Breaking the Class Size Myth for Enhanced Learning with Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE

Have you ever wondered if smaller class sizes always translate to better learning? In this episode, we challenge that assumption with our guest, Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE, a seasoned educator and educational advisor. Ger brings a wealth of experience from traditional and non-traditional learning environments, and he's here to shed light on the benefits of larger classrooms.

This episode goes beyond the simple notion of "less is more." We'll explore the value of diverse learning dynamics and how quality teaching can truly shine, regardless of class size. Ger will reveal the dynamic interplay that happens when students learn from each other and how a larger classroom environment can actually offer a richer palette of interactive and collaborative opportunities. We'll also tackle the stigma associated with labelling in small classrooms and emphasize the importance of cultivating exceptional teachers who can steer education towards a brighter future.

But this episode doesn't stop at the present. We'll also take an inspired look ahead with Prof Dr Ger Graus. Get ready to explore his vision of a future where schools transcend their traditional roles. We'll delve into the potential of AI, the exciting possibilities of integrating students' digital fluency, and how these advancements can level the educational playing field. Join us as we embark on a journey to reimagine the boundaries of what schools can achieve and harness technology to create a more equitable and awe-inspiring education system for all.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

Hi everyone, welcome to the Teach Middle East podcast. My name is Lisa Grace. Today I have Gare Grouse and he is going to be talking to us a little bit about a topic that is very, very dear and near to my heart as a former classroom teacher, now parent, and we want to dive into class sizes. Is bigger bad? Is bigger better? Does it really matter? What really matters when it comes to class sizes?

Speaker 2: 1:00

You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Gare, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3: 1:13

Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:16

I like to dive straight in, but for you I would love an introduction so people can get to know a little bit about you.

Speaker 3: 1:22

Oh, where do you want me to start?

Speaker 3: 1:24

So I grew up in the South of the Netherlands, went to school, went to university, became a teacher, moved to England for one year only, in 1983, and I'm about to enter the Guinness Book of Records because it's about to become the longest year ever, I think, because 40 or years later I'm still here. Originally a secondary school teacher, teacher of German, then the traditional thing became a head of faculty, became an advisor, then joined the dark side, became an inspector and a senior inspector, became Anakin Skywalker, again as education director, and then in the late 1990s, early 2000s, left that field of formal and increasingly formal schooling teach and test and started to work in a sphere of learning outside the classroom. I founded the Children's University as a charity which went global and then became the first global education director for Kitsania, as in how do you make education play and how do you make play educational and what can we learn from that. And since then, as speaker conferences, I participate in podcasts and write articles as part of research around what education of today should really look like Brilliant.

Speaker 1: 2:39

That's a great introduction. Ger wrote and still writes for Teach Middle East and one of the reason why we're on this podcast today is because he's recently written an article about class sizes which we're going to unpack on this episode of the podcast. Because Ger makes the point that we don't need to always think that big class sizes are bad. He's about to bust the myth that big classes are bad. So in your article you reference, you know, different periods and some finding a minor improvement in test scores with smaller class sizes. But how do you recommend educators and policymakers balance the academic research with the practical considerations when making decisions about class sizes? That's a mouthful.

Speaker 3: 3:27

I think it's an odd measuring thing. Before I go into that, I'd just like to quote Antoine D Sainte exupéry, writer of the Little Prince, my all-time favorite book, and in that book he says all grown-ups were once children. But only few of them remember it, and I just throughout. I'd like us to hang on to this, because I don't understand sometimes where this big class size thing is bad thing comes from. If I go back in time to when I was a child, a pupil, a student, and I talk to many of my friends and acquaintances all over the world about this and my question to them is do you have any recollection from your own childhood where you sat down at some point and thought this class size is too big? I'm suffering here and nobody can. So that's an interesting thing. There's nobody I've met who said that, and I'm not quite understanding sometimes where that so-called measure comes from. I think it's certainly used politically In the UK, for example, political parties will go oh, but your class sizes were bigger than my class sizes and that's then used as a bad thing. I'm much more concerned about quality, because I promise you one thing you can have the smallest class size and a teacher who's no good, you ain't going anywhere and you can have a big class size and a teacher who's brilliant and you are going places. So, first of all, I'd like us to move away in our thinking of numbers 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, whatever you want and I'd like us to move to different numbers, and those numbers are about contact.

