the role of creativity in our education system - new … · the role of creativity in our education...

Creative thinkingThe role of creativity in our education system

Stephen Twigg Dan Jarvis Paul Collard John Dunford

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ROUND TABLE PARTICIPANTS

John D’AbbroHeadNew Rush Hall Group

Paul CollardChief ExecutiveCCE

Gareth MillsDirector of LearningFuturelab

Simon BartleyPresidentWorldSkills Intl

Stephen CrowneSenior DirectorCisco Global Education

Ian FordhamCo-founderEducation Foundation

John DunfordChairWhole Education

Dan JarvisShadow Minister forCulture, Media & Sport

Stephen TwiggShadow Secretary ofState for Education

Jonathan DerbyshireCulture EditorNew Statesman

Roger Walshe Head of LearningBritish Library

Joe HallgartenDirector of EducationRSA

Tom KenyonDirector of EducationNesta

Noah SamuelsDirector, cross-productsolutions (Europe),Google

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2 JULY 2012 | NEW STATESMAN | 3

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Reprints and Syndication [email protected]

Contents2 July 2012

6 Unlocking ingenuity in children and young people 4 Is Government’s approach stuck in the 1950s?

Articles 4 Matching demand Stephen Twigg and Dan Jarvis argue the case for creative collaboration both in and out of the classroom to create a modern workforce

6 Round table debate Our participants look at ways young people can acquire skills through activity, with teachers becoming partners in learning

14 Take a risk Creativity gives better than average exam results and lays the foundations for success beyond school, argues Paul Collard

The New Statesman is printed on 100 per cent recycled eco-friendly paper

Something old, something newPlans to “restore rigour in the key primarysubjects” were set out by Education SecretaryMichael Gove recently in his new draftoverhaul of the Primary National Curriculum.

The plans propose a back-to-basicscurriculum, focusing on times-tables,spelling and grammar. Pupils will be expectedto have learned their times-tables up to 12 bythe age of nine, to multiply and dividefractions by the age of 11 and to start learningand reciting poetry from five years old.

The coalition Government has made muchof giving schools more autonomy in how andwhat they teach. Some have welcomed therenewed focus on the traditional “three Rs”

as good preparation for secondary school.However, some union leaders fear that thisheavily prescribed curriculum will leave littleroom for teachers to adapt learning to theirindividual pupils’ needs and to make lessonsexciting for them.

This supplement looks at how far a verytraditional approach can be reconciled withwhat we now know about the benefits of acreative education, which promotes theability to question, make connections,innovate, problem-solve, communicate,collaborate and to reflect critically. Can wehave both rigour and creativity? Can we avoidthrowing the baby out with the bathwater? l

First published as a supplement to the New Statesman issue of 2 July 2012.© New Statesman Ltd. All rightsreserved. Registered as anewspaper in the UK and USA.

This supplement, and other policy reports, can be downloaded from the NS website at newstatesman.com/supplements

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03_contents CS:Statesman supplements 26/06/2012 12:39

The O-level and CSE system was designedover half a century ago

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One of the challenges is that our educa-tion system was founded on an Enlight-enment belief that a core of so-called “aca-demic” subjects are somehow superior topractical, vocational or creative skills.

This conceptual hierarchy has beencodified in the Government’s “EBac” –the English baccalaureate. While literacyand numeracy are rightly criticalbedrocks, it places no value on subjectssuch as music, religious education, engi-neering, design and technology, and art,showing that the Government does notunderstand their social or economic valuein today’s world. This may have dire con-sequences for Britain’s economic future ifit is not addressed.

The technological advances of today’s

Achild that begins primaryschool this year will not fin-ish their working life untilaround 2075. It is hard toimagine what society will belike then: the only certainty

during his or her life will be change.Two skills that are essential to be able to

succeed in an uncertain world are creativ-ity and resilience. Labour introduced re-forms to give more freedoms to schools,giving heads and teachers the space to fos-ter creativity and resilience. While manyschools have taken advantage of this, at asystem-wide level schools, colleges anduniversities can be doing more to pro-mote these skills, and the Governmentshould be encouraging this, not stifling it.

How can we give our education

system the potentialto create the next

Steve Jobs?

CHANGING SOCIETY

Matching demandBy Stephen Twigg and Dan Jarvis

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digital and creative industries requireBritain’s education system to be at the cut-ting edge. What is creativity? The educa-tionalist Ken Robinson has argued that oneelement of creativity is “divergent think-ing” – the ability to make the associationsand lateral connections between ideas.

About ten years ago, GeorgeLand and Beth Jarman pub-lished their research on di-vergent thinking. They gavea series of tests to 1,600 threeto five year-olds. If they

achieved above a particular score theywould be considered “geniuses” in diver-gent thinking. An amazing 98 per centscored at the genius level or higher for di-vergent thinking. They gave the sametests to the same children five years later atthe ages of eight to ten. Then only 32 percent scored at the genius level. At the agesof 14 to 15 and the result was 10 per cent.They gave the same test to over 200,000adults and the figure was 2 per cent.

