VOLT over hervormingen in het onderwijs

Misschien hebt u de discussie in VOLT gemist over de hervormingen van minister Pascal Smet. Hij wil de leerlingen na het lager onderwijs nog 2 jaar langer samenhouden:

Na jaren van SP.a beleid in het onderwijs onder Frank VDB, is de nivellering naar beneden nu volop ingezet. De maatregelen van Smet zijn daarin gewoon een nieuwe stap.

Er zijn betere specialisten dan ik om in detail uit te leggen waarom dit op termijn geen goed idee is.

Sir Ken Robinson is daar een voorbeeld van:

Zijn mening in een notedop: standaardisering is geen goed idee...

In the catering business, there are two main methods of quality assurance. The first is standardizing. If you have a favorite fast food brand, you can go to any outlet anywhere and know exactly what you will find: same burger, fries, cola, décor, and attitudes. Everything is standardized and guaranteed. By the way, this “cheap” food is also contributing to the most costly epidemic of diabetes and obesity in human history. But at least the standards are guaranteed.

The other method of quality assurance are the star ratings guides, like Michelin. These methods do not prescribe what’s on the menu, when restaurants should open, or how they should be decorated. They set out criteria of excellence and it’s up to each restaurant to meet them in their own way. They can be French, Mexican, Italian, Indian, American or anything else. They can open when they choose, serve what they like and hire whom they want. In general they are much better than fast food and offer a higher standard of service. The reason is that they are customized to local markets and personalized to the people they serve.

Education reform movements are often based on the fast food model of quality assurance: on standardization and conformity. What’s needed is a much higher standard of provision based on the principles of personalized learning for every child and of schools customizing their cultures to meet local circumstances.

This is not a theory. There are schools everywhere that demonstrate the practical power of these principles to transform education. The challenge is not to take a single model to scale but to propagate these principles throughout education so that teachers, parents, students and principals develop their own approaches to the unique challenges they face in their own communities.

Standardization tends to emphasize the lowest common denominator. Human aspirations reach much higher and if the conditions are right they succeed. Understanding those conditions is the real key to transforming education for all our children.

Er zal opnieuw worden aangevoerd dat het ons aan middelen ontbreekt. Maar middelen kunnen niet de hoofdreden zijn: België spendeert nu al bovengemiddelds in Europa, zelfs als men dit corrigeert voor de hogere levensstandaard (GDP/Capita). Deze nieuwe cijfers over de uitgaven in onderwijs werden trouwensop 21 september door Eurostatvrijgegeven.