How can education prepare children to lead a good life - ABC Magazine

I would guess that no one ever said on their deathbed: “I wish I had got better grades at GCSE”. In fact, research on deathbed regrets suggests that people in different parts of the world show similar responses. A top regret, for instance, is around relationships - and people feeling that they may have neglected friends and loved ones or may have allowed work to dominate their lives. Others regret the kind of career they have had and feel that they have not fulfilled themselves through their work life.

There is a link here to Freud’s comment that “love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness”. Note that he didn’t say that these are the only things that matter. But if we put his saying alongside the evidence of people’s regrets, it’s quite clear that love and work are crucial to a good life.

If we take work first, then research shows that many people feel unsatisfied with the work that they do. The research shows that they needed better advice when they were younger to make career choices. In mentioning at the start GCSEs, one of the things it’s apparent is that people often choose GCSEs based on such factors as liking the teacher or the views of others.

What is necessary is for the child to be helped to explore what a good life would mean for them and what that would mean therefore in terms of things that they need to learn to help them to get there. At Self Managed Learning (SML) College we start our time with children who join us by asking them about their lives and about things they like and don’t like and about what a good life might mean for them - and therefore what they need to do to prepare themselves for that future. Now we recognise that, especially for younger children, they may not have very clear ideas. That doesn’t matter. It’s more about providing a space so that there is continual exploration of what an individual wants for themselves and for their life in future. However, by the time students get to 13 or 14 clearly there are choices around what to do at GCSE. Those choices need to be made on the basis of how that helps the person to prepare for the future that they want.

The other side of Freud’s view is about importance of love. What he meant was not erotic love, but rather the ability to have loving relationships with those around us. It might be a more brotherly sisterly kind of love or it might be a generalised love for humanity. Whatever focus we put on it the link to deathbed regrets about relationships becomes relevant .

Schooling has become such an individualistic enterprise that, for instance, if you help a friend with a test, it’s called cheating and you get punished for it. In life cheating, is essential – that is helping people. It is the cornerstone of good relationships. In our College we don’t have such testing. It’s quite common for young people to help and support each other in their learning and to take this beyond when they leave us at 16. For instance, research on former students has shown that one of the key things they comment on learning at the College is what they often call their social skills. They see themselves as being able to relate to others effectively and it actually goes beyond just skills. It’s clear that they value having been in a community that is caring and supportive and that they have learned to engage with others in a truly human way. We know that this is one of the major criticisms of employers about people coming out of the education system - that they’re not good at working in teams and relating effectively to others within the workplace.

When I say that it’s more than skill it is because what young people learn in the community is about caring about others and demonstrating that care. By being in a small community that allows young people to really know those around them they can be highly supportive and caring to others.

In a court case about what constitutes suitable education, the judge defined it in the following terms: “To prepare children for life in a modern civilised society and to enable them to achieve their full potential”. I would go further than this. Although achieving full potential is clearly what we are aiming for, it has to be not just preparing people to fit in within society, but to be able to be themselves and to live a good life. One that is more than just fitting in. As each person is different, so they need to pursue the kind of learning that will give them a good life. This means not having a standardised curriculum and instead encouraging each young person to see who they can become and how they can achieve that.

Dr Ian Cunningham, Self Managed Learning College.

ian@smlcollege.org.uk

Aug 2022

This article will be published in ABC Sussex Magazine Winter 2022

The Future of Education & The Role of AI: The SML College President's Lecture by Rose Luckin

Watch this fascinating talk from Rose Luckin, a superstar in the AI world and SML College's President.

We're honoured to have Rose Luckin as our President. Every year she gives a lecture at the college and this year the focus was on AI in education. During the talk, she explored...

What can AI offer education? Is it really part of the future of education? What’s best done by human intelligence and what by artificial intelligence? Can we bring both these ‘intelligences’ together? What does the practical application of AI in education look like?

You can view a recording on the video below.

You can buy a copy of Rose's book 'AI for School Teachers' here.

This is the Best Thing in School - SML at Uckfield Community College

Written by Andrea Hazeldine, Deputy Principal and Head of College, Uckfield Community Technology College

Introduction

The title is taken from a comment made by a Year 8 student at the College. This article outlines the approach that prompted that comment – and others such as ‘I’ve learned more from these five sessions than in my whole school career’ from a Year 8 boy.

The approach is called Self Managed Learning and has been used for the last two and a half years at Uckfield Community Technology College to give selected students the chance to set their own learning goals and work towards them in their own ways.

The College

Uckfield is a small market town in rural Wealden, East Sussex and Uckfield Community Technology College is the only secondary school in the town. We are much larger than other comprehensive schools and have a large sixth form. The College intake comes from approximately 250 sq miles embracing small villages with equally small primary school: seven primaries with less than 100 students. Around 50% of our students travel to school on public transport, hired buses or by car. The number of students from minority ethnic backgrounds is about average for the LEA but significantly below the national average. The ability of students transferring to the College varies year on year however, an analysis shows they represent a broadly average national profile. Free School Meals have a low take up, approximately 5%. The take up of Educational Maintenance Awards is higher than might be expected at 15% of the Sixth Form. The level of special educational needs is above the county average, which is in turn above the national average. Inspectors at our recent OfSTED inspection agreed with the College’s own evaluation that ‘Uckfield is an outstanding school, strong in all areas with many exemplary features’.