It is extraordinary that, at the age offour, we have the ability to “think out-side the box”, in a way that decreases aswe go through the education system.Perhaps it’s not surprising. Too much ofour education system teaches childrennot to take risks, and that there is onlyone answer (it’s at the back of the book –no peeking!).

Many schools and teachers already pro-mote creativity, innovation and entrepre-neurship. Take, for example, PaddingtonAcademy in central London. Through itsfocus on the importance of developingspeaking skills, to its excellent entrepre-neurship programme, innovation andcreativity are being harnessed. However,we need to understand how to encouragethe entire system to follow the lead ofPaddington and other schools that areleading on this agenda.

If we are to break down the barriers thatstop some bright young people succeed-ing, then being articulate and confident iscritical. Employers’ organisations such asthe CBI have long argued for speaking,communication and presentation skills tobe given a higher priority. Labour is look-ing at how we could do things differentlyif we were in government.

As part of our policy review, we arelooking at how we can promote a strongerfocus on spoken skills and creativity in arevised national curriculum, as well astrying to ensure that we increasinglybuild the link between skills and

industry so that our education systemmatches demand.

As any business leader will tell you,most great learning and most great ideashappen in groups. Collaboration is criticalto a successful and confident educationsystem. This involves the collaboration ofpupils – and yet our assessment system isalmost entirely predicated on testing in-dividuals; it involves the collaboration ofschools and teachers – and yet the Gov-ernment is encouraging a greater frag-mentation and atomisation of our schoolsystem; and it involves the collaborationof ideas – and yet our curriculum and ped-agogy is too often based on a strict delin-eation of subjects and lessons.

Let’s take just one of these – the collabo-ration of ideas. Steve Jobs understood itsimportance and turned it into a multi-bil-lion dollar business model. Instead ofsimply hiring the best coders and pro-grammers for his IT business, he hiredartists and designers to make his productsappeal to the human instincts of con-sumers. His own background in calligra-phy gave him an unusual perspective,which helped transform the world of technology.

Creativity isn’t about a certain type ofsubject such as art or music or design, it’sabout a way of thinking. As Jobs put it,

“Creativity is just connecting things”. It’snot just about improving thinkingthough, creativity can help by chan-nelling energies into productive out-comes, improving attainment even in‘non-creative’ subjects.

An Ofsted report from 2006 foundthat creativity could help improve howpupils behaved. Pupils who had workedwith creative people, such as writers and fashion designers, were more punc-tual, better behaved and worked better. It said pupils developed skills such as improvisation, risk-taking, resilience andcollaboration.

Labour’s academies programme, whichprovided greater freedom for schools toinnovate, and develop partnerships withbusinesses, including creative businesses,helped to raise standards in some of thetoughest and disadvantaged neighbour-hoods across the country.

Most great learning and most great ideas

happen in groups

Two examples embodyLabour’s commitment to pro-moting creativity. In Har-mony is a music scheme fordisadvantaged youngsters, in-spired by ‘El Sistema’ from

Venezuela, and championed by the theneducation minister, Andrew Adonis.With projects in Liverpool, Lambeth andNorwich it provides a chance for childrento take part in symphony orchestras. The Henley Review of Music Educationreported last year that “there is no doubtthat they have delivered life-changing experiences”.

Creative Partnerships was a flagshipprogramme developed by the LabourGovernment to bring creative workerssuch as artists, architects and scientistsinto schools to work with teachers to in-spire young people and help them learn.The programme worked with over 1 mil-lion children and, apart from the culturaland creative benefits, it was expected togenerate nearly £4bn for the UK economy– the equivalent of £15.30 for every £1 ofinvestment. Bizarrely, funding for Cre-ative Partnerships has been massively cutby the current Government.

Sadly, the Government’s approach isstuck in the 1950s. The O-level and CSEsystem was designed over half a centuryago, when our economy needed far moreunskilled jobs and where people were ex-pected to “know their place” in a dividededucation system. We need to encourageentrepreneurship and creativity in ourschools, to keep up with rapid changes inthe labour market, not aspire to a rose-tinted view of history.

Celebrating and encouraging creativityis also a way to play to our strengths as a nation. In the last ten years, the cre-ative economy was the second fastest-growing economy in the UK behind thefinancial sector, generating significant numbers of jobs and providing hugeearnings to the economy through ex-ports and revenue.

Yes, employers and parents want youngpeople to have a firm grasp of the basics –this is crucial, but it’s not enough by itself.Young people also need to be encouragedto think critically, in a way that enablesthem to solve problems and develop re-warding lives and careers.

Collaboration is the key to creating theJobs of the future. lStephen Twigg MP is Labour’s ShadowEducation Secretary and Dan Jarvis MP isLabour’s Shadow Culture Minister

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Jonathan Derbyshire It is a propitious timefor a discussion on creativity andeducation – last week, the Secretary ofState for Education Michael Govereiterated his commitment to traditionalmodels of pedagogy, to the “Three Rs”and to what the government calls“uniform learning”. It’s unclear whatroom, if any, Mr Gove’s model leaves forcreativity in the classroom. To open thediscussion, I’d like to invite StephenTwigg, Shadow Secretary of State forEducation, to address that issue.