Speaker 3: 5:02

So, for example, a really easy some would be I'm going to stick 30, 11 year olds in one room. We call it a classroom, but I have three adults in that room and all of a sudden, I have I'm starting to create the best of both worlds, because where necessary, I am one to 10. And where necessary, I can be three to 30. So it allows me better learning dynamics and it allows me to create those learning dynamics. Of course, the same thing still applies, doesn't it? If I have three brilliant teachers in the classroom, I'm flying, and if I have three bad teachers in the classroom, I won't take off.

Speaker 3: 5:43

So I think we need to be slightly more realistic, feet on the ground, honest about what we're actually talking. That, first and foremost, and after that, it is always about the quality, it is always about the awe and wonder, it is always about the experience, and I would. I would much rather work with teachers who for whom the world is the classroom, because that's the other thing. Why are we obsessed with being in a classroom when I can go online and I'm everywhere, or I can go to all the amazing cultural places in the Middle East and elsewhere that are also classrooms? I mean, I remember my first ever visit to the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and I was just completely and utterly blown away. It's a better classroom than the classroom in the school. So we need to think differently.

Speaker 1: 6:38

I'm curious, though is there no point at which it's too big a class for, say, for example, 11 year olds to actually thrive? Where is there no cutoff point? Is there a cutoff point?

Speaker 3: 6:52

I think there's a practical, there are cutoff points, right. Forgive me if I sound flippant, I'm not, I just so. So I can't, I can't put, for health and safety reasons, I can't put 100 children in a room where I'm only allowed to put in 30. So I think I think there are really practical measures where there are, of course, cutoff points, right. I'd like to go back to that issue. I think there are optimum relationships in contact points. So let's just say again you have 30 in a classroom.

Speaker 3: 7:22

Each one of those youngsters learns differently, of course, because that's why we're individual and that's why we talk about personalization. And I have three adults, four adults in that classroom and it functions. It functions because they're brilliant teachers, because they've got the youngsters engaged. There's a lot of noise, everybody's happy and smiley and learning, but actually I, as the pupil, sometimes I prefer to learn in a quieter space, and there are a couple of us who prefer to learn in a quieter space. I have the flexibility for one of those adults, those brilliant teachers, to take the ones who prefer a bit of peace and quiet occasionally out of that room into another room called a library or resource center, whatever it's called these days and or even outside and learn different. So if I have one teacher on a class of 15, I can't do that. It's about contact, flexibility and molding that to the needs of the youngsters.

Speaker 3: 8:19

This thing about class sizes as we talk about it in general, is almost like a value for money judgment. It's. Sometimes it feels like a commercial kind of judgment that goes there's more than 30 in that room, it's bad. We really need to be a bit more intelligent about that, I think. And to go back to my friend Antoine, we need to remember that we were all little ones and that we all learned differently. So you could have, if your room is big enough and it's nicely air conditioned and we are comfortable, so if the environment is conducive to learning, you can have 75 in the classroom, as long as I've got seven and a half adults, or let's make it eight adults in there, right, or 10 adults or whatever. So that flexibility, because the other nice thing about the learning side of it is that if I have three or four adults in a room, just for argument sake, as the youngster I can also find the one that suits me best.

Speaker 3: 9:16

Because learning is about relationships. I did that. If the relationship is brilliant. It kind of works better. So I think it's a lot of force about nothing If it comes to the point whereby it does become an exercise that is monetary driven, because we have to remember, of course, that we are also in a world, rightly or wrongly, where schools have a business element to them. Yeah, they are. Sometimes, if you have a private school group, they are commercial entities to a degree. If those decisions are made on commercial grounds and it is one adult per 30 or one adult per 20, I think that's a different discussion. So my argument as the parent of the school would be I've got nothing against big class sizes Brilliant, I can see all the advantages of it. How many brilliant teachers are where the youngsters in that big class are? It's a different argument. It's a quality argument rather than a numbers argument.