The context

Given the College’s commitment to exploring and developing strategies to promote success and achievement, the student’s comments at the start of this article are not surprising. They reflect our commitment to developing a variety of approaches to learning and teaching in order to benefit all students. A number of Government initiatives point to the need for a new approach to the education of young people. ‘Every Child Matters’ indicates the need for a holistic approach that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The personalising agenda prompts the need to recognise that each young person is unique and worthy of a person-centred approach to his or her education.

Our approach

The Self Managed Learning approach is based on students working in learning groups of six with an adult as a learning group adviser. The students write a learning agreement specifying what they want to work on including goals and means to achieve these. Behind this approach is our intention that students see learning as a natural process that satisfies their curiosity and enables them to accomplish the things they want to do rather than it being an imposed and passive process. Each young person is different with differing learning needs and learning preferences. Educational provision has to respond to these differences and not assume a one-size-fits-all model.

Learning agreement

Each student has freedom to raise whatever they wish in the group and to create a learning agreement around their own specific needs. The structure of the learning agreement requires the student to answer five questions.

Where have I been? What have my past experiences been that make me as I am today? What are the important things that have happened in my life? What have I learned in the past?
Where am I now? What kind of person am I? What qualities do I possess? What do I like – and not like? What are my learning needs?
Where do I want to get to? What goals do I want to set for myself in terms of a) my future life b) my potential career/job c) my immediate goals to set me on the path to achieve what I want?
How will I get there? How will I achieve my goals? What learning methods will help me? How will I implement these?
How will I know if I have arrived? How will I measure my progress and achievements? What evidence will I be able to present to show my achievements?

These are not easy questions and they require the support of the group to do justice to each individual’s learning.

Learning group

The learning group is formed of six students and one or more adults as learning group advisers. The latter role is about assisting the group to work effectively and helping individuals to work on creating a learning agreement and then implementing it. We have had the support of a team from the University of Sussex and SMLC, led by Professor Ian Cunningham, to support us in creating and running the groups.

Ian Cunningham’s team worked with our Assistant Directors of Year (ADoYs). These fulltime non-teaching colleagues work alongside each of our Directors of Year using and developing strategies to manage behaviour for learning; promoting positive approaches to relationships and resolving conflicts as well as pursuing attendance and other pastoral issues. This role enables our Directors of Year to focus on supporting learning and achievement across the year groups. Ian Cunningham initially ran a workshop with our ADoYs introducing them to the approach. Each ADoY was then attached to one of Ian’s team in an apprentice role so that they could develop practical experience of running groups prior to leading groups independently.

Each learning group met for about two hours every three weeks during the spring and summer terms. We started with three groups of gifted and talented students in Year 10 (they are now Year 12) and followed the next year with groups from Years 8, 9 and 10. For these latter groups we identified students who would benefit from additional support. For instance, the Year 8 group was made up of boys who were in and out of short term exclusions and who were identified as having behavioural issues in class.

Currently we are running groups assisted by the external team for newly appointed colleagues as well as other groups lead by our ADoYs. And, we intend to both sustain and extend the use of such groups in future years.

Activities

Since the activities of each group are decided by the group they vary greatly. A Year 9 group last year for example had one student who wanted to be an author. The group invited in the children’s author, Jane Hissey, to question about how she became an author and what her work entailed. Although only one student was interested in a career in this area others in the group were able to support him by helping him come up with relevant questions.

As a result, others in the group learned from this experience about ways that they can explore options for themselves. For example one girl in the Year 9 group aspired to be a netball coach. She had the support of the group to devise questions to ask her netball coach about how she got into coaching and what she needed to study at university.

These are examples of the group balancing independent learning with interdependent learning. Personalising cannot mean purely individualising. People have to work in real organisations with other people. This responds to employers complaints that many students coming out of education are poor at team working, self discipline and self motivation. Leadbeater, 2005, comments: ‘The ability to fit into a timetable made sense for a world in which employers wanted workers to fit into a neat division of labour. In future, however, even work in large organisations will require skills of self-organisation and self-scheduling.’ The College is highly regarded for its exemplary Enterprise Education and the learning groups provide ideal environments for young people to learn these capabilities.

Hence as well as learning what they set out in their goals (content) they also learn from the process of learning even more important abilities. This is especially so when they are able to become more active learners through the process.

This was exemplified in the Year 8 group when, in an evaluation session with students and learning group advisers, senior colleagues in the College were intrigued as to why most of the Year 8 boys had markedly improved their behaviour. The learning group adviser commented that he had not asked them to change their behaviour. They set all their own goals and most of them had started to see a future for themselves that would require them to learn. For instance, a number were interested in becoming apprentices in motor vehicle maintenance, plumbing and electrical work. By visiting a further education college and a local garage they understood the need for NVQs and what this might demand of them in the short term. This meant that they decided for themselves to take relevant lessons more seriously.

