Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

into six ‘areas oflearning’ including ‘historical, geographical and social understanding’ and ‘scientific and technological understanding’, had both the Prince and the
Daily Mail
in apoplexy. 8 ‘Children to learn about blogging and climate change as Government reforms relegate history in curriculum’ is how that venerable organ summed up what would have been the biggest shake-up in primary education since the
Plowden Report
in 1967. ‘The Prince believes rigorous teaching in traditional subjects was the basis of a good education’, according to Bernice McCabe, power-dressing co-director of the Prince’s institute, quoted in the article, which also decreed that ‘critics of the approach warn it smacks of 1970s-style teaching methods’, presumably the same methods that helped me to achieve A grades in my A-levels and qualify for Durham University, with the same nameless ‘critics’ fearing ‘pupils would leave primary school ill-equipped for GCSE and A-level study, where teaching is subject-based’. Interestingly, the 2006
Nuffield Review Higher Education Focus Groups
found that young people starting university these days needed a year’s remedial work to develop the skills needed to succeed at university anyway. In the words of the report:
    narrow accountability based on exam success and league tables needs to be avoided. This leads to spoon feeding rather than the fostering of independence and critical engagement with subject material. Learners who may have achieved academic success by such means at A Level, it was felt, are increasingly coming into HE expecting to be told the answers.
    ( www.nuffield14–19review.org.uk/files/news44–2.pdf )
    As E. M. Forster said, ‘Spoon-feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.’
    One of the pioneers of the ‘skills-based’ curriculum work has been my friend and colleague, Jackie Beere, who was involved with the RSA project as a headteacher of a secondary school in Northamptonshire and was also involved in the Demos report mentioned above. She also received an OBE for her pioneering work as an Advanced Skills Teacher, although given her divergence of views with the Prince that is as far as her honours will probably go. I invited Jackie to bring her expertise in the ‘competency curriculum’ approach to the QCA project we had been asked to undertake and that I mentioned in chapter 3 .
    One of the findings which we reported back to the QCA I put under the heading of ‘The B-Word’–‘B’ standing for ‘Boredom’–and stated in my report that:
    We are boring the motivation out of our children. Disaffection means ‘to cause to lose affection or loyalty’. We are the cause. We dis-affectchildren. We talk about motivation but we need to have a serious conversation about de-motivation.
    Both online and in our one-to-one interviews it was the word ‘boring’ that was used most often to explain lack of student motivation. You know that phrase about the Sixties, ‘If you can remember it you weren’t there’? I’ve been in science lessons like that. The second most common word used was what appears to be the B-word’s antidote, ‘practical’. Which is where approaches like the ‘competency curriculum’ can play a very powerful part. To test this we sent Jackie into the three schools to work with teachers and children on delivering a lesson that was based around a set of skills. Note that the students were not using skills in isolation. They were still learning ‘stuff’. They just happened to prioritize the development of a range of skills employed in the learning of the ‘stuff’. ‘Skills’ then ‘stuff’, not ‘stuff’ and then, maybe, ‘skills’.
    Feedback from both students and staff in terms of motivation were, although not without their challenges, very positive, as summed up by these comments from one of the geography teachers involved:
    Both of my Year 8 classes are working through it at the moment and really enjoying it. The class that we filmed are working particularly well – they have some excellent plans for their ‘own tasks’ and most lessons they have come straight in and got on without me prompting them. They are working well in their groups and taking on responsibility for their own tasks – they are also doing a lot of extra work in their spare time. They are also able to recognize the competencies better now and have the confidence to judge their own performance.
    The other