Stephen Twigg In the light of the overhaulof the primary curriculum that wasannounced last week, I would like tostart by making five points briefly.

First, ten years ago, we published the

primary schools strategy Excellence andEnjoyment. The aim of this documentwas to reaffirm literacy and numeracybut also to celebrate the broadercurriculum; to ensure that children had arich and exciting experience at primaryschool, and that they learned a widerange of things in a variety of differentways. So I am deeply concerned thatwhat has been published in the last twoweeks is a retrograde step. We all learn indifferent ways and this must be reflectedin the curriculum. I see no reason whywe cannot have rigour and creativity; infact they should go hand in hand.

Second, while there is a lot ofgovernment rhetoric about reducing theamount of government interference inwhat goes on schools, the new document

seems to be pointing very much in theopposite direction of that.

Third, the curriculum needs to includepersonalised learning, where children’seducation is built around their interests,needs and attributes.

Fourth, our children’s education needsto contain a combination of building coreknowledge and building skills, and Ithink we need to find the correct mixbetween core knowledge and skills.There should be more focus on skills,resilience, communication and arts. I wasat the recent CBI event about its surveyon education and skills. The surveyshowed that employers require morepresentation skills and “soft skills”. This is what we need for our futureeconomy. There is no contradiction

ROUND TABLE

Building creativity into our future

Participants talk about the mixture of strategies, techniques and technologies that can help to prepare our

young people for the jobs of tomorrow

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between creativity and rigour.Finally, schools are increasingly treated

as islands but they shouldn’t be isolatedfrom their communities. Schools need tocollaborate both with each other and inother partnerships if they are to offertheir students the best start in life.

Dan Jarvis The timing of this round tableevent is immaculate. I am something of alatecomer to this particular party but, as aparent of primary school-aged children, Ihave become seized by the value thatyoung people get from creative andcultural experiences, both in and out ofschools, for several reasons. There is anintrinsic benefit in being involved increative opportunities because theyprovide you with transferabledisciplines. For example, even singing ina choir or playing a musical instrument ina group gives you team-work skills,confidence and character developmentthat you can take with you.

There is a statistic which I am veryfond of using, which is that, of mychildren’s contemporaries – who areaged between seven and nine – 60 percent of the jobs that they will go on to dohaven’t even been invented yet. Whatthese children need is access toopportunities that will prepare them for that.

Jonathan Derbyshire Thanks both of youfor starting the debate. Stephen Twiggexpressed worry about governmentpolicy and you have both argued todefend creativity in a number of waysbecause it has both an intrinsic value andan economic value. We’re preparingchildren for an uncertain future. Weneed to be wary about policy and a falsedichotomy between core knowledge andskills, and we cannot choose betweenrigour and creativity.

John Dunford There is a cultural aspect ofthe rigour versus creativity argument.Since 1988, there has been a top-downnational curriculum system. It hascreated a different culture and it is thissystem that is the one that all peopleunder the age of 45 have operated under.That includes the vast majority of theteaching staff in this country – anyoneunder the age of 45 has spent their wholecareer with a top-down curriculum – andthey are the decision-makers in thesystem now. Frankly, the biggest thingheadteachers need to do is to create a

culture change. People are locked intolooking up but they need to stop lookingup and start looking out.

Ian Fordham There is another importantgroup of decision-makers in this and thatis school governors. As a governor at myson’s special school, I think that they canbe key. Governors can bring in creativityand start to shift the balance of thedecision-makers. Creativity isn’tcommand and control.

Another point I’d like to make is about“best practice”. There is a tyranny of bestpractice and it tends to mean that, oncesomething has become regarded as “bestpractice”, it becomes constricting and isdifficult to break away from. We need toshare creative practices that work.

I agreed with what John [Dunford] saidabout culture change and I think thatschool governors are key to that change.

Stephen Crowne I think we need to take amore international view. The creativeagenda is a very strong movementworldwide and it’s about the wholeapproach to education. There is a hugeamount of ideas among curriculumpedagogy. We need a more confident,creative, innovative, expressive set ofyoung people in the interest of economicgrowth and development. They are the

drivers of future economies. We needmore professional sharing.

Simon Bartley We need a vision for theUK. Building on the internationalperspective, all countries around theworld have a different approach to howthey teach their teachers but manyteachers simply follow the path fromschool to sixth-form college, to highereducation and straight back into schoolagain to teach. Where is the creativitybeing inculcated into their lives? Weshould expect teachers to work inindustry, commerce or charity and gettheir hands dirty before they start toteach. We have to be able to change theattitude in schools.

The rest of the world has a widerunderstanding. Creativity is not just anarts subject; there is creativity all over theplace, in engineering for example. Don’tfall into the trap of thinking thateducation only happens in schools; it’s incolleges and workplaces too. Everythingin work, and in play, has a creativeelement to it.

Creativity in management is just asimportant as creativity in art. We need toget at it at all levels. We must think ofcreativity not as a subject but anentrepreneurship skill.

Jonathan Derbyshire We should try todefine creativity.

