Going global

The education system must do more to prepare children for a fast-changing world

One of the strands of Jim Callaghan's ‘great debate' on education over 30 years ago was the aims and goals of education. Recent years have seen Labour focus heavily on educational structures such as the introduction of the academy model - but it is now time to move beyond this to think about the purpose of education in a progressive society.

All of the major progressive challenges we face - from poverty and climate change to community cohesion - have learning and understanding at their heart. Without educating people about these issues, we cannot move forward on a progressive agenda. And at DEA, our work in promoting this ‘global learning' aims to do exactly this. In the summer we launched new Ipsos MORI research at a parliamentary event hosted by David Blunkett. The research showed that young people are hungry for global learning, and that it has a clear impact on their attitudes and understanding. It also showed, however, that one in five young people are in danger of being left ‘globally illiterate' - at school they are not learning about key world events or problems, not thinking about how their own actions can make a difference - and only half of them think that people from different backgrounds should live in the same country.

The answer is not, however, to add any kind of special ‘global hour' to the curriculum, thereby increasing demands on teachers and the school day. Instead, it is in the approach taken by David Miliband at a recent Progress event. While discussing the serious challenges we face in building understanding of the EU and Europe, and on major world issues such as climate change, he noted that every school subject has a global dimension which can be brought out in the existing curriculum. Alongside the sort of global learning that citizenship or geography can obviously provide, there are examples in other subjects - the distribution of wealth in the world can be used as data in a mathematical problem, and even in PE we might ask where, how and by whom was your football and PE kit made?

The importance of global learning is increasingly recognised. In our recent publication, Global Matters, the prime minister said: ‘I want to see the teaching of global issues given more weight in our schools and colleges.' There are some great examples of global learning already going on in formal and informal education around the country, but the question is how to scale this up so that no child is left behind. Unless it is prioritised by government, other agendas can squeeze out global learning. Since its inception in 1997, the Department for International Development has given funding support to this agenda. The new secondary curriculum is a further positive step but the Department for Children, Schools and Families has much further to go to ensure that every child's ‘world class education' is also an education that properly prepares them for life in this changing world.

Hetan Shah is chief executive of DEA, an education charity that promotes global learning. He will be speaking at a joint Progress-DEA event at Labour party conference entitled, World Workers or Global Citizens? What is 21st century Education For?

17 Sep 2008 17:57

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