160 Learning in Twenty-First Century Schools
In the British case, with the advent of the global economic crisis and in the face of high public debt, David Cameron’s Conservative government decided to cancel the BSF program but to continue with the Academy Program. The perceived benefit of the Academy Program was that it decentralized decision making by providing vouchers, or a direct subsidy system, through which parents could decide where to send their children, thus creating competition between education providers. The intention was to bring the British model closer to the Scandinavian model, in which private schools receive a direct subsidy. In this context, the Academy model makes more sense, in that a private partner and an industrial partner define priorities and the curriculum (ostensibly in competition with other providers of public education), the goal being to help young people find employment when they complete high school. But the new plan makes less sense in the context of an educational curriculum organization that is more centralized and guided by urban planning, such as that pursued by the Labour government over the past 13 years.
Key factors to consider Transformation. The transformation encouraged by the BSF model consists of movement toward change, using PFI models as triggers. The curriculum must go from rigid to flexible and the learning mode from passive individual in-school learning to active, community-based, and group learning. The school must go from single use to multiple uses and become the center of the community, something that has been lost in modern societies. The development of secondary education is linked to the educational development of adults, continuous education, neighborhood committees, and social services. This transformation can be achieved by a more sophisticated PPP model (such as the BSF or the Academy Program), but not through a basic or initial PPP model such as the traditional PFI. Information technology. It is essential to incorporate ICTs into the investment program so as to optimize the use of physical space. For example, with proper planning, cables and wires can take up less space, and provisions can be made for fixed technology such as projectors and smart boards. Planning for ICT use in advance also allows savings on telephony and other operations and systems in a building, such as security and the library. Most important of all, ICTs add flexibility to the pedagogical process (allowing teachers to move from left to right in figure 13.4). Without flexible designs that allow for the long-term involvement of IT service providers, flexible solutions cannot be reached. But technology should change not only infrastructure but also teachers and their pedagogy—that is, technology should impact teaching and learning. Links with families