From the FORUM Archive: The Person-Centred School

The fourth article we are highlighting from the extensive FORUM archive introduces Michael Fielding's critique of practice and policy for school effectiveness, first published in 2000. In it, Fielding describes the disillusionment with New Labour education policies before setting out a well-made argument for the person-centred school to promote human fulfilment.

John Dewey's imagination

In several of his writings, John Dewey returned to the importance of the imagination for thinking about experience and making sense of it. This article looks at some of what he says, especially in Democracy and Education, and considers the enduring importance of imagination for lesson-planning, teaching and assessment.

What the 'lost children' helped us find

The public emphasis on 'lost learning' and hapless child victims fails to acknowledge children's drive to learn and misconceives the role of the teacher. Through direct conversations and close observations Emily Rowe, class teacher, and Jeni Smith, school governor, worked together to learn from year 5 and 6 children about their experiences of learning during the pandemic and to reflect on what children learn at home with the adults there and alone, and on the role that teachers play in children's intellectual growth. They reflect on the centrality of listening and careful observation, on children's resilience, ambition and intellectual engagement, and the significance of a community of learners in a primary school. The paper ends with a compilation of all that the children listed they had learned at home, at school and on-line during the time of lockdown.

Year of struggle: Reflections on secondary education in Norfolk through the pandemic

This is a companion-piece to my account (published in FORUM 62/3) of how the Covid-19 pandemic affected teachers in Norfolk schools. I give a brief overview of the past academic year, then draw on interviews with 21 secondary teachers to highlight certain general themes, before considering particular characteristics of each of the past three terms. Finally, I present teachers' overall reflections. The experiences of staff I interviewed seem to exemplify certain general aspects of teaching through the pandemic: of intensified workload, pressures relating to caring for students, and recognition of the ways in which the pandemic exacerbated existing social and educational inequalities. Staff responses suggest that the discourse presented in parts of the media about a 'lost generation' of students is particularly misleading and unhelpful.

Whose schools are they, anyway? A review essay

This review essay brings together reflections on four recent books about the current state of England's school system, how this was brought about and what might be a road to recovery. The books have some overlapping themes such as the academy system, testing, accountability and central political control, but interesting differences of approach; however, all of them raise fundamental questions about system change and the quality of young people's education. The conclusion consolidates and extends the theories from the four books with the aim of enhancing a clear understanding for education campaigners and finding ways forward. Both authors have been actively involved in building Reclaiming Schools, a research network established to underpin the work of the NEU, parents and other activists through reliable knowledge (see reclaimingschools. org). The Reclaiming Schools website has regularly drawn on the work of several of these books' authors. Full publication details for each book addressed in the review essay can be found at the end.

Tornadoes, transformers and time to imagine: Increasing opportunities for creative thinking with a class of young children

This article looks at a specific intervention carried out with forty young children over the course of an academic year. The aim of the intervention was to give opportunities for creative thinking, with the ultimate goal of promoting learning free from preconceptions and judgements of ability. The intervention resulted in learning through co-agency, opportunities for the teacher to deepen their understanding of the pupils and their learning and, ultimately, it empowered pupils to become better learners.

Personal principles for a roadmap to educational recovery in the 'Covid decade'

The Government's roadmap to recovery from the educational deficit caused by Covid-19 appears to pivot, primarily, on 'catch-up' plans and 'discipline hubs'. Despite continuous teaching online and in Covid-restricted classroom formats, teachers have been urged to act like 'absolute heroes' and abide by their 'moral duty' to keep schools open. However, neither appeals to 'heroic' duty nor Nolan's Seven Principles of Public Life, are likely to provide the conceptual underpinning required of a roadmap to meet the complex challenges of children's new learning needs or enhance their wellbeing. This article offers an alternative approach to educational principles for navigating the unchartered territory of the 'Covid decade' now unfolding.

Re-imagining education

FORUM is part of the movement for instituting a system of comprehensive education. Such a system would, among other things, prevent selection of young people for different types of education in different types of schools. It would do so principally on the grounds that a selective system educationally damages all young people in it. Commitment to a system of comprehensive education entails a particular conception of human educability: that it is limitless. Such a view is radically at odds with the conception of human educability which informs arguments in support of educational selection between types of school and also within schools of any type. It poses a host of questions which adherents of comprehensive education must continue to address, related to all aspects of an education system: the nature of learning and teaching, how those who learn are to be regarded and how their learning might best be assessed, what is to be taught, how those who are taught may be grouped and organised in school, how education and democracy, school and community entwine, and more broadly, the social purposes of education. To envisage a comprehensive system is to re-imagine education thoroughly.