Gareth Mills Again on the internationaldimension, we need evidence to informpractice and we need to be careful aboutour evidence. There’s been a lot of talkabout the bypassing of evidence in thesenew primary curriculum reforms.Three-quarters of Gove’s panel on thereforms are worried about the way thatevidence has been used or misused. Acurriculum diet, if rich, includes the arts.They can have a positive impact.

It is important that children learn howto learn. Learning to learn is animportant part of the curriculum. Weneed to develop knowledge, skills and anattitude to learning.

The curriculum that was publishedlast week was more like pieces of apuzzle. What we need is a framework forlearning, not a prescription. Aims foreducation are lacking.

Jonathan Derbyshire So do we agree that aframework was missing from what waspublished last week?

ROUND TABLEt

“People are locked intolooking up but they need

to stop looking up andstart looking out.”

John Dunford

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Simon Bartley Doesn’t a framework haveto come from some sort of vision for theUK? We need a vision or it is extremelydifficult to put the right thing inperspective. If we were a business, as acountry, we would have a vision. Weneed to know were these aspects ofeducation should be taking us.

Gareth Mills I think there are three areaswhere we need to articulate aims: weneed to focus on aims for individuals,aims for society and aims for theeconomy.

Stephen Twigg Yes, Gareth is right. I feel I should put my hand up and

admit that we didn’t do enough to makethe curriculum less prescriptive in theLabour government. We definitely needa national curriculum but it does need tobe dramatically less prescriptive.

Paul Collard On the issue of definitions,we lack a language of creativity whichworks for schools, teachers and pupils.We can prove that bringing creativityinto lessons works by measuringbehaviour and attendance but we have to create a language in order it be able to describe its progress. The literature is staggeringly dense andincomprehensible. But, in an attempt tomake things clearer, five habits of goodlearners have been identified; pupilsshould be imaginative, disciplined,persistent or resilient, inquisitive andcollaborative. So we have been able togive the means by which they can assesschildren by saying, for example,“Observe how curious and inquisitiveyour kids are”.

However, once teachers have thatlanguage, it turns out they still cannotreally identify creativity because theydon’t have time. They always come backsaying the day is structured too rigidly toallow pupils the time to be curious.Consequently, by the time children are14 or 15, they have been taught not tobe curious.

So, we do have the language tomeasure how creative we are being butwe need to train teachers to help then useit. Teachers say “I don’t want anotherbook that I just don’t understand”. Sowhat we need to provide is help for themin the classroom – not just hand them adocument that they cannot put intopractice. And we need more time in thecurriculum for children to ask questions.

John D’Abbro I have been a practisingheadteacher and what I know is that, atthe core of learning, there is a “learningrelationship” and that relationship isabsolutely key.

In order to learn we have to be able totake risks. Teachers have to be able to takerisks because pupils learn to not becomecreative if they’re frightened of takingrisks. The lack of willingness to do thiscomes from league tables and Ofstedjudgements, which make schools shyaway from being creative or reaching outand collaborating.

The risk culture has been knocked outof the system because of the necessity forschools to get results.

We should let schools collaborate andthink about the quality of theirrelationships. We have got to start beinghonest and recognise that work life as wehave known it will not continue in thesame way in the future.

The people who are children today willhave more leisure time when they growup. They need to consider how they aregoing to structure their time. Otherwise,we are likely to see some more of thetypes of behaviour that were in evidenceduring the riots last summer. Pupils willneed to be “problem finders” not justproblem-solvers, and consider “howpeople are”.

Dan Jarvis In my constituency of Barnsleywe have had the Building Schools for theFuture programme, so some greatschools have been built – but they’re justa shell, just a building. Leadership is themost important thing.

Sometimes there is a “teach to the test” mentality, where it is just resultsthat matter.

I don’t often talk about my career in thearmy but, in my 15 years there, I did notexperience any evidence of “teaching tothe test”. If you are learning how to use amachine gun, you need to actually knowhow to use one and why. When teachingsomeone how to do that, you need toengender an understanding of why theyneed to learn to use it. It is more aboutthe importance of results without a focus on tests.

We need to teach teachers how toassess and examine in this way.

Stephen Crowne Can we gain leverage oncreativity by changing assessment? Ihave been working on high-levelproblem-solving and how we could usethis approach to assess in the classroom.It is what we call formative assessmentthat we need more of, rather thansummative assessment, which is tests.

Jonathan Derbyshire There is a theme ofthe challenge of preparing students forthe future.

Noah Samuels I think that fundamentalaspects of the jobs of the future will bethe same but there will be technicalaspects that will be different. Skills areenduring: visual jobs and jobs thatinvolve engineering or coding persevere– the job is similar.

Companies are constantly trying tofind a balance between rigour andcreativity. Google balances hitting targetswith the need to be creative and developevolving products. People have to findtime to be creative and find whole newways to interact while still hittingtargets. It’s complicated but we have tofind the balance.

Stephen Twigg What do you think is thedifference between the English systemand systems in Germany or France. Howare we doing compared to the rest ofEurope?

