How teachers teach
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What next?
Professor Stephen Heppell believes that schools must change to meet the challenges of the digital age
Sally & Richard Greenhill
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E-learning guru and educationalist Stephen Heppell is one of the world's leading experts in using technology in education and in challenging existing education systems to make the most of the digital age. He spoke to writer Heather Welford about how he sees education in the future.
We are already at the stage where we are able to use a number of world curricula. You can see an increasing number of UK schools 'shopping around' the world for choices like the International Baccalaureate. I think children will study bits from Tasmania, bits from Hong Kong, from wherever, and they will be learning alongside others in different places around the world too.
There is an alternative view, where none of this happens – unfortunately. Instead, we may experience a great commoditisation of learning.
It is just as likely that some huge learning corporations will build a global curriculum around textbook sales and their marketed materials. We already see global Microsoft and Cisco curricula being followed by kids from India to Indiana. And we could see huge school corporations – they're being developed even now.
I want us to accept that there is no reason to fit everyone into a model that means they can't learn exciting stuff until they reach the right age. Young people can learn fast and we risk putting a lid on that progress simply because we can't cope with it.
Many 15-year-olds could easily do the first year of a university course in the subject they are passionate about. So why don't we let them? In the future we could do this if we wanted to. I am sure of it.
I believe the secondary school timetable is dead. Ringing a bell to change what you are absorbed by so you can go to another lesson entirely? That's just crazy.
The future will mean project-based work – the sort of stuff that absorbs kids for days on end – in mixed groups, cutting across subject boundaries and often not taking place in school at all. The boxes we have built to 'contain' children will not be there.
