In our second post on the 10th anniversary celebrations of Challenge Partners, we are privileged to reproduce a large part of the speech from the organisation’s CEO, Kate Chhatwal.

In her speech, Kate reflects on what we have learnt in education over recent months and what she feels we need to consider in the future. Her words contribute to our ongoing debate on the future of education.

 “As we look ahead to our next decade of collaboration and challenge and forge together a vision for a future in which every youngster is able to flourish, the hard work and innovation of the pandemic period points to some of the opportunities we can look to seize and the obstacles we will need to overcome.

“We will shortly publish a report analysing findings and leading practice identified in the more than 250 virtual and in-person Quality Assurance (QA) Reviews that took place in spring and summer 2021. The fact that these reviews took place at all tells us something about our collective capacity to innovate and our determination to continue to improve ourselves and the system, even as covid ravaged our classrooms and communities.

“Sir Tim Brighouse identified ‘unwarranted optimism’ as a crucial quality for school leadership and it is something we have tried hard to hold onto – even in the darkest moments of lockdown.  We talked a lot about optimism and opportunity at our events over the last 18 months and the reviews show how it permeated schools in our partnership.

“I’m sure the headteacher of St Albert’s Catholic Primary School in Knowsley was not the only one to ‘view the consequences of the pandemic as […] ‘unexpected silver linings’, such as strengthened relationships with parents, families and a heightened sense of belonging within the school community.’ (…not to mention the opportunity to run parents’ evenings to time for the first time ever!)

“QA Review reports also point to the extraordinary lengths schools took to support the pupils and families who needed it most within their communities.  For example, Willow Dene School – a Leading special school where almost half of pupils are eligible for FSM – went beyond distributing devices to setting up a loan scheme so that parents could hire a wider range of furniture and equipment to support and enable their children’s learning.

“I’m afraid anyone who diminishes the importance of such actions fails to understand that youngsters cannot learn if their basic needs aren’t met and that the safety net which should be there to support them isn’t there, meaning schools – driven by the deep moral commitment of their staff – feel they have no choice but to step into the breach. On behalf of all the families who benefited from your efforts, I thank you that you did.

“As you might expect, our lead and peer reviewers found an increasing focus on pupil and staff wellbeing – and captured the many small acts of kindness that made a big difference, including ‘Treat Trolley Tuesdays’ for staff at Gifford Primary School, offered alongside free onsite counselling.

“In spite of these additional demands, schools continued to drive forward on the core business of curriculum and pedagogy, spurred on by their vision for #excellence in education and significant events, like the murder of George Floyd.

“In many schools visited, peer reviewers found that the curriculum was being reviewed to ensure that it is truly and rightly representative of our diverse communities and heritage, explicitly incorporates school values, and prepares pupils to be active citizens in modern Britain – recognising that it is not only dead, white men who can lay claim to the best that has been thought, done and said.

“In pedagogy, there is little sense of stepping back from the great technological leaps of the pandemic, with digital becoming an embedded element of schools’ learning strategies, even as students return to the classroom. 

“There is still ground to make up. Research shared by EY Parthenon at a seminar for those in our Trust Leaders’ Network this week highlighted how far the UK lags behind other education systems in our degree of digital maturity, sitting some way behind the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, US and Australia.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, their research also indicates a seismic shift in attitudes to technology in the classroom, with 90 per cent of UK teachers surveyed now saying technology is a great way to ‘engage young people in a medium which is familiar to them’ – up from just over half pre-pandemic. But there is a long way to go for the rest of the system to catch up – so that teachers are trained to make the best use of technology; and assessment is not bound by the constraints of teenagers sitting in rows in draughty sports halls.

“This matters, because EY Parthenon’s latest survey of economic and labour market trends – taking into account the effects of the pandemic – continues to highlight the growth in demand for higher-order critical thinking skills; for agility, flexibility and adaptability; and for technological skills. Not at the expense of domain-specific knowledge – in STEM, healthcare, and arts and creativity – but in addition to it.

“So the task for all of us in education is to consider how – with unwarranted optimism and the highest ambition for all young people – we prepare what my sons refer to as the ‘Zoomers’ (contrasted with us ‘Boomers’) to imagine and create a future that is fairer, better, more just than the present they have inherited.  A future where we grasp the nettles of climate change, of poverty, of inequality and injustice in all its forms. 

Because as anthropologist Margaret Mead once noted, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens [or in our case educators] can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

We hope you enjoyed Kate’s speech and thank her for allowing us to publish it. The speech by Chris Davidson about the similarities between innovation in his world of business and Challenge Partners can be found here.

It has not been an easy few days for us on the editorial team. Our local Member of Parliament, Sir David Amess, was tragically killed nearby whilst carrying out his weekly surgery in which he met members of the public.  Sir David was a role model as a public servant and supportive of our work. Our thoughts are with all who have been affected by this tragic event.

Take care and stay safe

George