What should parents want from their child’s schooling?
As a principal, I have conversations with parents all the time, and these conversations often reveal to me underlying desires - the things that as parents we really want for our kids at school. Have you ever stopped to think about it? What do you really want when it comes to what your child is learning at school?
Having seen many young learners from different contexts grow up through the grades and then hit the ‘real world’ after school, I’d like to suggest a few things that, as a parent, you could value in their schooling journey. These are not prescriptive - every family is unique - but they do seem to be just about as universal as it gets if you want to set your child up for success.
A focus on soft skills
Those of you who know me well probably saw this one coming from a long way off. Soft skills are key! We are talking about the ability to engage with our work and those around us meaningfully. Yes, having hard skills (think of classical content knowledge) is important. But a focus on soft skills such as creativity, critical thinking, empathy, problem solving and communication is what prepares our young people to engage successfully in just about any environment. LinkedIn says that more than 80% of the specialised jobs posted on their platform have soft skills as the top priority for candidates. It’s easier to teach someone a coding language on the job than to teach them how to analyse a complex situation. It’s easier to teach someone how to manage a fuel pump than to manage a difficult conversation.
Now that’s not to say that strong academics and specialised content knowledge are not essential in school. But it should not come at the expense of those transferable, relevant skills which we so often undervalue in high school education. These skills are not only essential for a strong academic education, but also for navigating a complex world, making wise personal decisions, building healthy friendships and much more!
A strong foundation
Following on from soft skills, when we learn content in school, the focus should not just be on cramming information to be repeated in tests. We should be interested in the underlying concepts of learning that cut across all content areas.
Essay writing in History is not just about being able to recall facts from a long time ago, it’s a fantastic tool for learning to think critically; being able to take a complex issue and break it down into smaller problems to be solved. Understanding how ratios work in Maths is key not only in being able to multiply fractions, but also in being able to evaluate and understand patterns in data, which comes in handy when drafting meaningful company policies.
Our schools should be teaching content with a keen eye on the underlying question of why is this important to learn.
A life of learning
Understanding why flows naturally into our next theme, which is developing young people who have a desire to be lifelong learners. Science Direct describes a lifelong learner as a person who looks for the opportunity to learn and grow anytime, anywhere. Our classrooms should be teaching our children to love learning - to see its value on a personal level.
Lifelong learning is really a blog on its own, but if you want to nurture a love for lifelong learning in your child, here are a few things to think about:
- Develop healthy habits and routines which make learning accessible.
- Pursue specific and personal interests which give a sense of reward.
- Set clear and realistic goals for the future, knowing what needs to be learnt in order to achieve them.
- Spend time with mentors and friends who have a growth mindset.
- Embrace failure as a learning tool, and don’t be afraid to talk about it.
- Read, read and read some more. Read anything, so long as you read!
A path to discovery, not just a career
Some of us know exactly what we want to be when we grow up. I did. If you had asked me in high school what I wanted to do with my life, I would have told you that I wanted to teach Chemistry and then go on to be a principal. But it’s far more common that we are either not quite sure of what we want to do, or worse - that we have an idea of what we want, only to get to university or to start the job and realise that it is not what we imagined it to be. Add to that the fact that the British Council estimates that 65% of our learners in school today will be in jobs that either don’t exist yet or are so radically different by the time they work in them.
Around this time of year, I speak a lot with parents about subject choices and what they want their child to be one day. When we want the best for our kids, we tend to become more prescriptive, rather than more curious. Many parents ‘select’ a career for their child and steer them towards it, whether they have an interest and aptitude in that field or not.
My advice to parents is to use your child’s schooling years to ‘discover’ opportunities and stay open minded. Help them to discover themselves, and teach them to get good at finding intersections between their interests and valid opportunities in a fast-changing job landscape.
A diverse experience
Forbes has pointed out that in order to minimise risk, we tend to spend time with people who are very similar to ourselves. And while there are certainly strengths to having like-minded people in our personal community, there is also a lot to be said for learning from people who think differently to us. Seeking out diverse experiences and perspectives busts blind-spots, builds trust and strengthens leadership.
An individualised approach
This last one is something that I am particularly passionate about. For years - no, for decades - mainstream education has favoured ‘teaching to the middle’. This is when we assume that most kids are the same, or at least very similar, in their needs. Then we design school programmes that suit the ‘average child’.
Let me give one quick example of where this seriously needs to change. ‘Teacher paced learning’ needs to be replaced by ‘mastery based learning’. Teacher paced learning is when the whole class moves at the same pace as the teacher. Everyone learns the same content at the same time, whether or not it suits them. This is so prevalent in mainstream education, that we assume it’s how schools have to work. But it’s not! With mastery based education, each learner can work through the subject content independently and out of sync with the other learners in the class. They move onto the next section as and when they master the previous section. The teacher then becomes a facilitator of individual learning journeys, rather than trying to dictate the learning pace. When a learner understands content, they are able to move through it more quickly. When they are stuck they can slow down a bit. It also means that there are far fewer learning gaps in the higher grades.
Know your values
I encourage all parents to think critically about what they really value when it comes to their child’s schooling. Try not to fall into assuming that we know what we want by default, or because of our experience of school, or especially because of what ‘the Joneses’ want. Find a school that aligns with your values, with a firm eye on what is really important when it comes to setting your child up for success in today’s world.