Noah Samuels What we notice at Googleis the availability of talent when we are

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“By the time children are 14 or 15, they

have been taught not to be curious”Paul Collard



recruiting. Computer science graduatenumbers are down about 20 per cent.Business people are still good – there arelots of good Oxbridge graduates. Wedon’t struggle to fill the roles but therearen’t enough tech-savvy people withgood digital skills.

Stephen Crowne We need people withthe confidence to put up ideas when nineout of ten of the ideas they put up won’tgo anywhere. It’s less about content,more about attitude.

John Dunford It’s about both. We can’t becreative without technical knowledgeand creative skills. For cross-productsolutions we need what I call “warp andweft” in the curriculum. Children needto develop both core knowledge andskills, and they can develop them at thesame time. I’ve been saying toheadteachers that they need to look atthat warp and weft of developing skillsthrough content. Teachers can haveattention on knowledge and, at the sametime, develop those skills. We need to

develop a clear framework of what awell-educated 11 year old needs to be ableto do and then develop the warp andweft to do it.

Tom Kenyon We separate the arts and thesciences but the really interesting stuffhappens when disciplines collide.

Joe Hallgarten I’d like to come in and astrike a chord of disagreement – there’sbeen rather a lot of agreeing going on!

I think that the new framework thathas been produced is OK, so long as thereis space in it for schools to develop theirown curriculum. We’ve heard muchfrom government on the rhetoric of“freedom”. I actually think it is OK ifschools can inject other stuff, so thatabout half children’s time should bespent on things other than the nationalcurriculum; and there should beaccountability for individual skills.

On the statistic about 60 per cent ofthe jobs that current pupils will go on todo not having even been invented yet: I’dlike to point out that it’s not a statistic,

it’s a prediction with no empirical base.There has been “diversification” on

creativity; it’s not in decline but there issomething of a postcode lottery aroundyoung people’s attitude to creativity.Schools’ attitude is OK but the parentalengagement is not there. We need to get parents on board to increase demandfor creativity.

Stephen Twigg Yes it is fundamental forparents to be on board. The risk is thatusing creativity is seen as a softening ofapproach. But we do see primary schoolsin challenging neighbourhoods doingreally well by doing their own thing interms of phonics and “reading recovery”.

John Dunford The point about parents isimportant. What do parents want? If youask them, it isn’t just about exam results,they want something much broader.However, that’s not so much what youget when you ask parent governors.

Schools that are doing well are able tobe confident, whereas schools that arestruggling a bit tend to be more

ROUND TABLE

Dan Jarvis: “I don’t often talk about my career in the army but, in my 15 years there, I did not experience any evidence of ‘teaching to the test’.”

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constrained. Collaboration betweenconfident and constrained schools is theway forward.

Gareth Mills We need a paradigm shift tosee headteachers as the “architects” oflearning experiences. If the job wasviewed like this you might design abroader curriculum and look at bringingin people from industry. Children shouldhave an entitlement to experiences, suchas science experiments, not a list of stuffto check off.

On assessment, what we do is ratherlike the tail wagging the dog. We onlyhave one assessment tool – standardisedtests. And the answer won’t come from atop-down approach – teachers’engagement is key. The evidence saysthat children who are involved in theirassessment do better.

Paul Collard On the “jobs of the future”discussion, I have some data from astudy done by Levy and Murnane,looking at the percentage change of jobskills between 1960 and 2002. The skillshave been split into various types. Theskills that are all decreasing as aproportion of jobs are: manual skillswhether they are “routine” or “notroutine”; manufacturing skills androutine cognitive skills; whereas theskills that are increasing in proportion arenon-routine analytical skills and non-routine interactive skills.

The “Govian” reform is focused onroutine cognitive capacities, despite theirdeclining importance.

Simon Bartley We have to be carefulabout statistics. We have fewer peoplemending roads now because we don’tvalue the jobs, and now we have morepotholes. We mustn’t throw out thebaby with the bathwater.

We’ve got to be smarter at some of thethings that we do. School trips can becreative experiences but the way we do it“compartmentalises” the experiences.We need to talk in an engineering senseabout the whole day out. We should geton the coach and talk about how the roadthat we’re travelling on was made, whereit goes to, and use an experiential way oflearning things. Creativity is all around us.

Primarily, we need young people to gothrough this system to get a job.

Jonathan Derbyshire Do we need to goback to the definition of creativity?

Stephen Crowne What are thecomponents of creativity? What kind ofskills are we talking about?

What we need is collaborativeproblem-solving skills but where is therecognition in education to reward thoseskills. How do we incentivise that?

We also need to recognise how peoplework together, in science and traditionalindustries too.

Ian Fordham At the moment we have“planet business” and “planeteducation”. We have to try to move awayfrom that cycle and connect work withskills and further education.

We need to scale up policies and notjust make yet another bolt-on initiative.For example, I heard of a project intendedto help children read aloud by gettingthem to read to a dog – the dog is non-judgemental about their reading and it issupposed to give the childrenconfidence. We don’t need another bolt-on initiative.

