Personalised learning

October 2004
An interview with Professor David Hargreaves, Chair of Becta
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/web_articles/Web_Article553
Clare Richards
'A tailor-made education for your child' - this is not an extract from the prospectus of a well-endowed independent school, it is the government's most ambitious agenda yet for the UK's schools: it's called Personalised Learning. In the not so distant past when everyone got their gas from British Gas and their telephone lines from British Telecom, personalised number plates were one of the few ways to mark yourself out from the crowd. Now we are all individual consumers, empowered with the ability to choose in many areas of our lives from electricity providers to ring tones. The promise of personalised learning in schools is part of the government's agenda to bring public services in line with this societal change. The leap required is from an education system that delivers the best for some to the best for everybody - it would be the holy grail of a Labour third term.
Professor David Hargreaves is a passionate educationalist with a reputation for radical ideas. He is the Chair of Becta, an Associate Director of the Specialist Schools Trust, a senior Demos Associate and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He is also one of the key architects of the personalised learning agenda. So where does he think the idea originates? "Customisation in business is where goods or services are tailor-made, in contrast to the mass production of good or services. Mass customisation means providing goods or services at the prices of mass production. Personalised learning is an educational version of this, and means meeting the needs of every learner more fully than we have in the past," he explains. He believes that this means embarking upon a journey of radical innovation and taking a new perspective on learning. He also prefers the term 'personalising', which suggests "a complex and continuing professional process of education', rather than 'personalised", which implies a finished product.
So how do you provide a bespoke suit at the price of a high street version? Surely a massive increase in spending and bureaucracy is the only way to personalise education for every child? "The challenge is to personalise learning without creating a huge bureaucratic machine," he says. "That's why we need to be radical rather than just modify our current models of schooling in minor ways. It's all about doing things differently but better, not about doing a load of new things in addition to what we have done in the past," says Professor Hargreaves.
In his speech to the North of England Education Conference in January this year David Miliband, Minister for School Standards, defined personalised learning as follows: "High expectations of every child, given practical form by high-quality teaching based on a sound knowledge and understanding of each child's needs. It is not individualised learning where pupils sit alone at a computer. Nor is it pupils left to their own devices, which too often reinforces low aspirations. It can only be developed school by school. It cannot be imposed from above". In July at the OECD conference he elaborated further: "It means building the organisation of schooling around the needs, interests and aptitudes of individual pupils." So at this stage we know more about what personalised learning isn't - the next stage will be for teachers and school leaders to share and shape what it is.
Professor Hargreaves is currently leading a series of conferences, run by the Secondary Heads Association and the Specialist Schools Trust, designed to enable teachers and school leaders to do just this. The first conference this October is a sell-out - it is evidently an idea that school leaders are ready for. The conferences will explore nine 'gateways': Assessment for learning, New technologies, Curriculum, Workforce development, Student voice, Learning to learn, Advice and guidance, Mentoring, and School organisation and design. Professor Hargreaves sees all these areas as having huge radical potential for personalising learning. In particular, he sees a critical role forICT. "Learning anytime, anywhere is now potentially available through the new technologies. We are only at the very beginning of this transformation, which will not be simply aboutICT in classrooms, but about a new relationship between what happens in formal education and what happens in the home, the workplace and the community. Our vision forICT is still far too limited, parochial and school-centred," he says.
He also believes that this is a crucial time for the teaching profession. "Education is beginning to go through some of the crises experienced earlier by the world of business and it is painful because the rate of change is so high. Teachers have generally responded well to the pressures on them to improve, but unless they are willing to reconsider the structure of the profession in a more radical way, the transition will be far more painful that it need be," he says. He cites the medical profession as an example where doctors have gained social standing by upgrading their knowledge and skills and specialising, supported by a wide range of para-medical professions. "Together they provide sophisticated medical services that we rather take for granted but were unthinkable a generation ago. Teachers will have to follow a similar path," he says. Personalising learning will require pupils and parents to take greater responsibility for learning than ever before. Teachers may be engaging in the debate, but are the 'consumers' ready to play their part?
Links
www.specialistschoolstrust.org.uk
Details about the upcoming conferences on personalising learning
www.cybertext.net.au/inet/welcome.htm
International Networking for Educational Transformation - the international branch of the Specialist Schools Trust
www.sha.org.uk
The Secondary Heads Association
www.ncsl.org.uk/leadershipnetwork
National College of School Leadership
www.demos.co.uk/projects/currentprojects/personalisationintro
Read Professor David Hargreaves' recent papers for Demos on the subject of personalising learning
www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/personalisedlearning
Read David Miliband's speeches on personalised learning and contribute to the debate