Blog #Aspiration

With a looming curriculum review that doesn't actually involve many classroom teachers, we need to consider what will have the positive effect of keeping young people in education. We don't need a curriculum overhaul for the "disadvantaged", the current one has been raising standards well for thousands of disadvantaged young people for over a decade. What we need is a method of engaging the disengaged - finding a sense of purpose does that.

We walk a tightrope in education, balancing the ideal of students studying a subject they are passionate about and the pragmatics of a student studying because they need to for future employment. There seems to be innate and extrinsic motivation working at odds here, when we can use the extrinsic motivation of getting a college place or earning money to develop the intrinsic motivation that develops a student’s belief in themselves and a positive future.