Podcast Recommendation: Reasons to be Cheerful: How to Fix our Education System

One of the things I miss now that I am working from home is listening to podcasts as I drove to and from school, so this week I decided it was time to catch up with some episodes of one of my favourites - Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd. If you are not familiar with the podcast, each week Ed and Geoff talk to a special guest (or guests) about a project that they are involved in which is seeking to improve society or the environment.

This is a great episode and focuses on the state of the UK education system which many argue lets young people down by being outdated and too rigid, putting passing exams over everything else.

This episodes three people who all argue that there are better ways to educate children, talk about the different things that they are currently trialling. They are...

Dr James Mannion - Director of Rethinking Education (a teacher training organisation)

Dr Naomi Fisher - clinical psychologist

Andy Sprakes - co-founder of Doncaster's most oversubscribed school (XP School)

Listen to the episode here.

Other sources of information...

Do schools kill creativity? TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson

The crisis of the last six months has exposed five damaging myths in education - Blog by Peter Hyman

Rethinking Education - James Mannion's teacher training organisation