Roger Walshe Education at the BritishLibrary focuses solely on skills: criticalthinking, literacy, progression andresearch-based learning. The aim of thisis happy, well-balanced, informedcitizens, who should be able to function,understand, problem-solve and have theflexibility required to be a lifelonglearner. We mustn’t forget that learningalso happens outside of school.

John D’Abbro We need to embracetechnology. We just don’t accept it inschool – we make kids hand in theirphones the moment they get in toschool, instead of getting them to makeuse of them in school.

Also, why do we have a three-termyear? It makes no sense to have a six-week break in the summer when kidsforget everything. Why not break it upinto four terms? Kids need to be able toaccess learning as and when it suits them,and we need to trust kids to do that. Whyare we still so constrained as adults?

Dan Jarvis Stephen Crowne makes a goodpoint about collaborative problem-solving. At the University of Sheffieldthey are giving cash prizes forcollaborative problem-solving work.

On school trips, I think they giveopportunities that can be life-changing;many of these children would not havebeen able to have such experienceswithout them. We shouldn’t becomplacent about these experiencesbeing life-changing.

Simon Bartley Visits to somewhere suchas the Olympic site can be creativelystimulating for all sorts of reasons.

John D’Abbro Taking kids on a school tripto Spain, for example, has benefitsculturally, benefits for their languagedevelopment and for their creativity.

We have to maximise theopportunities for creativity to get themost out of the whole trip We’re alwayslooking for a quick fix but there isn’t one.We need to take this out of the politicalarena and be able to play without the fearof getting it wrong.

Paul Collard Going back to the definitionsof creativity, when we try to getcreativity into schools it often goes intothe arts. However, the definition needsto be more diverse. Lots of activity in thearts isn’t creative, for example, much ofthe detail of learning a musicalinstrument is technical engineeringstuff, without much creativity involved.

Kids arrive at school with their headsbursting with knowledge, they need toknow what to do with it. What Gove’sreforms are doing is cramming in evenmore knowledge.

Why can’t school be a place where how to learn can be measured? Weshould get more accreditation for whatwe already know but, at the moment,there is no way to structure this.

Ian Fordham I worry about theknowledge gaps. Some things must beknown but we need value, not justknowledge. We need a framework ofaccountability that includes the richnessof the issues – progress, destination andthe way that we assess learning. Thatneeds to be part of individual andsummative analysis.

Stephen Twigg We need both. We have todevelop a way of assessing skills.

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“We need a paradigmshift to see headteachers

as the architects oflearning”

Gareth Mills



Stephen Crowne I think there is a riskof reduction. So much about behaviour,values and leadership is really theterritory of Ofsted and not the territoryof metrics. We need a clearer statementabout the attitudes and behaviours thatwe want to encourage. A governmentstatement of values might be the wayforward.

John D’Abbro We should ask kids whetherthey are happy. Their relationships withteachers are the core experience and, ifthe kids are unhappy, it needs to change.

Paul Collard There is an issue about theobjective assessment of vocationallearning, experiences and so on. Can we perhaps get technology to capturethis stuff?

Ian Fordham How do you capturelearning that happens outside of schoolhours? How do you capture that non-formal learning? The Mozilla OpenBadges project is looking at differentways of accrediting learning, using adifferent approach.

Joe Hallgarten We have been workingwith ASDAN on the RSA OpeningMinds Award, which presents a series ofchallenges around the five Open Mindscompetences.

Creativity is not just about the arts,although it can happen through the arts.Exploring problems is good preparationfor work.

Where is arts provision going –especially in Key Stage 4? If we’re notcareful we’ll be heading for a ten-yeardecline in arts provision. It’s partly to dowith the English baccalaureate and partlyto do with pressure from Russell Groupuniversities.

Roger Walshe On assessment, issues onhow to assess project work have beencompletely sidelined. And there has beena complete U-turn on project work in thenew curriculum.

John Dunford Accountability drivesbehaviour. Assessment by average pointscore is better than assessment relying onwhether or not you get five GCSEs atgrades A-C. Intelligent accountabilitycan help you deliver the educationsystem that you want.

At Whole Education, with theAssociation for School and College

Leaders, we have been developing theBetter Bac – an alternative to the Englishbaccalaureate. The Better Bac is aboutrecognising skills and not just aboutknowledge.

We need an Ofsted system that valuesa fully rounded education system.

And I should point out that schools dosurvey children about their happinessand they also survey parents.

Simon Bartley WorldSkills Europe islooking at ways of assessing or testing anelectrician, a plumber and a bricklayertogether, to see how they work togetherand interact in a team. In the army theycan work out how to do this; let’s look atthese models and see how we can usethis in schools.

Stephen Twigg I totally agree.

Tom Kenyon So do I. It happens all thetime in the world of work; there must bea way.

Stephen Crowne I’m more sceptical. Itthink it’s more about capturing behaviourwhen it occurs and rewarding it at thetime. Employers do use group workwhen they’re interviewing candidates, tosee how they work in a team.PC: Why don’t we make progress? Why

is it not progressing? The consumer – thechild – is not perceived as the client in theeducation system; the voter is.

Only 22 per cent of households havechildren but educational success is key to the electorate. We need to be abledemonstrate to the electorate thateducation is progressing.