The way the group worked also provided a forum for them to take collective responsibility for behavioural issues. For instance this group, like all others, set its own ground rules. At the same meeting they came up with a ‘three strikes and you are out’ rule. One boy did collect three strikes for breaking the agreed ground rules. His peers agreed that he left – and he did (for that meeting). Members of the group were all on the daily behaviour report the College uses at the College with identified students at the first meeting. They handed their report cards to the learning group advisers to mark. The learning group advisers insisted that they were not going to score them – this would be the collective decision of the group.

The examples of the student sent out and the report forms helped the group to see that they need to take collective responsibility and to learn teamwork and the ability to make judgements about each other. Initially this was a bit of a shock but they quickly learned to work in this way and the number of report forms reduced over time.

Given that the peer group is the biggest influence on teenagers what we see in learning groups is the chance to mobilise the peer group for good rather than ill. We know that teachers and parents can tell teenagers not to smoke or take drugs and yet many do – through peer group influence. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend this does not happen. But what we can do is create positive environments so that peer group pressure works in positive ways. The Year 8 student who was sent out of the group was shocked at getting this feedback from his peers – it’s something he had never had before as normally teachers were the ones who sent him out of the class. In subsequent group meetings he was the one who most diligently policed the ‘three strikes and you are out’ rule.

Evaluation

The follow-up to the Self Managed Learning programme has shown the value of it. For instance some of the students from the Year 10 groups produced a list highlighting the benefits of the use of the learning group as follows:

Thinking about our future;
Exploring further education;
Exploring career paths;
Learning from each other;
Developing our independence;
Taking more actions towards our future (not just thinking about it);
Having a regular meeting with students and the learning group advisers to get resources/contacts to help with present problems;
Thinking about our priorities/assets/strengths/weaknesses;

Teachers in Year 12 have commented that students from these learning groups have shown greater awareness of their future options and this had led to them being able to do their UCAS applications more effectively.

Working in this way forms a part of our on going debate about how the curriculum - its content and process - as well as the role of ‘teaching’ and ‘non teaching’ colleagues support and challenge students. Leadbeater, 2005 comments: ‘Children have a huge appetite and capacity to learn, yet all do not learn as enthusiastically or effectively at school.’ Our College logo, Realising Potential, reflects our fundamental focus of both recognising and liberating this potential and making real the aspirations, talents and skills of our students. Sustaining the Self Managed Learning Groups approach has implications for resources as well as basic practical considerations such as finding suitable rooms for groups to meet. Clearly however this approach benefits students hugely.

Andrea Hazeldine

Deputy Principal and Head of College, Uckfield Community Technology College

Reference

Leadbeater, C. (2005) The Shape of Things to Come, DfES Innovation Unit

A film about this work and work in another East Sussex School is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBybHthhwXE

The importance of well-being in education

Published in the May 2022 edition of ABC magazine.

It may surprise some parents that research on adults has shown that the best predictor of life satisfaction is wellbeing in childhood and not factors such as academic achievement and exam grades. In fact test results in general, and whether a person is successful in them or not, does not predict later life satisfaction. With this issue is the fact that fear of failure and anxiety around examinations and tests reduces wellbeing in children. Even if the child is successful in academic attainment in school, if that is coupled with stress and anxiety, that has a negative effect on individual wellbeing.

We know that mental health and other factors that affect wellbeing have become an increasing problem in the UK. The World Health Organisation describes mental health as “a state of wellbeing in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” Measures of wellbeing in children carried out internationally shows that the UK is doing worse than most other countries - and things are getting worse.

Other research has shown that the continuation of wellbeing from childhood through adulthood predicts how well people will do in old age, such as physical and cognitive ability, and also life expectancy. Loneliness is now well accepted as an important threat to physical and mental health and again in relation to life expectancy. Developing good relationships in childhood can be a major factor in inhibiting the onset of loneliness in middle and old age.

So what is the impact of schooling on all this? It has now been established that it’s not necessarily the frequency of testing that is a factor in schooling, but the perceived lack of teacher support. This is not an attack on individual teachers, but rather points to the reality that the structures of schools increasingly inhibits adult support for children. The average teacher in local secondary schools typically has to teach over 250 children per week. It is well-known that it is impossible to know well 250 individuals.

We also know that over the last 27 years the length of break times in schools has gone down by an average of 45 minutes per day. Studies of children show that they actually want more break time and more opportunities to develop their relationships with friends during informal breaks in the school day. They are right in wanting this.

The Government has been supporting the notion of possible longer school days and if this means more time in the classroom and less social time, then this is an unhealthy option. Indeed, despite the rhetoric in the media, there is no evidence that making children be in school for longer is necessarily a good thing. An example would be why do parents spend large sums of money on sending their children to independent schools that by and large have shorter terms than state schools?

Also our research has shown that travel is an extremely valuable opportunity for children to learn many important abilities - and the exposure to other cultures is hugely positive for wellbeing. Yet parents who have the good sense to want to travel during term time with their children are subject to significant fines. Schools with a rigid imposed curriculum find it difficult to deal with the necessary flexibility to cope with giving children the chance to travel.

At Self Managed Learning College, which is a learning community rather than school, we encourage parents to travel during term time to avoid the steep costs of travel during school holidays. We can do this because we don’t have a fixed curriculum, but rather each child is able to pursue their own learning in their own way and if they’re away for a week or two in term time, they merely pick up where they left off when they return. In the absence of classrooms and imposed testing we are not trapped in school structures.

