Basic Skills, General Knowledge and Pedagogy, 2017 and beyond.

Basic Skills, General Knowledge and Pedagogy, 2017 and beyond.

Introduction

As part of the Beyond Unemployment project at Impact Hub Birmingham I set myself the task of defining how individuals choose or acquire employment. What skills do they develop, What expectations do they have, what aspirations, and how do they acquire these ‘skills’?

I simplified this musing to three fundamental questions

1. What defines new/current ‘basic skills’, what skills and experiences are to be taught, what is underpinning knowledge for ‘everyday’ experience or employment needs?
2. In today’s ecosystem of accessible and available information, what constitutes general knowledge?
3. How are we going to modify the pedagogical approach to accommodate how people learn and what they do with that learning?

Taking the long view

Having arrived at these three questions I began to ask myself additional questions. What are basic skills? Is general knowledge a cultural construct? How do we teach learning? Is employment, and the expectation of individuals, always based on where they are educated?

I embarked on an exploration of the roots of learning, skills acquisition and developing expectation. I set parameters of the exploration to ‘state defined learning and provision’, where the learning provision influences or supports employment. I can only describe what follows as a brief romp through education legislation, followed by a personal, political perspective of the intent of the process. I would, however, argue that, if we are to consider how systems change in education impacts on employment, we must first identify the system and the principles of its foundation. This begins in the 19^th Century.

19^th Century Beginnings – Origin - Definitions

The majority of education-related legislation in the early part of the 19^th Century related to factory and employment legislation - children working in factories, children working outside school and the age at which education would be provided to all children.

 The 1870 Education Act created School Boards and set the school leaving age at 12 yrs, although that was not compulsory till 1880. The Act can be argued as being child-focused, and aimed to get children out of factories. While factory owners were initially against the Act, as it removed cheap labour from their employment, there was a change of mind as education began to produce more skilled individuals who could read and write. Increased basic skills had an impact on employment, ability and output.

Elementary education, created because of the 1870 Act, was not a universally equal provision. Chitty, 2007, outlines that some school boards “significantly altered the legislators' original concept of Elementary schooling in terms of buildings, equipment, curricula and age range” by establishing higher classes, or separate higher-grade schools for older pupils who showed ability and commitment. A few Boards went still further and created a new type of evening school for adults. Higher elementary schools often received a higher rate of grant than the ordinary public elementary schools, on condition that they provided a four-year course for promising children aged 10 to 15. The curriculum included drawing, theoretical and practical science, a foreign language and elementary mathematics.

Early 20^th Century – setting the scene over 100 years

The 1902 Education Act created the Local Education Authorities (LEA), local and accountable bodies to run education with the new local authority structure. The Act initiated and consolidated the number of schools for specific provision: State aid for endowed Grammar Schools, Municipal or County Schools built upon the tradition of the ‘higher Schools’ for those who were going to remain in education. Elementary education would remain for the rest. “From now on there was to be no confusion: two systems, each with a distinct educational and social function, were to run parallel to each other, and there was to be no place for the higher-grade schools and classes which were deemed to have strayed into the preserves of secondary and higher education. The vast majority of children were to be educated in elementary schools where they would remain until they reached the statutory school-leaving age”. Chitty C (2007) Eugenics, race and intelligence in education identified in Derek Gillard Education in England 2011

The Act can be seen as framework setting, developing an education structure and promoting national efficiency in the increasingly mechanised manufacturing industries. It was focused on developing skills for the world of work, defining curriculum content, especially at post 11 level, to meet employment need and the employment potential of children who would inevitably end up in manufacturing or industry. The higher-grade schools continued to offer a wider range of subjects for those not entering manufacturing but remaining in education, progressing into lower management roles or higher education.

The 1918 Education Act raised the school leaving age to 14 (not enforced till 1921), and continued defining the skillsets and employment potential/direction for school-aged children. This Act consolidated the developmental and social role of education. It reinforced the continued need for craft skills for boys and home craft skills for girls, based on their employment prospects, clarifying the role of ‘Elementary’ education - basic skills for those who would leave and go into service or industry.

Higher skilled individuals, more often from the middle/upper classes, would benefit from the now state funded grammar schools, and benefit from an education system beyond the official school leaving age.

Consolidation had the effect of creating two types of state-aided post 11 school: the endowed grammar schools, which now received grant-aid from LEAs, and the municipal or county ‘secondary’ schools, maintained by LEAs. Many of the latter were established in the years following the Act, and others evolved out of the higher skill schools.

Throughout the 1920s the Hadlow committee reports of 1926, ‘31 & ‘33 continued the refining of the education process, defining the 3-phase system in education: 5-7 infant, 7-11 junior, 11+ secondary.

So the system is set...

From 1918 the education system, and the curriculum offered, was focused on supporting economic activity. Children ‘destined’ for manual labour were provided with the ‘basic skills’ of English and maths but were also provided with an understanding of industrial or housekeeping skills, depending on gender. 

Children from the ‘administrative’ social classes were ‘stretched’, and experienced a wider range of skills suited to their post-education positions within the economy. Even in this system, education for girls still focused on housekeeping skills, in preparation for their position as wives in the male dominated society.

