting some grading differential in pay too. No LDD PAs or casework managers.”

Similarly in Northamptonshire. “The whole Company, numbering 175, has been placed at risk of redundancy. The in-year cut to the Connexions service is £1.3 million out of a budget of £5.4 million, which will require a 40% reduction in the second half of the year to end of March.”

And so it goes on. Meanwhile the government blathers on hypocritically about its commitment to a universal and high quality careers service. Indeed, the Conservative Government in their manifesto proposed a new all-age careers service. At the Institute of Careers Guidance conference (November 2009) then shadow education minister David Willetts stated that he recognised the critical importance of high quality, impartial, universally available careers information and advice and of the economic and social benefits these bring

Sadly few outside the careers services realise what is going on. But everyone in education in the UK should be watching. For what is happening to the careers service today is a blueprint for what may happen to schools, colleges and universities tomorrow.