Our focus on wellbeing above all else, means that we can take time to find out about every child, and to understand them, so that we can deal with whatever they need in support. With no more than 42 children in the building at any one time there is plenty of opportunity for staff to engage with each and every child -and get to know them and their needs really well.

Dr Ian Cunningham

Chair of Governors at Self Managed Learning College

Learn more about the Self Managed Learning College and our unique approach to education, providing a supportive environment for learning.

To arrange a visit, find out when our next Open Days are.

Reviews & Endorsements: Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm by Ian Cunningham

This is a book everyone involved in education should read whether they be in early years, secondary schooling or post-school education and particularly these days in university education. Too often education is not about learning but about instruction or even propaganda and not about empowering individuals to make their whole life a learning experience rich in its variety and usefulness. Too often learning is impeded because it is too controlling and conformist. And in some areas of life such as health education, it is little more than bad advertising. Learning should lead to internalisation - that is understanding and capability.

It is also a very personal book because it gives an autobiographical background to how the author himself has learned to learn. Learning is a consequence of experience which has been acknowledged and understood. Professional educators will benefit from reflecting on what Ian Cunningham experienced and comparing how their own learning has taken place and how it will continue.

Dr Harry Gray, President , WISDOM Academy

This book is a gift. The Self Managed Learning College is a beacon of hope.

I personally found this book illuminating and was struck by the boldness and bravery of some controversial and utterly convincing ideas.

Ian writes cogently and elegantly. Every term is carefully considered, placed within a rich historical context.

His ideas were - and continue to be - pioneering. I admire Dr Cunningham's wisdom and humility.

Many members of our network of pioneers around the country turn to Ian for guidance and support; this book is a beautiful way to collate and articulate many insightful perspectives into one document, for people to refer back to time and time again.

Self Managed Learning is a distinctive model, which I hope many will wish to emulate in years to come. If all schools were turned into Self Managed Learning Colleges, the world would be a brighter, happier and more enlightening place.

This book has humanity & humility, intellectual insight & academic rigour, reflection and practical guidance. If you're an educator interested in doing things differently, this book is for you!

Having visited the College, I can attest to the jovial, relaxed yet industrious atmosphere, where young people have retained their innate curiosity and follow their passions and interests. It's a very natural place. This is how education should feel.

Danny Whitehouse, Chief Executive, Charles Burrell Centre

Guardian Member and Company Secretary, Phoenix Education TrustFreelance education consultant and youth worker. Founder, Reimagining Education Norfolk

What a joy to read about Self Managed Learning.

This is the guide for authentic support for young people’s holistic learning about the world & themselves. It supports the natural curiosity of young people to find their own path with self confidence in choices they have made not ones imposed on them. Thank you, Ian for enlightening reading.

Christine Price, Treasurer & founding member of Australasian Democratic Education Community. Secretary of Children’s Learning & Children’s Rights, Australia

Ian Cunningham, who is the first, or one of the first, people to recognise self-development and work on how to enable it (self-development has presumably always gone on largely implicitly). It is interesting that such a long book is needed to deal with it. However the words are not wasted and contain much wisdom and practical advice. Well done Ian.

Dr John Burgoyne, Emeritus Professor at Lancaster University.

While compulsory schooling mainly serves human-centered capital reproduction and economic competitions, human beings is regarded as the major resource, a functional role of social building block, but the most needs of humanity is often being neglected in the settings of young people and their learning guiders. Dr. Ian Cunningham and his collaborators bravely founded the Self Managed Learning College and practice a new way to solve this world-wide problem. Their over decade long stories, experiences and on-the-ground researches must enlighten or inspire other pioneers in their approaches towards a new education or a learning exploration in forming healthy information societies.

Ann Qiu, Director, iSkool, Shanghai

The most valuable currency for any society are the open minded, creative human beings able to solve complex problems in cooperation with others in the continuously changing environment. Education systems from nurseries to PhD programs have to nurture development of these types of talents. Ian’s book on the New Educational Paradigm is an excellent, very timely and rightly justified resource based on experience and extensively researched theoretical findings for those who are responsible for shaping not only better economies, but also better societies.

Prof.Dr.Magdolna Csath, Emeritus Professor at the Saint Stephan’s University, Gödöllő, Hungary, research professor at the National University for Public Service, Budapest, Hungary, member of the National Competitiveness Council at the Finance Minister of Hungary.

Ian Cunningham has provided a deeply engaging analysis of his work with young people and SML (Self Managed Learning). His clear explanations of the theoretical bases for his work, his descriptions of SML in practice and the open hearted stories from the young people themselves are essential reading for anyone involved with learning.

Wendy Pettit, Currambena School, Sydney, Australia

A brave, life-enhancing book of immense contemporary importance. At once practical and profound, creative and deeply challenging of dominant models of education currently suffocating so many societies across the world, Ian Cunningham draws on a wide range of experience in industry and in education to explore and advocate the practicability and desirability of life-affirming alternatives that inspire hope and resolve in equal measure.

