(0:56 people's noises) (check who) 1.17 We've got one hour and a quarter. (confused voices then 1:31) How do we know when these things are going to be turned on? (confused voices, then1:58) What? OK? Right. (Chairperson 2:03) Ladies and Genltemen, can I ask everyone to take their seats, please? We're about to begin, so if you're visiting the bar, can you charge your glasses and return to your seats, and then we'll begin. We've got an hour and a quarter for this debate. OK, can I -- Welcome everybody to the Online Educa OEB debate. I'm not sure what number this is in the series of debates that we've had, I think it may be getting up to our 10th. What I can tell you is that in the time that we've been having these debates and that I've been chairing them, my eyesight has now gone so bad that I can't possibly read any notes that I have without using glasses, so I think we must be on at least our 10th. What I can also tell you is that Online Educa itself, OEB, this year is celebrating its 21st anniversary. So I think that perhaps deserves a round of applause. So happy birthday to Online Educa -- (Applause) -- this fantastic conference. And 21 years ago was a very difficult -- very different world indeed, when one thinks about the scale and scope of change that there -- that has taken place in the last 21 years. One statistic I was reading recently was that in the UK, in 1994, 21 years ago, there were only 67 mobile phones per 1000 people. But only ten years later, in 2004, there were more mobiles in the UK than people. And that pattern of spread of mobile communications alone has spread across the world and in Africa, for instance, those of you who have been to Elearning Africa will have learned about the spread of mobile communications across the African continent. So in terms of the scale of technological change, and the spread of that change across the world, the change in that short period of time, in these past 21 years alone, has been enormous, and we heard about the scale of it in the opening plenary session this morning. We live in a world that is globalized, interconnected, hyperlinked and that scale of change we're experiencing, have experienced in the last 21 years, is going to gather pace and continue. And all that is going to create a huge challenge for education and training, which is going to be at the heart of dealing with both the positive and negative aspects of that change. And that's why the motion that we're dealing with today, in this debate, is so important, and why the whole subject of giving young people the skills that they need to cope with the challenges of this new world that we all are going to -- that we are creating, is so important. We've got four speakers, four panel speakers to open the debate this evening and I'm going to ask each of them to speak for 10 minutes, and then I'm going to -- -- two of them will speak for the motion, obviously,and two against -- then I will throw open the debate to all of you, but if you want to intervene whilst they are speaking, because we're having a parliamentary-style debate, then you can try to intervene on them and if they want to take your intervention, then they can do so, but it will be entirely up to you. And if they don't, then you can draw whatever conclusions you want from that. But I want to ensure that we keep the flow going, so I'm not going to let you bully them but I'm going to allow you, if you want to make a particular point, or if you want to make a short intervention, to do so. Then after they've spoken, we'll throw open the debate to the floor and you can make your contribution, but do please realize that time is of the essence, so please try to keep it short and to the point, succinct. This is the kind of debate equivalent of texting. So, no long rambling contributions, because I will cut you off if you try to do that. So, very short contributions, please. And then I'll ask each of our -- I'll ask one speaker from each side to sum up, and then we will take a vote, and we'll do that by a show of hands. And I've also made it clear to all the speakers that they may say things that they don't necessarily want to be held to in the future, so I hope that you will understand that. But this is an opportunity for us to explore some of the issues, but don't take it all too seriously, and don't come and accuse people of saying things that you would -- that they might not necessarily always want to be held to. With that in mind, I'm going to ask our first speaker, who is Jo Swinson. Jo Swinson, who is the former Minister for business, innovation and skills in the UK's coalition government of 2010 to 2015, to speak first for the motion. And Jo, since leaving Parliament, has begun a new career and is involved in an award within a data intelligence company called Clear Returns and she is an expert on the challenges and opportunities of the digital age. So, over to you, Jo. (Jo Swinson) Thank you very much indeed, Harold. And I'm absolutely delighted to be here in Berlin at OEB. A bit of a first, actually, the first technology-related conference that I've been to where there is a queue in the ladies' loos! I have to say I was particularly pleased by that, not only as a feminist, but also as a Brit who appreciates the art of queuing. So it was good on two fronts. So, this house believes that 21st century skills aren't being taught, and they should be, is the motion that I want to convince you to support this evening. We absolutely need to be equipping our young people, and indeed, people at every stage of their lives, with the skills that they need for the 21st century. And our education systems, and our wider society, have an important role to play in this. But I will put it to you, this evening, that when it comes to technical skills, when it comes to social skills, and vitally, when it comes to capacity to embrace change, we are not yet rising to that challenge sufficiently. There are very specific skills, there are gaps in science and technology that are not being properly filled. 