thank you very much Anna and good
afternoon good evening thank you so much
for the invitation to come and speak
here what a great conference so far and
it’s fascinating whenever I speak about
education at an event such as this the
way you realize that although we didn’t
plan all of our talks together so many
of the themes linked up and so many of
the things that have already been said
in the first half linked with things
that I want to say in the next few
minutes and I do promise it will be a
few minutes I’m well known for being a
little bit lengthy when I speak from
time to time it’s funny isn’t it but
when we talk about things must change we
tend to mean somebody else has got to
change and we don’t always look into
ourselves when my wife and I were first
married many years ago nearly 30 years
ago now one of the things we’d love to
do was to renovate old houses to live in
we had to do that because we had no
money so we said we couldn’t afford new
houses and one of the houses we bought
to renovate was in Essex none of you
know what Essex is so I’ll tell you it’s
over towards the east coast of England
and in this very old house it was a bit
of a rundown building outside in the
back garden there was a pond and in that
pond as you tend to get there were lots
of tadpoles now I’m not a scientist but
I know that tadpoles are supposed to
change into folks and one morning I was
out there having my morning cup of tea
because I’m petition that’s what we do
every morning and I was drinking my tea
and looking down at the pond and I saw
something which shocked me to the core
and I called to my wife mrs. Potter I
said
because I’m a teacher and that’s what we
do come and look at this and what my
wife Ellie is a biology teacher and she
came and she looked down at the pond and
she said oh that’s neoteny I had no idea
what neoteny is and I have to say I’m
incredibly grateful to a former
colleague in the UK Brian carline great
teacher who explained this all to me
neoteny is what happens to animals when
they take on some of the features of the
adult without achieving full adulthood
so with this tadpole frog it had all
swollen up huge body huge head but
little tiny legs and feet it has grown
it has changed somewhat but never fully
changed and of course sadly in the
animal kingdom you can guess what
happens to animals that exhibit in
neoteny and that is that they die so our
theme today is on the load and I’ve
chosen as my theme education the journey
or the destination and as I was thinking
about that as well as thinking about my
folks and my tadpoles I thought about a
real journey so at the weekend my wife
and I are going to spend a little bit of
time together
in hoi an up in up in the north of
Vietnam and I’m going from Saigon from
Ho Chi Minh su Jolla and of course what
I’ve got two choices how to get there I
could fly or I could drive and because
I’m a little bit lazy and we haven’t got
much time and I’ve only got a couple of
days holiday so I’ve chosen to fly there
but it goes without saying that if
instead of flying I chosen to drive I
would have experienced all the richness
of Vietnam on the way but by choosing to
fly I’m still going to get to that
destination but I could miss out so much
along the way and speak
to parents and teachers and and even
some of the students in the room if I
asked you to think about what do you
think of when you think of Education you
might think of something a little bit
like that on the screen behind me and
traditionally and throughout my career
that is very much what education
particularly British style education has
been students of the same age all
grouped together going to school for the
same period of time going for the same
times of the day normally something like
8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. following pretty
much the same curriculum yes maybe some
options in the curriculum for a GCSE or
for IB Diploma but more or less the same
and all coming out at the end with one
thing in mind and throughout my career
that was very much about the destination
and the destination the purpose of
Education was to get to a great
university was to get a great job and as
Anna Skye knee mentioned I’ve been a
teacher for 32 years
it’s what you do and it would be pretty
much the same career throughout your
life but the world is changing you know
that I know that the outside world is
changing the world around us is changing
the world of jobs and careers is
changing and so we’ve said but of course
schools need to change and that’s right
schools do need to change and one of the
great privileges of my job is to visit
many many schools that are already
changing but as I said at the beginning
so often when we talk about change we
talk about those people changing rather
than this person changing and speaking
to the students in the room and I
suppose to parents and adults another
view we quite often have of Education is
a bit like that so we as children or
students
to school and open ourselves up to
receive all the knowledge skills and
understanding that our teachers give to
us and what I would suggest and what my
experience is to date is to prepare
ourselves for that fast changing world
of the future we need to be less like
the little birds with our open mouths
waiting to be fed but we need to extend
the analogy slightly to jump out of the
nest and go and look for ourselves to
look for experiences to look for
challenges to sometimes fail to take
risks to get it wrong and then from that
to learn and change and one of the
themes I heard consistently coming
through in the first half of our
conference today was very much that it’s
actually nothing particularly new
because if I think of my own experience
at school where at the age of eleven I
was a relatively academic but not high
achieving student I found myself and I
found my motivation through things like
sport and music and drama and debating
and and school adventures and
experiences of learning but nobody gave
those to me on a plate nobody fed me
with those things I had to go and look
for myself it’s very interesting mr.