Michael Fielding, Emeritus Professor of Education, Institute of Education, University College London, UK

Ian Cunningham’s ground-breaking work to develop Self Managed Learning has given hope and a positive future to many young people over the years. This book is long overdue and is a valuable pointer to an approach which truly puts young people in control of their learning. Required reading for policy makers, school leaders and teachers alike if we are to develop an education system that meets the genuine needs of children and society going forward.

Fiona Carnie, author of Alternative Approaches to Education (2017) and Rebuilding our Schools from the Bottom Up (2018), published by Routledge

Having known Ian and his work with Self Managed Learning for many decades I am certain that his model is at the core of any new educational paradigm. Proof of concept and efficacy is long established and only desire to maintain control over the individual, custom and practice maintains the schooling paradigm. SML strips away the inefficiencies and distractions of age-stage proscribed curricular and assessment progressions, uniforms, bells, whistles and all the appendages of the industrial epoch and replaces them with an altogether mature, coherent democratic and sustainable educational approach befitting of the 21^st century.

SML works. I have seen it in action spoken with and heard from its students and learning advisers. I have seen young people destroyed by the inflexibility of the schooling paradigm rise phoenix-like to take control of their own lives and learning. However, this is not just something for those who can’t cope with the schooling model. All young people should have access to this model of learning, its logical, incredibly efficient and successful.

Substitute the extrinsic control and motivation, the redundancy of so much learning and sheer drudgery and inflexibility of schooling and replace it with the personalisation at the heart of SML. Here ownership, self-management and responsibility, replace coercion and compulsion. Learners are literally in the driving seat and the trusted community learning advisers and educators around them assist through dialogue, guidance, challenge.

The global schooling disease annually digs itself into further trouble and at great expense. The race to nowhere produces endless damaging, unintended consequences to the learners, the teachers and society at large. The schooling ‘own goals’ leave too many young people with unstable mental health, poor physical health, incoherent and unconnected learning and skills. If a fraction of the resource could be applied to SML society at large would reap the benefits of having educated, responsible, fulfilled and self-directed citizens.

SML leads to an education, self-management and deep learning. The learning journey is one that’s led and owned by the young person and co-created with learning advisers. It’s a far cry from the schooling illusion, the superficial, predominantly instructional ‘done to’ paradigm a product of a bygone age. Ian Cunningham’s argument is that SML is an insight into a new paradigm. I wholeheartedly concur, it can’t come quick enough.

Since 1979 Ian and his team have evidenced that SML works at any age from young people to blue chip company executives. Its clear, logical, essentially simple and like all the best ideas damn right efficient. SML is eminently scalable. A shift in this direction would be truly transformative on individual and societal levels and finally put to bed the redundant, pale, superficial factory schooling that has held sway for far too long.

Peter Humphreys. Former: Headteacher, educational adviser, consultant, researcher, Chair Centre for Personalised Education, Visiting Lecturer in Teacher Education.

You can purchase Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm on Amazon.

You can’t judge a book by its cover

In conversation with a father he used the old expression: ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover’. He was referring to his daughter, who is profoundly deaf. The daughter is now 40 and running a successful business. However, in her childhood, she was grossly underestimated, because she was defined by her deafness.

This made me think about many young people that I’ve worked with, where immediate impressions or labels have been unhelpful. Naïve judgements are often made about a young person from the label given to them. For instance, in working with a secondary school running a Self Managed Learning programme for those called ‘gifted and talented’, it was quite evidence that such a generic label was unhelpful in working with the six individuals in the group. One girl, who was in year 9, could learn any academic subject to a very high level. She was subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, encouraged by teachers to pick their subject as an option for her GCSE. The problem was that she had no idea about a career such that she could choose options. She quite reasonably complained that the school gave her no help in thinking about career options. Because she could learn any academic subject and was bound to get an A* at GCSE in it, she was highly stressed meeting the expectations of teachers and of living up to her gifted and talented label. All of this was not helpful for her thinking about a more rational basis for choosing options. In reality she was not very talented at making choices – an important ability.

Other labels come with initials these days, such as OCD, ADHD, and ASC. To take the latter example, of those on the autistic spectrum. The label autism for a child is just a generic label that does not define an individual. At our College, we’ve had a number of autistic students over the years who have been underestimated by their schools and yet gone on to successful careers. To take just one example. Charlie came to us from Year 10 having missed a large part of his secondary education due to bullying and the implications of his autism. With us he learned the social skills needed for him to go to further education college. His learning of subjects such as English was no problem but maths was a great struggle. Initially he failed maths at GCSE, but eventually passed while at further education college, and then went on to do a psychology degree, which he successfully completed. During his psychology degree he volunteered to work in our College with our students. He was very successful in getting on with young people and helping them in psychology, sociology and other areas. This blows away one myth with about autistic people, i.e. that they are not good socially - and that this can’t be changed as autism is a lifelong condition.

After he graduated, and because he’d been popular with the students, we arranged for him to continue part-time with us. We found that he was also picking up support for students with maths. Remember that this was his worst GCSE subject and the assumption is that you need to be good at your subject to help others to learn it. What Charlie offers to students, who struggle like him, is an empathy with their struggles and a caring and patient way of working. Since our students have a totally free choice about which staff they use, his popularity is based on this free choice (we do have another member of staff who supports students with maths and who has an excellent academic track record, with a PhD, but he is also part-time, so the shared tutoring works really well.)

