David Price's Blog, page 4

Ten Years On : Remembering Jane Attenborough

Ten years ago today, December 26th 2004, I was guiding my two sons through the streets of Venice. Along with their grandparents, we’d decided to spend Christmas in that beautiful city. Our visit coincided with the ‘aqua alta’ – the…Read more ›

Do We Actually Know What Parents Want For Their Child’s Education?

Over the past 10 years, I’ve spent considerably more time with teachers and school leaders, understanding their needs, acknowledging their challenges, than I have with parents. That’s a proportion I want to reverse over the coming 12 months, because of…Read more ›

Meerkats, Ostriches & The New Learning Ecosystem

Today marked the last day of my trip to Australia. As ever, it’s been a great visit, full of learning opportunities. It’s varied from delivering project-based learning training in schools, to talking to parents about their kids’ work prospects, to…Read more ›

Parental Engagement: Help Wanted?

The Australian education system resembles the UK’s in many ways – recently, and depressingly, by adopting policies which have already been proven not to work in the UK – but in at least one important area, they are leading the…Read more ›

When Do We Get The Curriculum For The 21st Century?

I spoke last week at an education conference on enterprise education. As invariably happens at these kinds of events, talk soon turned to the skills young people going to college will need. Since, in my experience, there is always a…Read more ›

Engaged Learning Down Under October/November 2014

There are only a couple of days available if you’d like us to work with you on our next Australian tour. We’ll be working in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart during the period October 13th – November…Read more ›

Gove Gone….. 7 top tips for the new Secretary of State for Education

Last Friday saw another round of inflationary gifts to teachers in England. As The Independent reported ,Tiffany bracelets, opera tickets – even a brace of pheasants – were given to teachers as the academic year drew to a close. But there…Read more ›

Transforming From The Ground Up

A short while ago, I asked readers to send in examples of how their organisation had gone open. Of the many that came in, one stood out, and clearly warranted a post of its own. Helen Bevan is Chief of…Read more ›

How To Kill Off Vocational Learning

I had a depressing experience this week. I’ll not name the school or the representative of BTEC that I worked with because, such is the fear surrounding the current culture of compliance, they may well be in trouble if I…Read more ›

Do Schools Belong To Communities, Or To Governments?

Although I’ve spent the last 6 weeks working in Australia, I’ve been following the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ story back home in the UK. This is a deeply disturbing case of political interference, whatever the outcome of current machinations (more below).…Read more ›