A short intro to the Studio School Geoff Mulgan

what I want to talk about today is is

one idea it’s an idea for a new kind of

school which turns on its head much of

our conventional thinking about what

schools are for and how they work and it

might just be coming to a neighborhood

near you soon where it comes from is an

organization called a young foundation

which over many decades has come up with

new innovations in education like the

Open University and things like extended

schools schools for social entrepreneurs

summer universities and the school of

everything and about five years ago we

asked what was the most important need

for innovation in schooling here in the

UK and we felt the most important

priority was to bring together two sets

of problems one was large numbers of

bored teenagers who just didn’t like

school couldn’t see any relationship

between what they learnt in school and

future jobs and employers who kept

complaining that the kids coming out of

school weren’t actually ready for real

work didn’t have the right attitudes and

experience and so we try to ask what

kind of school would have the teenagers

fighting to get in not fighting to stay

out and after hundreds of conversations

with teenagers and teachers and parents

and employers and schools from Paraguay

to Australia and looking at some of the

academic research which showed the

importance of what’s now called non

cognitive skills the skills of

motivation resilience and that these are

as important as the cognitive skills

formal academic skills we came up with

an answer very simple answer in a way

which we called the studio school and we

called it a studio school to go back to

the original idea of a studio in the

Renaissance where work and learning are

integrated you work by learning and you

learn by working and the design we came

up with had the following

characteristics first of all we wanted

small schools about three four hundred

pupils 14 to 19 year olds and critically

about 80% of the curriculum done not

through sitting in classrooms but

through real-life practical projects

working on Commission to businesses NGOs

and others that every pupil would have a

coach as well as teachers there would

have timetables much more like a work

environment in a business and

this will be done within the public

system funded by public money but

independently run and all at no extra

costs no selection and allowing the

pupils the route into university even if

many of them would want to become

entrepreneurs and have manual jobs as

well underlying it was at some very

simple ideas that large numbers of

teenagers learn best by doing things

they learn best in teams and they learn

best by doing things for real all the

opposite of what mainstream schooling

actually does now that was a nice idea

so we moved into the rapid prototyping

phase we tried it out first in luton

famous for its airport and not much else

I fear and in Blackpool famous for its

beaches and leisure and what we found we

got a quite a lot of things wrong and

then improved them but we found that the

young people loved it they found it much

more motivational much more exciting

than traditional education and perhaps

most important of all two years later

when the exam results came through the

pupils who had been put on these field

trials who were in the lowest performing

groups had jumped right to the top in

fact at the top pretty much top decile

of performance in terms of GCSEs which

is the British it sort of marking system

now not surprisingly that influenced

some people to think we were onto

something the Minister of Education down

south in London described himself as a

big fan and the business organizations

thought we were onto something in terms

of way of preparing children much better

for real life work today and indeed the

head of the chambers of commerce is now

the chairman of the studio Schools Trust

and helping it work not just with big

businesses but small businesses all over

the country

we started with two schools that’s

growing this year to about ten and next

year we’re expecting about 35 schools

open across England and another 40 areas

want to have their own schools opening a

pretty rapid spread of this idea

interestingly it’s happened almost

entirely without media coverage it’s

happened almost entirely without big

money behind it it’s spread was entirely

through word-of-mouth virally a

Crosse teachers parents people involved

in education and it spread because of

the power of idea so the very very

simple idea about turning education on

its head and putting the things which

were marginal things like working in

teams doing practical projects and

putting them right at the heart of

learning rather than on the edges now

there’s a whole set of new schools

opening up this autumn this is one from

Yorkshire where in fact my nephew I hope

will be able to attend it and this one

is focused on creative and media

industries other ones have a focus on

healthcare tourism engineering and other

fields we think we’re onto something is

not perfect yet but we think this is one

idea which can transform the lives of

thousands possibly millions of teenagers

who are really bored by schooling it

doesn’t animate them they’re not like

all of you who can sit in rows and hear

things you know said to you for hour

after hour they want to do things they

want to get their hands dirty they want

education to be for real and my hope is

that some of you out there may be able

to help us we feel we’re on the

beginning of a journey of experiment and

improvement to turn the studio school

idea into something which is present not

as a universal answer for every child

but at least for an answer for some

children in every part of the world and

I hope that a few of you at least can

help us make that happen thank you very

much

you