Fitzmaurice earlier mention that a
statistic from the World Economic Forum
talking about the students entering
grade one today sixty-five percent of
the jobs they enter have not yet been
created how do they know how on earth
does somebody know what has not yet been
invented and of course there’s lots of
clever people have worked out that
statistic people far cleverer than me
but they’re talking about what they know
at the moment and if there’s one thing
I’ve learned about artificial
intelligence is that it’s not only
reinventing the world it’s
reinventing itself and our concept of
what is artificial intelligence and what
computers and and the the world of
technology can do are vastly changing
all the time let me give you an example
one thing people have always told me is
that however complex they are computers
can do routine tasks now in my lifetime
in education my goodness the definition
of a routine task has changed a hundred
percent or more you can’t have more than
100 percent but it’s changed by a huge
amount think of driving now I live in
Hong Kong before that I lived in Beijing
I’ve spent the last day and a half in Ho
Chi Minh City in those three cities you
would not define driving as a routine
task would you but yet we now have
computers that can do it and in the
future of course there’ll be a whole
industry built up around those computers
that the new laws that will need to come
with it so artificial intelligence has
redefined our future and what I would
say is to those students in the room and
to us as teachers and to those parents
in the room is we simply have no idea
what that future will hold so what can
we in schools do and of course what can
our students do is to just grasp every
opportunity to try something new to be
like that live from here to haiyan
rather than jumping on a plane to
experience the journey and you never
know what that journey might take you to
so yes the world is changing we in
schools need very much to change and I
would suggest to my colleagues to my
fellow parents because I have three
children and to our students you need
and we need to change our perspective on
the world but there’s one other change I
would like to talk to you about before I
finish and I ask the question is it
journey or the destination and one thing
we all in this room have in common is we
are either on the journey as they were
all on the journey of Education if I
gave you the figure of 264 million I
wonder what that figure would say to you
you might be thinking it’s the
population of a large country I checked
her the other day and apparently the
population of Vietnam is approximately
96 million there are or there were in
2017 264 million children and young
people between the ages of 6 and 17 that
were not in full-time education and did
not have access to education
approximately evenly split about what
evenly split about 130 million girls and
about 134 million young men boys
tomorrow is World Children’s Day it’s
been defined by the UN and we as you
know are working with UNICEF to promote
World Children’s Day and the theme this
year is twofold it’s about access to
education and it is about ending
exploitation violence and abuse towards
young people and I’m going to finish
with a very short video for you because
I’ve given in my few thoughts on the
journey or the destination some thoughts
about things that need to change for us
and for our schools but when I talk to
young people as mr. Fitzmaurice said
earlier the one thing they all tell me
is they want to make the world a better
place so I hope as you think about those
264 million and you think about World
Children’s Day tomorrow you may be
perhaps inspired to do whatever you can
to help others start the journey thank
we as young people would perceive the
world in a different perspective we see
it as in our future there’s scientific
evidence already that the planet is
going to deteriorate over the next ten
years it’s evident that in many
countries there’s people who are
suffering unnecessarily there’s too much
in other countries so obviously
important that we take action the global
goals are the vision that I see our
world in 2030 the goals are
significantly important to our
generation today
it will project what the future will be
like for the younger generations I think
the global goals are important because
their way of achieving a better planet
environmentally socially economically
also a way of ending a lot of the big
problems that we have in the world at
the moment in order to create a
sustainable future and where our kids
and generations can continue we should
really try to use our resources in the
best way possible it starts with you and
your change I think that one person can
make a difference
but it needs to be a collective effort
it needs to come from them and from us
and it’s not just an effort of younger
generation or older generation it’s not
just us working each other in our
corners but we need to just intertwine
at what generations do if you want a
future then we’ve got to take action now
we need everybody to do it to make a big
difference
count me in me too me too and me I can
[Music]
you [Music]
afternoon good evening thank you so much
for the invitation to come and speak
here what a great conference so far and
it’s fascinating whenever I speak about
education at an event such as this the
way you realize that although we didn’t
plan all of our talks together so many
of the themes linked up and so many of
the things that have already been said
in the first half linked with things
that I want to say in the next few
minutes and I do promise it will be a
