Living on the Edge
December 2008
Kim Thomas
Simon Binns and Huda Al Bander are used to dealing with influential people. Being a member of the Edge Learner Forum entails putting forward the message about vocational education where it needs to be heard – and that has meant talking to Ed Balls (the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families), meeting the Head of Education at Channel 4, and working with Labour MP Barry Sheerman to discuss the possibility of creating a Youth Commission.
The Forum, which began life in 2004, isn’t about sitting around discussing ideas – it’s about getting things done. While its parent organisation, Edge, works with employers, educational providers and parents to promote vocational learning, the Forum works with young people themselves.
Originally London-based, the Forum is now a national organisation with 200 members, organised into eight regional forums, in places such as Newcastle, Birmingham and Sussex. Members, all learners, range in age from 12 to 25, and represent every aspect of the learner experience, says Simon Binns – from school “dropouts” like himself to Cambridge University graduates.
Simon now works for Edge, and helps to run the Forum. Huda is a university student and has been active in the Forum since she was 15. Both have been involved in a variety of projects, including creating a DVD to promote the newly-launched vocational Diplomas.
Perhaps the most exciting new initiative from the Forum is Edge Instead, in which school students assess their own school – an alternative to the traditional Ofsted inspection. The idea came from the London branch, and it requires the school students to review their school under four topic headings: respect, environment, aspirations and learning (REAL for short). “The whole idea was to work from within,” says Huda. “We were saying that you’re better-off with a student in a maths class reviewing the school with one of us, instead of a middle-aged man in a suit coming in, because it would keep the environment in the school the same as it would be normally. We didn’t want to change anything because obviously people would act differently if a different person came in through the door.”
The idea was piloted at South Camden Community School. The Forum members worked closely with 50 students at the school to show them how to carry out the assessment using research techniques such as interviews, classroom observation and questionnaires. They even introduced the innovative idea of a ‘diary room’, as pioneered in the TV show Big Brother, where students could share their views to camera.
Forum members were determined to canvass the views of the full range of students, says Simon: “A lot of the teachers were a bit reluctant to let us use young people who had been in internal exclusion a lot. They really wanted us to use the school council and kids they’d picked for us to use, and we decided we weren’t going to do that, we were going to go off and pick our own kids, and the kids that wanted to get involved.”
Some of the less well-behaved students became very interested in the project and keen to have their say. Their input helped teachers to realise that some of the more disaffected students did care about their education, even though their behaviour had suggested otherwise. Similarly, while some teachers had reservations about the project because they felt under attack, most were won around at the end of the four days.
Students were encouraged to provide constructive criticism, and to reflect on their education, rather than just to carp, says Huda: “We took the questionnaire out into the playground with clipboards, and we got them to talk about what year they’re in, what they liked the most and what they didn’t like. We said if you’re going to criticise something, you’ve got to back it up with why, and how it can change.”
A major achievement of the pilot, says Simon, was to create a better relationship between students and teachers in the school: “I think there was more of an understanding from the students that the teachers do have to stick to a curriculum, and that some teachers could make the learning more exciting, which is what a lot of the students wanted, but it is difficult to be as exciting as the students want them to be.” Huda agrees: “The students realised that teaching is a hard job, and they realised how much effort teachers have to put into a lesson.”
Many of the students, says Simon, realised they could play a more active role in their own education: “They realised that a lot of it is to do with taking their learning into their own hands instead of blaming it on teachers and blaming the school. They realised that it was down to them a lot of the time to get the most out of each lesson.”
The young people at the school now have the toolkit to conduct future reviews themselves, and the school, about to be refurbished as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, plans to incorporate the reviews into future practice.
Simon plans to take Edge Instead to other schools and believes the principle could be extended elsewhere – an FE college, for example, is adopting it to review one of its departments. He believes the principle of internal assessment is more constructi
ve and less intimidating than an external inspection.
The next big project for the Learner Forum in London is to launch a new free magazine. ‘The Nerve’, written and produced by Forum members, aims to provide information and inspiration about lots of different careers. Each edition will explore a different industry and the careers within it – the music industry forms the focus of the first, pilot edition. Currently the Forum is looking for sponsors, with the aim of launching the magazine in the new year. The magazine is designed to be attractive and ‘arty’ so that it doesn’t look like a typical educational publication, says Simon.
Simon and Huda are committed to the principle that learners should have a full say in their own education, and believe that strides are being made in that direction. “We’re at a point now where young people should really just be listened to,” says Simon, “but we need to get the right model so that it doesn’t feel it’s just being done to tick a few boxes and say that learners have been involved.”