We have had a number of students with the label ADHD come to us. They come as school has not worked for them, because they did not cope with sitting still in a classroom for many hours during the day. Some years ago a boy out of Year Seven in school came to us because it just wasn’t working and he was ending up as with another label, namely, school refuser. He talked with a member staff about learning maths. He said just give me a worksheet and then tell me after 10 minutes and I’ll take a break and then go back to the worksheet. He didn’t like working at a desk, so he used to lie on the floor to complete the worksheet. Eventually he had no problem with learning maths and, indeed, any other subjects where we could accommodate the fact that he learned in quite short bursts and needed to be able to move around between bouts of academic learning.

I could repeat the stories over dozens of young people who come to us with labels. By spending time with each individual to find out who they really are and how they could best use their time with us, it becomes much easier to be helpful with their learning.

One example we had in our College was a boy who a school sent to us because he was a ‘selective mute’ (their label). He never spoke to anybody in the four years that he had been in secondary school nor had he ever done any school work at all. The school tried sending round tutors to his house, but he never ever responded to these lessons

We met with his mother and discovered that at his primary school the teacher had said to him, ‘you are stupid, Darren’. Darren decided, therefore, that it wasn’t much point in talking to these adults and became a selective mute. Darren was happy to speak to us as we didn’t start with trying to teach him anything but rather asked him about his life and what interested him. We discovered that he was quite a practical boy, making things with his elder brother, for instance. He was naturally quite introverted but he was able to make a great deal of progress, just by us giving him the chance to be himself.

As was the school arrangement at the time, he had a statement of special educational needs so was required to attend a meeting at school after spending some months with us. The school staff were shocked when he spoke confidently to them about what he had been learning with us.

Labels might get extra resources for a child - but this happens less often these days. So the disadvantage of labels does tend to outweigh their advantages. Whilst we have to acknowledge the label that a student comes with, the key for us is spending time to find out who this person really is so that we can respond to that reality and not to some crass generalisation.

Dr Ian Cunningham, SML College

Quantum Theory and Self Managed Learning - and the relevance of this to education

I once heard a distinguished physicist describe Quantum Theory as a major problem because:

It accounts for all the known facts.
It makes no sense.

His error was to attempt to live in a Newtonian world and not recognise the paradigm shift necessary to appreciate Quantum Theory. I experience the same issue when we talk to traditionalist teachers and educators about the idea of using a Self Managed Learning approach for learning purposes. It is a problem to them because:

The approach responds fully to all the existing knowledge about learning.
It makes no sense – to them.

Knowledge about learning

Here are just a few things we know about learning.

What is taught does not equal what is learned. People choose what to learn and teachers cannot control their brains – much as some might wish to. The notion of ‘covering a subject’ has no necessary relationship to learning.
People learn a great deal through relationships with others – and often the most powerful influence is the peer group. Research has shown that especially for teenagers the peer group is the most important source of influence (and therefore learning). For instance verbal bullying from peers can cause such distress to a young person that they make take their own life – and this is despite having a loving family and support from other adults.
People learn most about how to be effective outside the classroom. (The research suggests that the classroom may contribute a maximum of 10-20% to the effectiveness of an adult in any role – at work, in hobbies, in parenting, etc.).
People learn in different ways – often referred to as learning styles. The classroom is a poor learning environment for most people as it does not accommodate such variations in learning styles. One thing that staggers me is when teachers run an exercise using one of the learning styles instruments showing how people learn in different ways – and then they proceed to ignore this evidence in the rest of the class.
People are most motivated to learn when such learning makes sense to them and has a recognisable value to them. Personal ownership of learning is necessary.
Excessive course-based learning can encourage some people to believe that learning has to be something that is done to them as opposed to the situation where they take charge of their own learning. The evidence is that effective leaders and professionals manage their own learning and those that take a passive approach are less likely to be successful in their careers.
Evidence of passing examinations and gaining qualifications may bear no relationship to the ability to be successful. Indeed the Bill Gates’s and Richard Branson’s of this world could indicate the opposite – relying on formal education may indeed inhibit entrepreneurial success.
The Department for Education’s own research shows that at least 10,000 school children every year get worse results at GCSE - just because they are summer born. It also shows that both teachers and parents underestimate the ability of summer born children. And such children are less likely to go to university and more likely to have problems in school such as being bullied.

Responding to knowledge about learning

I could go on with this catalogue but I hope that the point is made. So when we talk to educators about young people taking charge of their own learning and deciding for themselves what they need to learn and how they should learn, we often get lots of defensive behaviour such as:

‘If we let people choose for themselves what and how to learn they will do all sorts of things that are unhelpful for them’.

The reality is that when we give young people freedom to set their own goals they do come up with sensible things to do. This evidence is based on evaluation studies on thousands of young people in a range of cultures. Self Managed Learning itself was given a Capability Award from the RSA over 30 years ago yet it is still assumed to be an unproven approach.