few minutes I’m well known for being a
little bit lengthy when I speak from
time to time it’s funny isn’t it but
when we talk about things must change we
tend to mean somebody else has got to
change and we don’t always look into
ourselves when my wife and I were first
married many years ago nearly 30 years
ago now one of the things we’d love to
do was to renovate old houses to live in
we had to do that because we had no
money so we said we couldn’t afford new
houses and one of the houses we bought
to renovate was in Essex none of you
know what Essex is so I’ll tell you it’s
over towards the east coast of England
and in this very old house it was a bit
of a rundown building outside in the
back garden there was a pond and in that
pond as you tend to get there were lots
of tadpoles now I’m not a scientist but
I know that tadpoles are supposed to
change into folks and one morning I was
out there having my morning cup of tea
because I’m petition that’s what we do
every morning and I was drinking my tea
and looking down at the pond and I saw
something which shocked me to the core
and I called to my wife mrs. Potter I
said
because I’m a teacher and that’s what we
do come and look at this and what my
wife Ellie is a biology teacher and she
came and she looked down at the pond and
she said oh that’s neoteny I had no idea
what neoteny is and I have to say I’m
incredibly grateful to a former
colleague in the UK Brian carline great
teacher who explained this all to me
neoteny is what happens to animals when
they take on some of the features of the
adult without achieving full adulthood
so with this tadpole frog it had all
swollen up huge body huge head but
little tiny legs and feet it has grown
it has changed somewhat but never fully
changed and of course sadly in the
animal kingdom you can guess what
happens to animals that exhibit in
neoteny and that is that they die so our
theme today is on the load and I’ve
chosen as my theme education the journey
or the destination and as I was thinking
about that as well as thinking about my
folks and my tadpoles I thought about a
real journey so at the weekend my wife
and I are going to spend a little bit of
time together
in hoi an up in up in the north of
Vietnam and I’m going from Saigon from
Ho Chi Minh su Jolla and of course what
I’ve got two choices how to get there I
could fly or I could drive and because
I’m a little bit lazy and we haven’t got
much time and I’ve only got a couple of
days holiday so I’ve chosen to fly there
but it goes without saying that if
instead of flying I chosen to drive I
would have experienced all the richness
of Vietnam on the way but by choosing to
fly I’m still going to get to that
destination but I could miss out so much
along the way and speak
to parents and teachers and and even
some of the students in the room if I
asked you to think about what do you
think of when you think of Education you
might think of something a little bit
like that on the screen behind me and
traditionally and throughout my career
that is very much what education
particularly British style education has
been students of the same age all
grouped together going to school for the
same period of time going for the same
times of the day normally something like
8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. following pretty
much the same curriculum yes maybe some
options in the curriculum for a GCSE or
for IB Diploma but more or less the same
and all coming out at the end with one
thing in mind and throughout my career
that was very much about the destination
and the destination the purpose of
Education was to get to a great
university was to get a great job and as
Anna Skye knee mentioned I’ve been a
teacher for 32 years
it’s what you do and it would be pretty
much the same career throughout your
life but the world is changing you know
that I know that the outside world is
changing the world around us is changing
the world of jobs and careers is
changing and so we’ve said but of course
schools need to change and that’s right
schools do need to change and one of the
great privileges of my job is to visit
many many schools that are already
changing but as I said at the beginning
so often when we talk about change we
talk about those people changing rather
than this person changing and speaking
to the students in the room and I
suppose to parents and adults another
view we quite often have of Education is
a bit like that so we as children or
students
to school and open ourselves up to
receive all the knowledge skills and
understanding that our teachers give to
us and what I would suggest and what my
experience is to date is to prepare
ourselves for that fast changing world
of the future we need to be less like
the little birds with our open mouths
waiting to be fed but we need to extend
the analogy slightly to jump out of the
nest and go and look for ourselves to
look for experiences to look for
challenges to sometimes fail to take
risks to get it wrong and then from that
to learn and change and one of the
themes I heard consistently coming
through in the first half of our
conference today was very much that it’s
actually nothing particularly new
because if I think of my own experience
at school where at the age of eleven I
was a relatively academic but not high
achieving student I found myself and I
found my motivation through things like
sport and music and drama and debating
and and school adventures and
experiences of learning but nobody gave
those to me on a plate nobody fed me
with those things I had to go and look
for myself it’s very interesting mr.
