FreshNetworks Blog

For the final session of the day I attended a seminar on whether our educational institutions living up to the innovation demands of the 21st century. The end of the day is always a tricky session and a bizarrely-shaped room didn’t help matters, but I couldn’t help but feel we never got to the meat of an exciting and radical topic.

I have worked with a lot of education clients in my previous roles and have always been struck by how traditional the structure is. Just taking schools as an example, the pattern of a day is still pretty much the same as it was 100 years ago - pupils arrive, listen to a teacher or read a book, make notes and answer questions and leave. They all go to the same building, and I bet school days typically start and end at the same time the always did, with a bell marking the same number of breaks.

Now compare this with the experiences of a modern workplace. Companies and the environments they create have changed radically in the last 100 years. The same is not true of our education establishments, many of which pride themselves on offering the same level and type of education that they have done for tens or hundreds of years. I went to a university that was proud of just that!

It’s not that this doesn’t work, or that things should change for the sake of it. Rather that the education system is not making the most of the creativity tools and social media that we see in the business world and social enterprise.

In work that I have done in the past we have developed innovative structures for education. We know that a real barrier to education for those with low skill levels or on low incomes is having to travel to a school or college - they either can’t afford the time or money to get there or feel intimidated by being in an ‘institution’. Why not, then, take education to them? Build small and localised learning studios that people can attend. Link them together through the internet and social media to create small studios that truly feel part of a larger (if virtual) organisation. There are pockets of innovation like this but nothing substantial and sustained.

Instead we’re Building Schools for the Future. As one colleague in the education sector once said to me “We risk knocking down old Victorian buildings to just build a cleaner, shinier modern replica in their place.”

I think the education system isn’t making the most of tools to support innovation and it’s a pity the discussion didn’t get here today. Perhaps it was the end of day blues and the bizarre room. I know at least one of the panellists, Andy Powell the Chief Executive of the Edge Foundation is passionate about change in education and making it more appropriate to the needs of learners. Sadly an open and detailed debate on these issues too often never emerges.