9:32 These shortages are causing significant problems for businesses, for employers. Half of engineering companies say that they have delayed taking forward new products or services, because they have vacancies that are so hard to fill, because the skills are not there to recruit. Digital start-ups are often in real need of software developers that they cannot find sufficiently. And companies of all sizes, grappling with cybersecurity challenges struggle to have the skills that they need to take on those important issues. As Harold mentioned, I'm now a director of a company called Clear Returns. It's been going for about three years, based in Glasgow, and uses data analytics to help retailers understand the problems they have with product returns and therefore successfully cutting the costs for retailers, and resulting in better customer satisfaction. But in our technology team of 17 people, there are 12 different nationalities and not one of those people went through the school education system in the UK, because the skills are not taught up to scratch. Now, there have been some improvements and as to 2014, computer science has been introduced into the curriculum in the UK, but that is not the end of the matter, because 11% of computer science graduates are unemployed. In fact, that's one of the highest unemployment rates for any subject discipline, at a time when we have a huge shortage of these very skills. Something is going very wrong when that is the case. And this is not just about teaching people to code. Fashionable ....... (check) undoubtedly is at the moment (check) and it is necessary that we do have people who can code. But it's not some kind of silver bullet on its own. Actually, it's the building blocks that we need to be putting in place, the things that lie before you get to the point of coding, the logic, the basic maths, enhancing those skills, so that people can put those building blocks together and create an argument or a train of thought or a mathematical proof, or indeed, a piece of code that will instruct a machine to do something. Yet our maths skills are also going backwards. A King's College, London, study found that compared to the 1970's young people today are significantly less well equipped in the field of mathematics. And it's also worth pointing out that we are missing out, when it comes to teaching these skills on almost half of the population. Only one in five A-level physics students is a girl. When it comes to computer science, that figure drops to 1 in 10. Now, it's wonderful to be at a technology conference where there is a queue in the ladies' loos, but even at this conference, if you have a look at the speakers' brochure, only 8 of the 35 main speakers are women, so where are the women? We are missing out on that important talent who will not then get in the fields that we need for the 21st century to enable all of our economies to flourish. We're also not doing well enough at the social skills which have always been imported -- important, and I would argue, are even more so in the context of the 21st century. Employers have long complained that they get coming into the work place are not yet ready for work. I have to say there is that thing I've observed, when new graduates starting out in the work place seem to be allergic to using the telephone for the purpose it was originally designed for. I've lost count of the number of times when, speaking to a member of staff about the particular project that they are trying to make happen, and it seems so stuck, and I say: "What happened when you asked that person about it?" "Oh, I sent them an email and they didn't get back to me." You know, for all the wonders that technology can undoubtedly do in helping us in our working life, when you want to get people to do something, an email is very easy to ignore, and it is much harder to just put to one side a face-to-face person or contact, or on the telephone. And relationships are absolutely critical to 21st century work places and skills: getting things done, collaborating in teams, motivating others. Yet when we assess children and young people in the education system, it is genuinely done on a pure individual basis, not looking at how they are actually operating within a drip setting (check). And when it comes to skills in terms of relationships, something like personal, social and health education, which I would argue, is absolutely essential to help young people learn to navigate relationships, and important issues like consent when it comes to sex, it's not even compulsory in the UK curriculum. In a world where ultimation is increasing, where jobs that we've already seen through the Industrial Revolution, that manual jobs have been replaced by machines, that with the next stage of technological advancement, many, many more, in things like accountancy and professional services, are also going to be replaced by algorithms, the human social relationship skills are going to be in even more demand and therefore deserve much more attention. And my final point is that we have not done enough to prepare people for the world of change. A little while ago, I spoke at a School Award ceremony to 12-year olds And I was to explain to them how the world had changed since I was there age. And one of the examples I used was the process of taking a photograph. And I described how, when I was 12, you would have a thing called a camera that was all that it did, it was just for taking photographs, you would have to get a piece of film, physically, to load it into the camera machine, you'd had to do that pretty carefully, because you didn't want to expose the film and it was quite a fiddly process. You wouldn't know whether the photos you were taking were any good. You would have to take at least 24, or sometimes 36, depending on which particular piece of film you put into your camera, before you would then take it along to a pharmacist's or a chemist's shop, pay some money and then go and do something else for a few days, at which point you could come back and be presented with your little envelope of photographs, and see if any of them had turned out OK. And I was counting on these 12-year olds looked at me like I might well be lying to them: this is how it worked, because of course these days, you know, within a matter of seconds, you can take dozens of selfies in