Stephen Twigg It is interesting that, if youask people about how good they thinkschools are generally, then their responsetends to be somewhat mixed. But if youask people about their own particularschool, then their opinion is usually thatit is good.

Simon Bartley Employers are alsoconsumers of education.

Gareth Mills I think that, on accreditation,we need to look at a balanced scorecardapproach if we are going to shift people’senergies.

Jonathan Derbyshire It’s time to wrap upnow, so let’s go to Stephen Twigg andDan Jarvis for some closing comments.

Stephen Twigg I think the issues we havebeen discussing are long-standing issues rather than new ones. We need to accept that Labour didn’t solve them –I accept that criticism. We need to ensure that the argument for creativityhaving an intrinsic value doesn’t get lost. And we need to remember the social justice argument that educationhas the ability to lead us out of poverty.

The challenge for policy-makers is toaccept that we need a different sort ofbaccalaureate – the response to thebaccalaureate that we have now has beena big negative.

The silos that we see in education are not just in schools – they’re in the business world too. We need to bring more entrepreneurship into theeducation system – we’re not good atthat. Creativity is not just about the arts and design and technology and so on.

Dan Jarvis I’d just like to thank everyoneto coming and for making this such anintelligent, useful and constructivedebate.

Jonathan Derbyshire Yes, thank you all formaking the time to take part in what hasbeen a very stimulating discussion. l

ROUND TABLEt

“The challenge forpolicy-makers is to

accept that we need adifferent baccalaureate”

Stephen Twigg

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A good education is highly structured,delivers measurable improvements inpupil learning and behaviour, and helpspupils acquire skills and manage knowl-edge. A creative education, such as the ap-proach modelled by Creative Partner-ships, achieves all these and more, as iswell evidenced in the recent report, TheImpact of Creative Partnerships on theWell-Being of Children and Young Peopleby Ros McLellan, Maurice Galton, SusanSteward and Charlotte Page.

A creative education is designed to gen-erate curious, ambitious, reflective, au-tonomous adults, intrinsically moti-vated, self-managing and capable, notonly of imagining a better future, but ofdelivering it. In the world into whichyoung people today will emerge, this isvital. The world no longer awaits job seek-ers. It demands job creators, young peoplecapable of inventing their own futures,changing the nature of their employmentseveral times in their lives, and forever de-veloping new skills. Without this flexi-bility of mind, adaptability to new cir-cumstances and passion for continuing tolearn, their future is bleak.

A creative education ensures activitiesin school in which pupils are involved de-velop their competence (so they feel ef-fective) their autonomy (so they under-stand themselves to be the source of theirown behaviour) and their relatedness(through which they feel connected toother individuals and their community).

The dominant mode of teaching andlearning in English schools which the Sec-retary of State for Education Michael Goveis determined to reinforce, is mainly con-cerned with the transmission of knowl-edge and technical skills from adults, whopossess them, to children and young peo-ple, who don’t. When transmission is al-lowed to become the exclusive pedagogi-cal practice, you get a deficit model ofeducation, in which the pupil’s lack ofknowledge and skills is constantly rein-forced, which has been shown to erodeconfidence and self-belief. It also under-

mines pupils’ sense of autonomy becausethey come to experience their behaviouras being externally directed and notdriven by personal interest, curiosity orenjoyment. Curiosity, interest and enjoy-ment are suppressed until they becomeabsent. By the time they leave secondaryschool, they have not developed the self-regulation, intrinsic motivation, inde-pendence and confidence to succeed orbecome fulfilled. Many young people de-velop these attributes elsewhere in theirlives, and as they get older they bring themto bear increasingly on their learning butmany young people do not, particularly

those from more disadvantaged back-grounds. This is highly relevant to the cur-rent debate about university education.

Universities complain that they havedifficulty in attracting and retaining stu-dents from more disadvantaged back-grounds. This is because A-levels are apoor predictor of success at university.Gove responds by asking universities toredesign the A-level curriculum, but thefailure of young people to progress at uni-versity is because they failed to developattributes such as self-regulation, intrin-sic motivation, independence and confi-dence. We don’t need redesigned A-lev-els, we need redesigned education.

A creative education reduces the domi-nance of transmission in education sothat, while still achieving good academicresults, it produces resilient, disciplined,self-starting young people. This approachrequires teachers to become partners inyoung people’s creative journeys, to bethe co-creators of their learning. It also re-quires those working with young peopleto allow young people to make meaning-ful choices in determining the nature andshape of the projects they pursue. Itrecognises that success for young peoplewill come from the boldness of the activi-ties they undertake, combined with highexpectation, and through the experienceof success that builds their confidence andsense of agency.

However, the default pedagogy inmany schools is one of transmission.

CREATIVITY IN PRACTICE

Getting teachers out of their comfort zoneisn’t easy but it improves results

Take a riskPaul Collard

The world no longerawaits job seekers. Itdemands job creators

14_CCE article_15 CS:Statesman supplements 26/06/2012 12:34 Page 4


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Once this has become the dominant prac-tice in the classroom, teachers are quick todevise strategies which guide the pupilsto the correct answer. ‘Guided discus-sions’ impacts pupils negatively in twoways. Less able students become highlydependent on the teacher to provide theclues to the answers, and so are unable toreplicate the process without the struc-ture the teacher has created. More ablestudents are demotivated as there is littlesatisfaction in getting the right answer.