Sometimes young people need help in developing their learning goals, especially where they are not used to doing this – and the use of a peer group of other learners is important here. Other supportive structures can also be important – and we mention these in other publications such as our free ebooklet on Self Managed Learning. What is clear is that continued confusion about educational processes makes life difficult for parents. For them to decide to send a child to our College means going against the grain of the claims of traditional schooling.

Ian Cunningham

Let’s scrap the myth of progress in learning

I meet many parents of school-age children. Most seem to worry about the progress of their child. The pressure from Government and from schools tends to be to expect neat linear progression. The requirement seems to be for a steady upwards curve of learning. But experience (and research) shows that this can be unrealistic. Here are some examples of different trajectories.

Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society Sir Venki Ramakrishnan was being interviewed on Desert Island Discs. Here is someone who is about as respectable as you can get. Yet being questioned about his education he was happy to say that he was a poor attender at school and at university. One trick he explained at university was to sit in lectures by the window so that after the register had been called, and the lecturer had turned his back to write on the board, he could climb out of the window and go off for a coffee.

It reminded me of Bill Bryson’s tales of school and that he was the worst attender in his high school. He was regularly hauled up for his poor attendance. At one meeting with the careers counsellor she had trawled through career options, given his poor school records, and in the end said; “It doesn’t appear that you are qualified to do much of anything.” He replied; “I guess I’ll have to be a high school careers counsellor then!”. For this response he was marched to the principal’s office (and not for the first time). It’s a shame that the school did not recognise his obvious comedic talents instead of punishing him.

He developed his writing talents by spending time on things that interested him and also learning a great deal from the world around him. He became an excellent self managing learner.

Another example is of a boy in Bolton, Lancashire with no apparent interest in his schoolwork. He tended to spend time with his mates or watched comedy VHS tapes that he had recorded. He gained one GCSE then after school did a series of seemingly dead-end jobs such as in the bingo hall and at the local cinema.

Because he enjoyed cracking jokes and fooling around, he started to do some stand-up comedy gigs in local pubs. Eventually he developed a comedy stand-up act. He was officially entered in the Guinness World Records book for the planet's biggest-selling stand-up tour ever. His ‘Tour That Doesn't Tour Tour… Now on Tour’ show sold 1,140,798 tickets in 113 arena dates between February 2010 and November 2011, earning him a place in the 2013 edition of the book. His name is Peter Kay and he has also won awards for his comedy acting.

His time when he was seemingly loafing and doing nothing was actually a crucial time of learning for him. He learned from watching comedians the art and craft of doing stand-up. He also used his time in the bingo hall and at the cinema to listen to people so that he could learn the potentially funny things that went on in daily life.

Looked at from a short-term point of view he was a complete failure. Taking a longer view it’s the opposite. He was, and continues to be, a brilliant self managing learner.

This is also true of the scientist Sir Venki Ramakrishnan and the best-selling author Bill Bryson.

To bring in closer to home, Coco came to SML College aged 13 having had a poor record at school. She was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. She was criticised for doodling in class and apparently not making progress. When she joined us she initially spent most of her time doodling, drawing cartoons and chatting to other students.

Last year her first graphic novel was published to some acclaim. The publishers initially could not believe that a 15 year-old girl could create such a mature piece of work. She emphasises that she prefers to work visually. For instance, last year she chose to take law GCSE (which she passed). She found that she could remember things by doing drawings. In order to distinguish between solicitors and barristers she drew them with speech bubbles.

She is not alone in finding that, developing her talents at a pace that suits her, she can make great progress. Patience is key to helping children develop. Also trust that with the right support children can surprise their parents with their achievements.

Ian Cunningham, SML College

Marcus Rashford as a model for learning

Published in RSA COMMENT May 2021.

Marcus Rashford has made an enormous impact for a young footballer. Ian Cunningham FRSA argues that Rashford is an exemplar of an effective learner and that there are lessons for the educational world from this.

In a tweet posted on 12 May 2021, by Marcus Rashford MBE, he wrote: “I stood on the seat in the Stretford End as a kid and watched that bicycle kick happen in real time. As soon as the game was over, I ran to the park and tried to recreate it. Luckily I’m still here because I landed on my neck a few times… but I just wanted to be like my idol.” For those who are not football fans, the Stretford End is a particular part of Manchester United’s ground at Old Trafford.

This little vignette shows some of the ways in which people actually learn to be brilliant at something.

First, what Rashford did was to actively look at what happened and how that particular technique of the bicycle kick had been used. It is not that he was just generally watching the game, but rather he looked in a particular way so that he could recreate the technique when he went to the park. ‘Looking for learning’ is different from just ‘generally looking’. It requires precision and specificity, is about looking to understand not just to observe and requires an act of involvement and inquiry.

Second, Rashford was not told to go and learn a bicycle kick; he has an internal motivation to learn and made the decision for himself. Schooling tends to assume motivation is an external process. Children have to be told to do things and taught in a formal way if they are to learn anything. Rashford’s statement could be repeated a thousand times by young people who choose to learn something as a result of an internal motivation. He decided for himself both what he wanted to learn (the technique of performing a bicycle kick) and also how to learn it (practicing by himself).