your phone, apply however many Instagram filters you like, and share it with the entire world, just without leaving the school. The pace of change is accelerating hugely. Here in 2015, for us to consider what even are 21st century skills, is like going back to 1915 and trying to imagine the space race, nuclear power, the internet, or the kind of social change going from a situation where women didn't even have the vote, to electing a woman as Prime Minister in the UK, or the change with gay rights, or the ending of racial segregation in the United States. We can't even conceive of all that the 21st century is going to bring. And so, more than anything, with this huge pace of increasing knowledge, more than anything, what we need to do is equip people to cope with and thrive on change and uncertainty. Instead, we have bunches of kids being processed through the education system that doesn't look that different to several decades ago. So we really do have a problem here, in terms of the skills that we are teaching and more importantly, not teaching well enough. Whether it's technical skills, whether it's those social skills or whether it's the vitally important ability to be resilient, to recover from change and setbacks, and to apply yourself in a new way to a new set of challenges and horizons. These are the things we must be focusing on, and we aren't yet rising to that challenge. I support the motion. 18:06 (Applause) (Moderator) OK, thank you very much for that, Jo. Our next speaker, who is going to speak against the motion, is Allan Päll, who is the Secretary General of the European Youth Forum, which is the representative body for youth organisations in Europe and he is an advocate for youth's rights. He lead student unions in Estonia and at the European level, and has advocated for students' voices to be included in educational policy. Allan: (Allan Päll) All right, thank you very much, chair. I would like to very much support many of the claims made by our opposition. However, when it comes to the question and when it comes to this specific motion, this house does not believe that 21st century skills aren't being taught, because, well, let me put it very bluntly and very simply: the whole notion of what are 21st century skills is often just a bunch of nonsense, if I would sum it up very briefly. But let me go into it a bit more. There are many definitions of what these skills could be and I fully agree that they do include everything mentioned by the opposition. However, there are many other ways of looking at it. So if we are to say whether these are being taught or not, even if we have a problem of the very definition of what these skills are, how can we say that they are not being taught so determinedly? Some of the elements that can be mentioned as 21st century skills are simple things, as critical thinking, problem-solving, reasoning, analysis, research skills, creativity, curiosity, perseverance, self-direction oral and written communication, leadership, information and communication technology, social justice, literacy, civic, ethical behavior, global awareness: the list goes on and on and on. So, indeed, many of those things, perhaps, are not being taught enough, or specifically enough, in our educational systems. But that doesn't mean that this is not happening. Let me ask you one simple question: If you believe that we don't acquire many of these skills in our educational environment, be it in a formal setting or a socializing moment in your school or at university, would we actually witness the pace of change in society that we are seeing. Almost all of us have gone through the educational system. So, we must get a lot of those skills also through that. I do agree, though, that there is something to be said about the question of how specific are we when we look at those skills. Because that is true that most curricula -- education is very much compartmentalized into very specific subject areas and we're seeing an increasing trend of those subject areas becoming more and more specific. And thus indeed, there is perhaps not enough emphasis on looking at, or thinking really about are we acquiring all those sets of skills that are important for our socialization, etc., our technical skills as well, as mentioned by the opposition. One of the things that I would like to highlight is that the schools and universities, and vocational education and training is not only about the formal learning outcomes that we are beginning to measure more and more. It is also about the social environment at that very school or university that determines a lot of what education gives us. In terms of specific skills that were mentioned by opposition and the lack of those skills, there are many variables perhaps to look at. Yes indeed, we are missing out on engineers, we are missing out on also staff in medical sciences, in care. We would need indeed many more people to have those qualifications, perhaps, indeed. But there is also a question of what is education for and what are the requirements on the labor market. And those two things, although they interact, they move at different paces. So sometimes, we start to put blame very easily on the education system for not delivering specific skills when, for example, the structure of our education -- sorry, the structure of our economy has changed. And I think here, it's an important remark that we need to look at different experiences of different countries. And you see countries where unemployment levels, even throughout the financial economic crises, were record low, such as in Germany and Austria. But if you look at youth unemployment figures, youth unemployment also among highly educated young people, in different areas, like Spain or Greece, all around the Mediterranean, they've been staggeringly high. And it's not because the education systems failed, it's because the macro-economic systems failed them there, in terms of not having enough job creation for all those skills. And of course, there is something to be said that when we train people and when we train minds to think critically, to come up with new and innovative ideas, we also change the world through that. So, we