Amid all the change, we mustn’t lose sight of the fundamental purposes of education

Last updated 16:26, Monday, 26 May 2008

People and change don’t always go well together. For some people change is about excitement, freshness and new beginnings, whilst for others change is difficult, upsetting and bewildering.

Yet change is, I guess, an inevitable and in many respects desirable part of life.

I am convinced that purposeful change in education is essential if the education system is going to be fit for future purpose.

The key word here is “purposeful”.

Change in education has to connect with the basic reasons why we have an education system – after all education exists to ensure that we have fulfilled and enriched lives and to ensure that our society is economically capable and socially cohesive.

Change in higher education is currently endemic at both the national and local levels.

At the national level the government department responsible for higher education, the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) is seeking to encourage ever stronger links between universities and employers, so that the country can be provided with a new generation of highly skilled, articulate and flexible workers.

Access to universities is becoming more flexible and yet more tied into vocation.

Universities are more accountable for the contribution they make to the regeneration of local economies.

The University of Cumbria’s very existence, for example, is based on an assumption that it will, over time, make a very significant contribution to the local economy by providing courses that meet employers’ needs.

The recently announced Institute of Policing at the university is a mark of its commitment to working in partnership with major local employers.

Around the country there is visible change too as universities build buildings which have come to symbolise this “new look” higher education.

The University of Lincoln, for example, has created dynamic new build in a waterfront location right in the middle of the city.

As an outsider it speaks to me of that university’s connection with the life, work and ambition of the city.

Whilst there is an enormous amount of work to do, the University of Cumbria’s estates strategy has the potential to create a similar symbolic link between the life and work of this sub-region and the ambition of the university. There will be campuses across the county and beyond, but a new campus built from scratch in Carlisle would have the potential to change the city into a true university town.

But in considering estates, and the changes inherent in creating new buildings and environments, it’s important to connect with the changing emphases in education.

At the end of the day the importance of connection between higher education and the well-being of communities is more important than the characteristics of new buildings. Take a look at Carlisle. There’s a lot of physical educational change in the pipeline in the city.

The development of a new university campus will happen in tandem with other new or refurbished educational build in the city, including that associated with the Richard Rose Central and Morton Academies.

The physical shape of education in the city in 10 years time will be markedly different from now, and this is one reason why Carlisle is such an exciting place to be.

Yet the risk is that the excitement around the construction of buildings will have a higher profile than the education that happens within those buildings.

For me it’s important that in the excitement of change we never lose sight of those fundamental purposes of education.

The act of building a university or school curriculum that connects with employers may be helped by the creation of a distinctive educational environment but the creation of this does not automatically mean that a university or school’s curriculum is fit forfuture purpose.