In interviews with pupils in The Impactof Creative Partnerships on the Well-Beingof Children and Young People, pupils areable to articulate their dislike of this styleof teaching clearly, as shown in this inter-view with top-set Year 8 pupils:

Pupil 1: I hate science.Interviewer: Why do you hate science?Pupil 2: …It’s cos we write a lot, like...Pupil 1: Yeah that’s all we do. Just copyoff the board and do worksheets.Pupil 2: Like six thousand slides that wejust copy.Pupil 1: And we haven’t done a practicalin a whole term.Pupil 2: And we have a test on it everyweek.Pupil 1: All we’re doing is copying everybook – I know for a fact that nobodywould go back into the book and read i t.

In other words the approach taken bythe teacher, while it might guide the pupilto the correct answer and some success inpassing tests, suppresses pupil interest,curiosity and autonomy. Children arevery aware of this:

Interviewer: What do you want teachersto do?Pupil 1: I just want to get on with mywork. I want to do it myself. If theteachers are always helping us it’s not ourwork. We need to learn.Interviewer: So you like doing it on yourown, even if you make mistakes. Is thatOK?Pupil 1: Yeah. Because why do we cometo school if teachers are going to help us?We’ve come to school to learn, not havepeople helping us learn.

The fact that the “guided” approachleads to decreased pupil motivation isnow widely accepted outside the ministe-rial team at the Department of Education.Recently, Sir Michael Barber, acknowl-edged that this problem was a key factor

in problems that arose in schools after ahighly transmissive approach to literacyand numeracy teaching was introducedby the British government between 2000and 2010. He admitted in an interview in2011, that this had led to reduced motiva-tion and increased behavioural problems.

A creative education takes a differentapproach. It provides an education which:“affords choice, provides opportunitiesfor self-direction, provides feedbackwhich is informing (helps pupils self-reg-ulate) rather than corrective (demon-strates the right answer), enhances intrin-sic motivation and promote feelings ofautonomy and self-efficacy.”

This approach is modelled by creativeprofessionals that Creative Partnershipsbring into the classroom:

Interviewer: Is [naming an artist] the sameas a teacher?Pupils: (in chorus) No.Interviewer: In what ways is she differ-ent?Pupil: She lets you take the big decisions.Interviewer: How do you feel about that?Pupil: It’s scary at first in case things gowrong (nods of agreement from otherpupils)Interviewer: But if it comes out right inthe end?Pupil: Then it’s magic. You feel proud andwarm inside (nods of agreement).

So, in a creative education, pupils areencouraged to become risk-taking, au-tonomous learners who exercise consid-erable choice, not only on the content, buton their working methods and the form oftheir final presentations. Motivation isthen largely intrinsic and the outcomes

have been largely as predicted by educa-tional theory. What McLellan et al foundwas: “Improved self-confidence, greatercapacity for self-regulation, a strong feel-ing of belonging to a community and in-creasing evidence of resilience (demon-strated by pupils’ ability to cope withsetbacks).”

But, for Creative Partnerships to have alasting impact on a school, the ways ofworking modelled by creative practition-ers need to be adopted by teachers. Ini-tially this requires teachers to focus moreon processes than on outcomes – on theways the school is organised and the waysthat teachers teach. Teachers in all Cre-ative Partnerships schools have reportedthat initially they find this change of focusextremely difficult. It also requires moretime to be devoted to planning and reflec-tion, often in circumstances where teach-ers feel that they are short of time. How-ever, the effort is worth it as the followingteacher attested.

“If you’d said to me two and a half yearsago that the staff at this school could take awhole week and devise a series of activi-ties and deliver them to students, I wouldhave thought you were absolutely mad.Even when we tried to do single days,everything was a big ask. It was the idea ofsomething different, something new,taking a risk, stepping out of your comfortzone, the workload involved, accordingto the different people, there was always astrand of people that relished anythingnew and different and exciting and chal-lenging and fun, but there weren’tenough of them. And what this has en-abled us to do is to draw everyone in.”

In its 2010 inspection of Creative Part-nerships, Ofsted pointed out: “...there isnot a conflict between the national cur-riculum, national standards in core sub-jects and creative approaches to learning.In the schools which were visited for thissurvey, careful planning had ensured thatthe prescribed curriculum content foreach subject was covered within a broadand flexible framework and key skills weredeveloped. These examples were accom-panied by better than average achievementand standards or a marked upward trend.”So, the creative approach to delivering thecore curriculum resulted in better than av-erage academic results. It also lays thefoundations for success beyond school.

So why is Michael Gove, trying to turnback the clock to reinforce teaching prac-tices which are far less successful? lPaul Collard is chief executive of CCE

14_CCE article_15 CS:Statesman supplements 26/06/2012 12:34 Page 5

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