In terms of accrediting out of school, informal and other sometimes formal learning / accreditation eg piano and dance lesson gradings, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or youth work, I am highly sceptical.
I used to manage youth work teams and there was a constant push to ‘take our education seriously’. I strived against this emotion, not because I didn’t think what we did was important or useful. It certainly was. But for the reason that children deserve a private life, where they can tell their teachers about their other achievements if they want to but also keep them to themselves if they want to.
Additionally, we were under constant pressure to prove our impact. To show how informal learning benefitted children. And to this end we were forced to seek accreditations for what we did. To ‘formalise’ our informal learning. Can anyone spot the problem here?
If, as I often said, youth work was the Heineken of education: we reached the parts that other educators couldn’t reach, then measuring it in the same way made no sense and in fact reduced or eliminated our impact.
In terms of accrediting out of school, informal and other sometimes formal learning / accreditation eg piano and dance lesson gradings, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or youth work, I am highly sceptical.
I used to manage youth work teams and there was a constant push to ‘take our education seriously’. I strived against this emotion, not because I didn’t think what we did was important or useful. It certainly was. But for the reason that children deserve a private life, where they can tell their teachers about their other achievements if they want to but also keep them to themselves if they want to.
Additionally, we were under constant pressure to prove our impact. To show how informal learning benefitted children. And to this end we were forced to seek accreditations for what we did. To ‘formalise’ our informal learning. Can anyone spot the problem here?
If, as I often said, youth work was the Heineken of education: we reached the parts that other educators couldn’t reach, then measuring it in the same way made no sense and in fact reduced or eliminated our impact.
Rant over.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, we defeated Named Person only for all state employees working with children to now be able usurp parents.