Aug
16
So we’ve come to the end of the AmbitionUK pilot with Orange Digital. The participants continue to be mentored by their Orange counterparts and we’re currently evaluating lessons learned with a group led by ex-McKinsey partner, Sir Richard Heygate and Orange Digital CEO Dominic Collins. We’re also very proud to include Kawsar Azom a participant… Continue reading »
May
19
We’re really delighted to be launching our first ambitionUK project with Orange Digital this month. It’s a 10 week corporate training opportunity for 12 unemployed 18-24 year olds. They get to spend around 20 days in the Orange Digital HQ, working with their teams, getting mentoring and learning about branding, marketing, leadership and skills. It’s… Continue reading »
Mar
11
While Jamie’s Dream School is showing some of the difficulties facing teachers and young people, it’s just TV. And as such, it’s chasing ratings. While there is something cringingly enthralling about the chastened and emotionally unintelligent Dr Starkey making up with the overweight and truculent Connor after their little spat, it misses the point. This… Continue reading »
Feb
15
The premise is simple, we need to reconsider how we deliver the curriculum: at them or with them. Think back a few years to the time when you were a child. What was it about you then, that made you the person you are today? Are you the person you wanted to become, did you… Continue reading »
Feb
09
Some time in the changing modern world, people in society stopped taking responsibility for each other and that means that most individuals only think of things that will keep things the way we like them. And it’s well documented how capitalism thrives on feeding that desire to have the things we want. Add to that… Continue reading »
Dec
07
This quotation is taken from Charles Dickens’ book Hard Times, a diatribe against utilitarian education that only believed in the forcing of facts into young minds. When I was a boy, I spent hours of my life in an imaginary world. ‘Daydreaming’ my teachers called it, and my youthful creative adventures of the mind were dismissed… Continue reading »
Dec
06
Many thousands of young people, living in the least affluent and successful areas of Britain are denied the opportunity to aspire to be the best. This is most often because they have been excluded or failed by formal education. As a result their lives often become a self-fulfilling prophesy driven by dissatisfaction and lack of… Continue reading »
Dec
06
This week Toby Young, once again promoting his slender understanding of the context of education in this country, decided to launch the reactionary idea that architecture has no impact on the way kids learn. This of course was an opinion, and an amateur one at that. It’s a worry, particularly in the week that leaks… Continue reading »
Oct
21
Delivering successful projects is difficult. Doing so in sectors for which business process is not a given is even harder. As creatives, we often assume that good ideas alone are enough to get us through. Or that just because we know what we want, we’ll achieve success. As long as everyone means well and does… Continue reading »
Sep
17
I had the privilege of working with the extraordinary and visionary mathematician and educationalist, Seymour Papert. He has been one of the leading lights at MIT’s Media Lab for the last 50 years. He came up with the idea of constructionism, based on the work of Jean Piaget, identifying that young people learn best by… Continue reading »