Take yourself back to your schooldays. Did you learn everything that you were taught? Or did you sometimes daydream in class? Perhaps there were subjects that you didn’t like so you paid less attention to them - or you were even disruptive in such lessons. For whatever reason, it’s likely that the teacher ‘covering the syllabus’ did not always result in you learning everything that they wanted you to. We know that people – of all ages – like to learn in different ways. My favourite teacher in my traditional boys grammar school was the geography teacher. Because he never tried...

Helping Chinese young people to get a real education The following is a press release that the College issued earlier this year. “Dr Ian Cunningham of Brighton’s Self Managed Learning College argues that: “It’s madness that the UK Government wants to copy the Shanghai schooling model – an approach that fails its young people and its society. We have entered into a partnership with iSkool in Shanghai to support this new school to revolutionise education in China.” Ann Qiu, its Director, commented: “If a ‘successful’ education system is based on shaping students as conformists and passive learners without confidence in their own creativity, imagination...