Third, another way of looking at the basis of Rashford’s motivation is to use the idea of locus of control. This idea is that if you have an internal locus of control, you believe that you can do things for yourself; that you are in charge of your own life. External locus of control tends to orient one to getting other people to do things for you or to teach you things. School tends to encourage an external locus of control, whereby it can be assumed that the only real learning occurs under teacher control in a classroom. Note that Rashford did not go looking for someone to teach him but assumed that learning was under his control.

Fourth, Rashford had the freedom to fail. Many sports stars talk about the fact that they failed a lot and that that was a basis to their learning. They would try and try to learn something new, while accepting that much of the time they would fail. In Rashford’s case he was free to go to the park and fail and would have failed many times before he was able to do a bicycle kick. I have observed coaches in professional football clubs with young stars criticising them if they try to do something and it doesn’t work. This is a good way to stop someone learning.

Finally, Rashford’s comment that he had seen somebody do something and decided that if they could do it, maybe he could speaks to both learning from others and the fact that the kinds of skills involved are not instinctive. People who are poor learners often look at someone doing something and tell themselves ‘that’s amazing, I couldn’t possibly do it’. But Rashford had the internal motivation and demonstrates elements of modelling where, as he said, he had seen someone who he idolised do something and wanted to be able to learn to do it himself. This is not instinct, it is learned. I find it very annoying, when football commentators talk of a player being an ‘instinctive goalscorer’. It is nonsense to suggest that people are born with abilities to play football or any other sport. These abilities are learned through many, many hours of practice, often failing before they get it right.

Looking at great sports people can really open up ideas on more effective ways of learning. They are prepared to take on the hard work and personal commitment needed to become great. This is not about luck or instinct but about a bone-deep desire to be the best they can be through self managed learning.

Dr Ian Cunningham founded Self Managed Learning (SML) College, Brighton, 20 years ago after a long career in the business world. SML College is a small learning community working with young people (aged 9-17) who can learn whatever they want in any way that they want. Ian’s latest book Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm is published this year by Routledge.

How do children best learn – a message to parents

Parents can support children in their learning – and this may be in addition to what school provides - or instead of school.

We did research on adults to find out how they learned when they were younger. We studied senior leaders in organisations as well as experienced professionals. We asked them initially to identify what made them effective. There were a multitude of different qualities and capabilities that people valued. We then asked them how they had learned these when they were younger. We had examples of learning from reading, from travel, from parents and others in the family, from friends, and so on. We actually found more than 57 ways that young people can learn and that are valuable. What we found, through interviewing many hundreds of people, is that school, college, university and other formal education contributes at most 10 to 20% in making a person capable in what work they choose to do.

Too often there is an assumption that there is one best way to learn things. And yet we find that there is very little in common between people. For instance, there is an assumption in some quarters that young people these days would prefer to learn from a screen in a digital environment rather than from books and worksheets. In Self Managed Learning College we have 9 to 16-year-olds who can learn anything they want in any way they want. We find that generalisations about screen use are false. Often students will say they prefer to read a book than read something off a screen. Or they want to spend time chatting to an experienced adult.

What can happen if young people are exposed to only one main learning mode, such as the classroom, is that they might find it difficult and start to assume that they’re not good learners. An example in our College was a 12-year-old boy with ADHD. He would say to a staff member, please give me a worksheet on maths and tell me when 10 minutes is up so I can take a break. And then he would lie on the floor and work for 10 minutes and then be told his 10 minutes was up. He would have a run around then was able to come back and do another 10 minutes. ADHD does not necessarily mean you can’t learn. Similarly, children with autism can find classrooms very difficult to deal with so want a quieter environment where they can learn at their own pace.

A student, who had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, decided to learn law in order to be able to do a GCSE when she was 15. She was learning the law syllabus from a textbook. I asked if she would like to meet a lawyer to help understand how the law worked and she said yes. So we were able to bring in a lawyer to have a dialogue with the student. I also asked if she would like to see the law in action such as visiting the magistrates court and she jumped at the chance. So we organised a trip for her and a small group.

Often young people feel trapped in a narrow range of learning modes and it’s really helpful if they can be exposed to other options. For instance, here is a film about the work we did with the University of Sussex in schools -

If you watch that you will see that there was a girl who enjoyed netball and wondered about becoming a netball coach She was encouraged to talk to her coach, and that is shown on the film. Another boy was interested in becoming an author of children’s books so the group that he was in invited in a children’s author to quiz her about how she went about writing.

These examples show how important it is if someone is interested in a particular career to help them to learn about the reality of that, as opposed to just assuming that, if you are good at something, therefore you might want to do it as a career. In one of the programmes that features in the University of Sussex film, I worked with a girl who was brilliant musician. She thought she might like to be an orchestra musician as a career. She and I sat down at a computer and I searched information on job satisfaction. Orchestra musician comes out as equivalent to a prison officer in terms of job satisfaction. What was described was the life of an orchestra musician, which is often precarious, a need to live out of a suitcase and a requirement to do what you are told by the conductor. Some clearly might like that - others might not. It wasn’t my aim to tell her what to do to but to help her to have information so that she could make her own choices.

I hope that I have made the case that parents can be creative in supporting their children in what and how they want to learn.