Fitzmaurice earlier mention that a
statistic from the World Economic Forum
talking about the students entering
grade one today sixty-five percent of
the jobs they enter have not yet been
created how do they know how on earth
does somebody know what has not yet been
invented and of course there’s lots of
clever people have worked out that
statistic people far cleverer than me
but they’re talking about what they know
at the moment and if there’s one thing
I’ve learned about artificial
intelligence is that it’s not only
reinventing the world it’s
reinventing itself and our concept of
what is artificial intelligence and what
computers and and the the world of
technology can do are vastly changing
all the time let me give you an example
one thing people have always told me is
that however complex they are computers
can do routine tasks now in my lifetime
in education my goodness the definition
of a routine task has changed a hundred
percent or more you can’t have more than
100 percent but it’s changed by a huge
amount think of driving now I live in
Hong Kong before that I lived in Beijing
I’ve spent the last day and a half in Ho
Chi Minh City in those three cities you
would not define driving as a routine
task would you but yet we now have
computers that can do it and in the
future of course there’ll be a whole
industry built up around those computers
that the new laws that will need to come
with it so artificial intelligence has
redefined our future and what I would
say is to those students in the room and
to us as teachers and to those parents
in the room is we simply have no idea
what that future will hold so what can
we in schools do and of course what can
our students do is to just grasp every
opportunity to try something new to be
like that live from here to haiyan
rather than jumping on a plane to
experience the journey and you never
know what that journey might take you to
so yes the world is changing we in
schools need very much to change and I
would suggest to my colleagues to my
fellow parents because I have three
children and to our students you need
and we need to change our perspective on
the world but there’s one other change I
would like to talk to you about before I
finish and I ask the question is it
journey or the destination and one thing
we all in this room have in common is we
are either on the journey as they were
all on the journey of Education if I
gave you the figure of 264 million I
wonder what that figure would say to you
you might be thinking it’s the
population of a large country I checked
her the other day and apparently the
population of Vietnam is approximately
96 million there are or there were in
2017 264 million children and young
people between the ages of 6 and 17 that
were not in full-time education and did
not have access to education
approximately evenly split about what
evenly split about 130 million girls and
about 134 million young men boys
tomorrow is World Children’s Day it’s
been defined by the UN and we as you
know are working with UNICEF to promote
World Children’s Day and the theme this
year is twofold it’s about access to
education and it is about ending
exploitation violence and abuse towards
young people and I’m going to finish
with a very short video for you because
I’ve given in my few thoughts on the
journey or the destination some thoughts
about things that need to change for us
and for our schools but when I talk to
young people as mr. Fitzmaurice said
earlier the one thing they all tell me
is they want to make the world a better
place so I hope as you think about those
264 million and you think about World
Children’s Day tomorrow you may be
perhaps inspired to do whatever you can
to help others start the journey thank
we as young people would perceive the
world in a different perspective we see
it as in our future there’s scientific
evidence already that the planet is
going to deteriorate over the next ten
years it’s evident that in many
countries there’s people who are
suffering unnecessarily there’s too much
in other countries so obviously
important that we take action the global
goals are the vision that I see our
world in 2030 the goals are
significantly important to our
generation today
it will project what the future will be
like for the younger generations I think
the global goals are important because
their way of achieving a better planet
environmentally socially economically
also a way of ending a lot of the big
problems that we have in the world at
the moment in order to create a
sustainable future and where our kids
and generations can continue we should
really try to use our resources in the
best way possible it starts with you and
your change I think that one person can
make a difference
but it needs to be a collective effort
it needs to come from them and from us
and it’s not just an effort of younger
generation or older generation it’s not
just us working each other in our
corners but we need to just intertwine
at what generations do if you want a
future then we’ve got to take action now
we need everybody to do it to make a big
difference
count me in me too me too and me I can
[Music]
you [Music]
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