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“What we call the beginning is often the end … The end is where we start from.” TS Eliot ‘Little Gidding’ The Four Quartets

This is what the late Sir Ken Robinson urged, sadly to deaf ears during his lifetime: “Creativity is essential to the success and fulfilment of young people, to the vitality of our communities and to the long-term health of the economy.”

Opportunity for all makes a bigger statement than equal opportunity to go to University just for half a school cohort, the other half left with a sense of failure and on ritalin when they throw a trantrum.

We are equal only sometimes, unequal most times and different always.

Keep the National Curriculum for the “brainy”, the scientists and the medics and technocrats who need three or more years study in a University setting.

However provide an Alternative Curriculum for the “bright eyed and bushy tailed”, often in SMEs in the private sector, street wise more than book-wise. This could include Design, DIY, healthy diet and cooking, drama and poetry, human rights, conversational languages, the world’s faiths and mutual respect, the environment – Greta Thunberg stuff. Holistic, to be enjoyed and valued for a lifetime not just for a job, and open ended.enjoyed, valued for life not just for a job, and open ended.

The “bright eyed and bushy tailed” have no time for three years’ University study, but one-year courses in a University could sharpen their cutting edge in a highly competitive world if the Universities could be sufficiently clued up to provide them. Their firms would fund them as a business expense.

Meanwhile bring back State Scholarships. They encourage ambition and promote excellence, never mind the inequality. But keep them to those disciplines the country needs, for scientists, doctors & nurses.

Meanwhile bring back State Scholarships. They encourage ambition and promote excellence, never mind inequality. But keep them to those disciplines the country needs, for scientists, doctors & nurses, and urban planners.

 And there should be gap years for students – but not from university – from SME’s in the private sector taking one-year courses at Uni;  students’ fees would be a business expense, providing an additional skill of value and would not be a charge on the students.

Schools should be for their pupils and Universities for their students, not the other way round, and there should be an end to the triarchy of the public sector, the private sector and Academia, each in their own silo, each thinking they are the important bit. And end to the constant “You and US” in society.

Instead, especially in education, there should be a team game of all three investing in the students of today, the future of tomorrow, and not at their expense.

Very simply, the more winners, the fewer the losers.

Click Student Podcast 3 Part 2

OVER TO YOU. A GOOD BRAIN EXERCISE HERE. YOU MAY HAVE TO LOCK DOWN YOUR BODY in COVID-19. YOU MUST NOT LOCK DOWN YOUR BRAIN.