There were some exceptions to the principle of education being preparation for employment/role in society, Henry Morris being but one example. Despite the relative wealth of the University, Cambridgeshire was one of the poorest counties in England. Education provision was in a poor state outside of the City of Cambridge. There was a lack of funding and no separate secondary schools. Children of school age (3-14) were educated in their village school, in one room and by a single teacher. Henry Morris, Secretary of Education for Cambridgeshire in the 1920s and 30s, envisioned integration between secondary and community education, accessible by all those living in the villages and small towns around Cambridgeshire, coining the idea of 'village colleges'. He described this idea as "raising the school leaving age to ninety", and firmly believed that education, both formal and informal, should be a lifelong process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morris (education)

And so we arrive at the 1944 Education Act, finally distinguishing between primary and secondary schools, equalising funding issues and raising the school leaving age to 15 (with powers to raise it to 16, not implemented till 1973) - a new tripartite system, Grammar Schools, Secondary Modern Schools and Secondary Technical Schools, and introducing Comprehensive Schools, an amalgam of all three. Pupils were allocated to the most appropriate school via the 11 plus, having little impact on the numbers entering the grammar system and girls were allowed to continue in secondary education. The Act also developed an adult education provision, benefiting from the learning and development that had taken place in Cambridge and other authorities.

However, while there had been modifications and widening of access, initiated by the 1944 and subsequent Acts, I would argue that the social purpose of education, and therefore schools, had not changed. It was crucial to the perpetuation of the social and economic order, creating parameters of achievement and by consequence of family engagement, individual aspiration. In other words, a young person’s aspirations within education would be based on parental educational achievement and employment expectation within the family’s social setting. Specific curricula were developed for particular social groups, and, while a ‘general education’ was purportedly offered to all, some had a wider and more focused ‘general education’ than others.

All participants received Basic (fundamental) skills, English and maths, and General knowledge, through a variety of core subjects: history, geography, science, etc. The depth and level of such learning and skills acquisition was influenced by the post-educational expectation and aspiration of the system (institutions), accepted by families and the students. Educational institutions throughout the 3-phase system focused on a varied skill development, cognitive and manual, relevant to: 

• Manual workers: unskilled workforce. 
• Skilled workers: manual activity requiring accreditation, predominantly male dominated, remnants of the ‘guilds’, and qualified through an apprenticeship.
• Middle management: Administrative and management, at a variety of levels.
• Senior management: leaders within industrial, financial or political fields, who would progress to Higher Education

Education remained gender biased. The above categories were predominantly male focused and girls/women had restricted access to learning and opportunity, receiving basic skills, general knowledge, secretarial or office related skills, with supplementary learning related to home making, housekeeping and maintenance, of a variety of levels, based on class and expectation - work or housewife.

So where does this fit into my initial questions?

For over 100 years education has been influential in the employment opportunities available to people.

Over that period the nature of manufacturing, housekeeping, secretarial and administrative work changed little. Then came the 1980s: Wapping – the News Corporation taking on the Unions, protected practices and old skills, the deregulation of the finance industry, a reduction in manufacturing and the growing impact of computer technology. If we need to choose a time where significant technological change began to impact on employment and the role of education, the 1980s is a reasonable point to start.  

There were some computers in schools in the early 80s, and even more by the end of the decade - none of these were of the level that industry was beginning to use. The segmented curriculum that had been established in the early part of the 20^th century began to crumble.

The curriculum which is offered, and which remains as the core provision of schools, is resolutely entrenched in the ‘classical’ subjects developed over that 100 years: Maths, English, Science, foreign language, history, geography, arts activity, some Physical activity. Additional subjects, including computer science, may not be part of the traditional offer, but the pedagogical approach remains very traditional in planning and content (curriculum), if not in delivery.

Schools and learning structure are treated as a palimpsest. A blueprint of delivery, established in the 1870-1901 Education Acts has been built upon and modified, irrespective of exterior processes and influences. The technology personally available to and being used by students and school children at home is far superior to that which they are using at school.  The pedagogical approach has modified over the years, but still remains teacher/institution-lead, with the content and process dictated by external bodies, with some political influence. Access to IT and data means that people today learn in different ways to suit need and circumstance.

While we are aware of student-centric learning, a variety of learning issues and intelligences e.g. Howard Gardner, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences, the process remains focused on restricted research and regurgitation of data and information.

Finally, the nature of employment has changed, not just because of the onset of technology, but also because the nature of employment always changes, influenced by need, market forces, price and access to market. Governments don’t decide what employment is available, business does. The length of time an individual can expect to be in one form of employment has changed.

Education that prepared people for the employment appropriate to their class or status is no longer appropriate to a system that, while existing in elements of social order, does not have the same authority as it used to have. New opportunities and a new economy require new skills.

So back to my initial questions

We cannot define employment. In a society dominated by capitalist principles, employment is created by those that control the wealth and manufacture products and services to be sold. What we can do is provide individuals with skills to survive and live within the process.

Education does not need a system change - it has already done that over the years. It requires a complete redesign. We need to address the questions our ancestors pondered almost 150 years ago. We need to identify a skillset for individuals, acknowledge the social and economic circumstances, as they did then,  

identify solutions, and develop a system, a new system, as they did.

We need to acknowledge that the system they designed fulfilled the role they, and others, intended. But the nature of employment opportunities, and the role of education in furnishing a workforce with relevant skills, and the employment market with appropriately skilled individuals, has changed forever. We cannot legitimately use or internally change an education system that was designed to fulfil roles conceived 100+ years ago if we want to facilitate agency in an employment situation which has changed exponentially, and keeps on changing.

So, my questions aim to begin that process, addressing fundamental skills. Should they be wider than English and maths? What is general knowledge and do we understand how and what people learn? 

1. What defines new / current ‘basic skills’, what skills and experiences are to be taught, what is underpinning knowledge for ‘everyday’ experience or employment needs?
2. In today’s ecosystem of accessible and available information, what constitutes general knowledge?
3. How are we going to modify the pedagogical approach to accommodate how people learn and what they do with that learning?

Ted Ryan August 2017