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An interview with Peter Humphreys, Chair, Personalised Education Now

Kim Thomas

It was a brave decision, acknowledges Peter Humphreys, to give up a successful career in schools to focus instead on research, consultancy and campaigning. Nineteen of his 25 years as a teacher were spent in leadership roles, first as a deputy head and then as a headteacher.

Peter now wears several hats: as adviser to Birmingham LEA, as project consultant on Becta's Strategic Leadership of ICT (SLICT) programme, and as chair of Personalised Education Now (PEN). "I've always been passionate about the inadequacies of our schooling system and wanting to move into something more befitting of the 21st century," he says. Meeting PEN's founder, Roland Meighan, while studying for a Master's degree, gave him the chance to explore some very different ideas about how education and learning should be organised.

At the heart of PEN's agenda is the idea that education should be shaped by the learner, rather than imposed from the outside. The schooling system, says Peter, was devised in the 19th century "for the purpose of the industrialised world, childminding and basic social cohesion". The model we have inherited is one that's "coercive and effectively compulsory". Although the Government is talking about moving towards a personalised system of learning, says Peter, it's difficult to see how it can be achieved under the current system: "It's not invitational, it's not at the behest of the learner, it's not learner-managed and learner-led."

Our current methods of schooling, says Peter, are bound by very rigid and artificial distinctions. There is no good reason, he argues, why children of the same age should all be taught together and kept apart from other children or adults: "If your learning system is based on a set curriculum offer, a linear offer that's linked to an age-stage philosophy of progression and assessment, all sorts of things fall into place in a horrible, horrible way. You immediately create special needs. If you add up the money that special needs eats out of our education system, it's crazy. Most of those learners are only on a different timeline." Children are unique individuals and, Peter argues, it is foolish to make them "jump through the same curriculum-packaged hurdles". But we are so used to the existing linear model that it can be hard to imagine an alternative.

We can begin, says Peter, by looking at first principles - asking what outcomes we would like to see from an education system. The answer, he suggests, is "happy people, strong families, good communities, low crime, good health, good mental health, people doing worthwhile work and environmentally sustainable lives." Achieving this requires some radical changes.

Instead of a school-centred approach, Peter advocates a "landscape" approach to education that meets the needs of individuals, families and communities. He points to models that have been shown to be successful, such as home-based education, where children have much more control over their learning: "The evidence from those who choose non-schooled routes indicates how well they are adapted to making decisions about their own lives and learning, especially compared to their schooled counterparts."

He points to the success of the Notschool project, in which children who have had to leave the education system (whether through exclusion, sickness or other reasons) are educated in a virtual, online community. Children often labelled 'failures' in the current system have thrived at Notschool. Other attractive models are the public library and the Open University - places where people are actively engaged in learning because it's something they've chosen to do.

The new learning environment, he suggests, would not have schools, but "invitational all-age community learning centres with world-class resources. They most certainly would have, or be linked to, libraries, theatres and areas where digital developments could take place. They would need the social and cultural and recreational facilities to match community size." Community groups could gather and learn independently, co-operatively or in traditional classes. As well as teachers, there would be guides and facilitators who could steer learners through different options.

Technology can play a useful role in this landscape. Peter argues that, in a learner-led environment, technology can help learners progress through learning using different routes, and at different times. Its greatest potential, however, is as a communication tool. "One of the key things that comes out of non-school approaches is the prevalence of conversation and dialogue," he says. In the home, he says, children often use technology such as e-mail, instant messaging and mobile phones to talk to each other and to collaborate - but they "power down at the school gate".

Critics of home education often emphasise the role of the school in socialising children. Isn't there a danger that, by taking children out of schools, we lose the valuable part that school has to play in helping children mix with their peers? Peter is sceptical: "At school, you stay with your own age group, you're not allowed to talk in class, you have minimal time to communicate and work together collaboratively, you're prevented from meeting the rest of the age groups and the generations. You get less socialisation at school."

Sceptics will find some of these ideas challenging, to say the least. The initial reaction of many of us will be that, if you allow children too much choice over what they learn, they will either choose not to learn at all, or to learn things that are inappropriate or not useful. Yet Peter argues that children are naturally curious and that between the ages of 0 and 4, before they go to school, they learn a huge amount, with the guidance of parents and pre-school educators. At school, that natural motivation and desire to learn is hampered by a forced dependency - particularly inappropriate, he argues, with teenagers "whose bodies are screaming for responsibility and independence". He points out that when learners go through non-school courses, they still often choose to go on to university: "There's no evidence that people bunk out and become total failures socially and academically."

This vision of a wholly personalised approach to learning is so out-of-step with our current curriculum-led, assessment-led educational system that it seems doubtful that Government would adopt it. Yet Peter believes that PEN's views, which would have been dismissed 10 or 15 years ago, are now more in tune with the times. "With senior decision makers there is a willingness to think outside of the box a little bit more," he says. "We're beginning to be heretical and look beyond the current systems."