need to understand that interaction. but certainly, when we look at 21st century skills, well, if we are to define them with this broad set of lists that I noted, we certainly are gaining those skills, but perhaps, not specifically and not enough: that, we could agree. When it comes to preparedness for change, when are we ever prepared for the change to come, one might wonder. Indeed, things, technologically, are changing very fast. And maybe our educational systems are not embracing that technology at the same pace. But that doesn't mean that if we would embrace the use of that technology very quickly, that it would enhance immediately the skills that we can describe as 21st century skills, such as, for example, critical thinking. There are many advocates that say that we need to replace subject matter teaching completely with horizontal level approaches. That doesn't work. If we don't know the facts, how do we know that we are on the right path with our decisions, how can we know what really happened in the past, and not, how can we verify what is true? So when we look at the skills, we need to look at the evidences in terms of teaching preparedness and pedagogy. And yes, we agree: there is a lot to be done there in terms of measuring those essential skills of socialization and communication, building relationships, and it is true that around, it's estimated, around 50% of jobs in the service sector are about to disappear in the next 20 years and transform, hopefully, into something completely new. Finally, indeed, those skills, we can all agree, we'll need those skills. But there is an important element of young people, and this is a study that we have done in the European Youth Forum, that they gain a lot of those skills also outside, in non formal education settings. And the key here is to see if we can bring those experiences that young people gain from youth organizations, activism, into the formal education setting, and thus make it much more open to recognizing those prior experiences as well, to overcome this shortage. Thank you very much. (Applause) (Moderator) Thank you very much, Allan. Our next speaker who is going to speak for the motion is Pedro De Bruyckere who is an educational scientist and he has worked in Ghent in Belgium since 2001. He co-wrote two books which debunk popular myths on generation Y and generation Z, and the latest one was entitled "I was 10 in 2015". Pedro: (Pedro De Bruyckere) OK. Good evening. I'm a teacher, I'm a teacher trainer, so I'm not used to standing still. So if you don't mind, I will move. Allan, thank you very much for making my point. I have to explain: I have to agree, I've written a book about it. There's no such thing as 21st century skills. And that's why they need to be taught. I have to explain this. You know, if we go back in time, to see the origins of the 21st century skills, you'll end up with the liberal arts, the Septem Artes Liberales. Rhetoric, what we are doing right here, that's for me ancient history, but still needed today. But the question is, is this still being taught in school? Because, like ....... Alberts (check) says, moreover we get a focus on the Three R's -- Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetics -- while most of the young people are looking to Snapchats. But because of the focus, because we want to test stuff, the more important things are being forgotten! Rhetoric, philosophy, for me, crucial. To be honest, then, you don't have to look at Ancient Times, than you have to look at Medieval Times, because then philosophy was added to the Liberal Arts. So we need to train our children because it's great to say: "Look at us: we've done it." Yes, but we are not talking about us, because in 20 years' time, they will -- we will be old, boring and other people need to sit there and beyond stage, using rhetoric. So we need to prepare them. I'm not sure if we're doing a great job. For instance, if we talk about technology, technology is often like a sex ad in education. You know, you talk about all the dangerous stuff and you never talk about the fun stuff. You know, it's very simple: "Don't do this, don't do that, certainly don't try that! Go ahead!" And another -- for instance, McKinsey, the McKinsey report, 2014 McKinsey report, said just (check) -- and I agree again with you both -- there is a mismatch. There is a mismatch between what children study in school and which topics they choose, and what we need in the economy. But at the same time, the employers said: "You know, don't train them to a specific job "but train them in strategic and communication skills." OK, they have been around for ages but they are still important. But what do we do, for instance, in many schools? I've been in schools in Holland, in Germany, in -- you know, we teach them how to write a job application. We teach them how to perform a talk for a job. Do we teach them to write a LinkedIn profile? No, what we say is "Never post a drunk photo on Facebook, "because people will search you." What we don't say is: "You know what? Post something good about yourself on Facebook, "that isn't a selfie." But we think well, they will do this. Actually, for instance research by Jan van Dek (check): that's one of the stuff that our kids don't know. And if we don't teach them, who will? So that's my point: we need to teach them basic skills like Jo said: communication skills, strategic skills. And if you want to call them 21st century skills because, by accident, we're living in the 21st century, so be it. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) (Moderator) OK, thank you very much, Pedro. Our final speaker who is going to speak against the motion is Miles Berry, who is the principal lecturer in computing education at the University of Roehampton in the UK: Miles. (Miles Berry) Pleasure to be here, really is. Philip and Gudrun, where are you guys? OK, on the Twitter thing you say: "We need to talk about what the purpose of education is, what is education for?" And that's where I want to start. I want to move back from the motion, to think about what education is for. And to do that, we need some understanding of what education is. I've been in education for over 40 years now. But even so, I checked. It's the culture or development of personal knowledge, or understanding, growth or character, moral and social qualities, etc., as contrasting with the imparting of a skill. (blurred: check) OK, there's definitely a place for imparting skills, but that's training, not education, and there is a difference. My Roehampton students study education, but they are trained to teach. England's new computing curriculum educates people about the principles, the principles of computer science: (inaudible: check), I tell you. (laughter) ... technology, I think the technology ran on me tonight, it's all right I'll give it... (off) (unintelligible) (Berry) 21st century skill -- on knowledge -- (laughter) Knowledge that these things are the wrong shape for my head: never mind. OK, so: England's new computing curriculum that Jo has alluded to educates people about the principles of computer science, whereas we used to train them to use Office software. Or think about sex. Look, not like that: we rightly include sex education on the curriculum in schools but we typically don't include training. (Laughter) Important skills. Do without microphones. (Laughter) ... very well. In England, our Education Act says what education is for. Firstly, it's to promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and of society. And it's to prepare pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. What else could education possibly be for? In that, you just got to love laws that require you to do what you'd want to do anyhow. There does remain a question about how best to prepare people for these opportunities, responsibilities and experiences. I think the nob of the motion this evening is about whether this should be done through some sort of training in 21st century skills or by passing on the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of our generation to the next and I'd say, the latter. I've no problem with skills per se in teaching. Behavioral management is a skill, coding is a skill, so is searching for things on Google, or even Bing. OK. I've some problem, though, with the notion that there are 21st century skills and I'd agree with you on that. But both of you have done a fine job of demolishing that notion already. I've also some problem with the skills -- with the notion that skills can transfer. Skills are about accomplishing something. There's a context to the skills, and I think we diminish specific skills by attempting to generalize them. It isn't critical thinking, it's thinking critically about something. It's not creativity, it's creating something. And it's not communication, it's communicating something through some media. The 'something' here matters. It's really not possible to teach skills in the abstract fashion, without context. And the context is king. Whatever the specific domain, knowledge of that domain is necessary for expert skills. My main problem, though, is that we've only a little time in school. We've other things to teach and our students have other things to learn: things like knowledge and understanding and wisdom. Without these, skills are unlikely to be of much practical benefit. Stephen Downes is here. Well, nodding in his direction, I'd say, learning is about connecting things: neurons, ideas, people. The computer scientists get this, Google's page rank algorithm relies not so much on the content of the page, as the links between the pages. The thing is then, the new stuff has to be connected to something. Otherwise, it's just isolated factoids. We can't make sense of it, we can't use new knowledge unless it's integrated into our existing mental maps, our schema. Put simply: it takes knowledge to gain knowledge. This apples to each of us as individuals, but it's also how civilization grows. Human achievement is a cumulative thing. New knowledge doesn't normally contradict what's gone before. It builds on it. If Newton saw further than others had, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. What hope would there be for the next generations if they had to discover everything afresh for themselves? The consequence of our building on what's gone before is that the pace of cultural, scientific and technological change accelerates exponentially. But even allowing for this acceleration is knowledge, understanding and wisdom which have done the test of time. Less so, skills. Expect new inventions and discoveries over the next 85 years and new practical skills to go with them. But don't expect the foundational shared knowledge of our civilization to become irrelevant. Indeed, it's on this very foundation that the new knowledge will be built. It's not 21st century skills that young people need. It's 21st century knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Time, I think, for a quick case study. The most successful education systems and the top universities seem to organize their curriculum around well knowledge-based subjects. England's new National Curriculum is quite explicitly a knowledge-based one. It sets out to provide pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they need to be educated as citizens, and to introduce them to the best which has been thought and said. One of the most radical things we've done in that curriculum, which many see as rather reactionary, is to have replaced the old ICT with a new subject: computing. This includes an introduction to the principles of computer science for all, from age 5 up. It has been my privilege to be part of the team designing and implementing the new subject. Under the old curriculum we offered a good grounding in tech skills, finding this online, making a presentation, typing up stories, articles and reports. Sometimes, even making a spreadsheet, often about having a party. Do people really use spreadsheets to plan parties? Are these fun parties? Are these -- OK (laughs) It was fine: pupils moved on to work or the next phase of education with some competence and confidence and broadly speaking, were digitally literate. Our ...... (check) students at Roehampton's suggested that broad portfolio skills, two thirds regarded them as .... as competent, proficient or experts. (39:58)