How about in 10?20?
In 20 years time my youngest child will be 23 and presumably have flown the nest. My eldest will be 35 (eek!) and I guess we could well be grandparents.
It’s hard to look that far into the future and come up with plans, and that’s with the benefit of 40 years life experience.
If I turn around and look back 20 or 25 years, I couldn’t have planned being here. The work I’ve done most of my adult life didn’t exist when I was choosing options. So how is it we still have an education system that expects children will make choices at 13 that will serve them the rest of their life, and they get no do overs?
I don’t understand why we aren’t trying to work towards an education system accessible to anyone at any stage in life. When people are unemployed, why not offer them credits to build up education, alongside the basic income I think everyone should have, so that they could be developing new skills to make it easier for them to find work. Which would be rather better than workfare, or as I like to call it, work unfair.
So what do you reckon? Is it time our education system caught up with the speed of change of technology and society in general?
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8 responses to “Where do you think you'll be in 5 years time?”
Well, of course people do get do overs 🙂
I’ve seen you do at least two bits of learning/training, and you know I’m retraining now.
I’ve tutored adult students who needed that maths GCSE for another stage in their lives.
I’d completely agree it would be ideal if such paths were *cheaper*, but they do exist, and people take them. I don’t think that people our age (lol – aside to those who don’t know, Jax and I are exactly the same age 🙂 ) and younger expect to do one job their whole working lives. I hope my kids have the same urge for lifelong learning that they see in the adults around them.I think, from conversations I’ve had over the past week with a variety of people in and around education, those paths are closing down, when they should be getting cheaper and opening up. Which was my point.
I was just having a similar conversation with a friend, while I was discussing home education for mine at secondary level. It’s so hard to explain how school and “qualifications” aren’t necessarily the right things (Fortunately friend understands!) when other family members disagree with it. Learning how to approach solving something is going to get kids further than recalling lists of facts. Exploring interests deeply because you care is going to be remembered more than because you have to for a test. Sigh. Basically as ever I agree. Things do not (and cannot) be just because that’s what was done before, or we’d be living in caves.
Oh definitely, to everything.
Ten years ago I couldn’t have predicted being here, like this. I was at university living on a student grant and loan doing something that I thought was worthwhile for my future despite leaving me with huge debts; they’re nothing in comparison to what graduates today leave with. Education and welfare were both very different even just that short time ago. I shudder to think what will have happened by the time my children are that age. Will we even still have universities? I’m not so sure, perhaps we’ll just have one left, for the ultra-rich to train in how to get richer. In the future will we look after those who need help, or vilify and punish them?
My dad (then a single father with 2 teenage girls) went back to education when I was in my teens, starting with GCSEs and vocational A levels at the local college. He graduated from the OU a few months after I got my degree and went on to study at postgraduate level. It was about 15 years ago he started college and volunteering, which led to him getting a series of jobs in education (which thanks to funding cuts he’s now been made redundant from). In the same situation now he’d probably be sent to work in Poundland for his Jobseeker’s instead.
I feel that as long as the government meddle in and have final say over education policies and funding that they will continue to restrict access to those who cannot pay and that they will run our educational establishments into the ground. Schools, colleges, universities, they need to be in the hands of people who understand how to run them and who have the interests of the learners at heart. The government is so far removed from that, interested only in money and power and what things look like on paper. Wasn’t the government created so that the follies of one supreme ruler couldn’t wield total power over us and cause havoc? What’s going to happen once all the schools are academies owned by businessmen and playing by their own rules, when FE colleges don’t exist because you go to school and stay there until 18 and that’s your one chance, when universities have no students able to pay and no staff because what should have been spent on research and higher education was spent on ‘more important’ things like nuclear weapons and keeping tax loopholes for the super-rich open?
I always think of the OU when the future of education comes up, as most of my family have studied with them at some point. They used to be ultra-accessible to anyone with an interest in furthering their education but in recent years they’ve stopped their open-to-anyone broadcasts on BBC2, their fees have increased enormously, they’ve stopped offering many excellent courses and much of what they offer now is delivered online without books to hold, without many (if any) face to face tutorials and they’ve all but eradicated residential schools. Students are paying far more for far less. I’ve done several courses with them including a short course in astrophysics, a physics qualification (one academic year at 16 hours per week plus a residential school), my as-yet-unfinished Masters in maths and the online introductory science course I’m currently doing with my 7yo. I had a wishlist of other courses as long as my arm but they are out of reach because the new rules, and the government’s attitude to those who aren’t born with their place at Eton already arranged, have made studying to gain qualifications all but inaccessible to the average person. Now you get one shot if you’re both lucky and willing to fight through a lot of red tape. I probably won’t finish my Masters because it’s just impossible to do now, as a lone parent on a low income. I guess the JobCentre advisor seven years ago was right after all, when she told me I shouldn’t be studying because as a single mum it was a waste of time!
It’s not the OU’s fault, it’s the way education has gone in this country. They do a good job of fighting back against it; they offer a lot of free resources but what are the stats on free online courses? Without physical books and papers to hold, without a qualification to aim for, without a peer group to meet up with even if only occasionally, without a set start date or deadlines, without some kind of personal investment (even if only in the form of having filled in an application form consisting of more than ‘first name, email address’) in the course, how many will actually follow that through to the end and gain something worthwhile from it? I’m betting not many, and fewer still will bother to pay for a certificate that ‘proves engagement’ (i.e. shows that they clicked a button at the bottom of at least a certain percentage of the pages to say they’d read them).
I’m guilty myself of popping my email address into a form at 2am to sign up for a free online course that, despite my interest in the subject matter, I barely even get started on before it’s slid down my to-do list and ultimately been forgotten about. I’ve two going on right now, a writing course and a child psychology course, that I was excited about joining but that I’m not following properly because there are no parameters, no final aim, no engagement, no commitment required. It’s a bit like borrowing a library book that you may never get around to reading before it gets returned but it’s there and you really wish you had time to read so you borrow it anyway. These courses are great but they are what they are, they’re the modern-day library and they’re no substitute for the access to structured education that the government is taking away.
It’s terrifying what’s happening and it needs to change before it’s too late. I know a few people who work in education and research, they are just being strangled at every level from preschool up to postgraduate and soon there will be nothing worthwhile left.
The divide between rich and poor is getting wider and they’re making it so much harder to get out of poverty whilst punishing people for being there. It’s as good as a crime now to be poor or to ever be in a situation where you need help. And Workfare is nothing more than slavery, a way of making sure a person knows their place at the bottom and of making sure they stay there.Woah, how well did that just show that I’ve been in the system far longer than I’ve been out of it.
Short version: Access to structured education should be available when you want/need it. The system needing overhauling but not in the destructive way they’re doing it currently.Gosh, I think that comment is longer than my post! But yes, so much of what you say is relevant. Thank you for taking the time to add your story.
I graduated from journalism in 2007 – a relatively short period of time – but back then there was very little social media, no module on digital or online journalism, no website building etc. Etc. Nowadays journalists are expected to know how to do everything online, from building websites to editing photography. My degree on writing is essentially irrelevant and outdated. Not a problem if you have employers who invest in training but mine didn’t. And now, having taken two years out to have a baby I’m struggling to find any jobs that I have the skills or experience to do. I will have to retrain if I want to get back into it but I can’t afford to pay thousands or even hundreds for a short course so it’s all looking pretty bleak!
That sounds really difficult Emily. Are there any online courses that might start giving you the skills you need? I know they rarely give recognised qualifications but might be a start?
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