Speaker 1: 10:11

I'm hearing you. So optimally you ought to have more adults to the number of students in the classroom. So it's not about the number of students. If, logistically, the classroom can hold 35 students, then it's fine for all 35 of them to be in there, as long as there are enough adults in there, of quality teachers who can then help them to learn and progress. Question what's the optimal number of teacher to student? Do you think then?

Speaker 3: 10:46

That's a very good question. Can I just say one thing first as well? I think if we have 35 in the classroom, let's just for argument's sake say I have 35 in the classroom with five adults, I would prefer to have 35 in a classroom with five brilliant adults than seven in five classrooms with one adult each. I think the 35 is a good thing. The question asked to how many adults per youngster and what's optimum is? It's quite simple really, and the answer is it depends. Let me give you the example. So if I come to give a lecture, if I'm here to pass on knowledge for 40 minutes and all I want is for the young people to remember what I've said, so that I can test them what they've remembered, which is what a lot of the schooling is about I don't know one to 100, because actually, what you are delivering to all intents and purposes and forgive me for being slightly facetious, but what you are delivering to all intents and purposes is a lecture. I'm not interacting, I'm not expecting any answers back. I'm passing on the knowledge. If I'm talking about learning and interacting with a group of 35, bearing in mind that each one of those children is different there are boys and girls, and some are geniuses and other take a bit longer. There's all those bits. It becomes more complex but also more fun. So let's just say that we have in a class of 35, let's say that we have five adults, four, whatever you take your pick somewhere in that region three. But then it becomes a different question. The question also that we need to look at in education in 2024, in schooling in 2024, is who is the teacher? Now let me give you an example, and there's a little bit of Kizanie O'Connor. So if I'm the career's educator, I'm the career's teacher For arguments. I've got 35 in a room and there's another two career's teachers with me in that room and all three of us are brilliant. We're the best in the business. I want more adults in the room At that moment in time for that subject. I want more adults in the room. I want at least as one of the three, I want at least an other five adults just with me.

Speaker 3: 12:58

Because today's topic is the airline industry. We're looking at that career aspect and actually I'd quite like a pilot in with me and I'd like cabin crew in with me and I'd like an engineer in with me and I'd like the person who prepares the food in with me and somebody else, because I can read from the book and tell them what a pilot does. But for that moment in time, for that lesson, I'd like the pilot to be a co-teacher. So the answer is how many adults for young students? It depends what we're doing with them, but I think in ideal terms and there'll be all sorts of research around this, and of course, please remember the different learning styles of the young students.

Speaker 3: 13:36

If I look at my three children, my very different my son was a self-learner really and it didn't really matter to him and he's very bright and much brighter than I am, and so he just did it on his own most of it and he was stimulated by all sorts of things. Both my girls are slightly different. They needed the interaction. It sparked them. The whole interaction thing just made them go boom. And so there is an issue around.

Speaker 3: 14:01

But you'd have to say, on the complexity of the youngsters in front of you in a, say, mixed ability class, in an ideal world if money were no object, you wouldn't want to go over a dozen to 15, really I think 15 would be pushing it for one teacher If you want to give them the attention that they truly individually merit and need. I understand there are all sorts of things that would be. There would be teachers listening to this and school owners going oh my God, we're going to go bust and this, that and the other, but I think there is an if you look at it from the child's point of view, and that's what school is about in the end. School is not about statistics and how many top grades did we get? The issue for the school is did we manage to work with that individual child for him or her to reach this or her potential? That's the measure, and that requires attention and time. So I'm going to do this and I'm going to say one, two. It doesn't, but no.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Right, you heard that people, gareth said one adult to 12 children is what would potentially be ideal. But I want to pull you back on something we talked a lot about. You said I would rather have five teachers with 35 students than have them separated off as in seven students with one. What are the advantages of having all the students together in a larger group? So I'm for the students yeah, yeah so.

Speaker 3: 15:35

And for the teachers, because teachers working together become better teachers. I'm very fortunate that I've met lots of people in my life and I am now working with a very close friend of mine, carla Renaldi, who is the president of the Foundation Aragio Children, the global experts on early years education, based in Northern Italy, and they have some very interesting research and some very interesting conclusions from that research, and I would say their headline for me is that there are three teachers the adults as teachers, not necessarily just qualified teachers. The parents are also teachers. We are all educated. So the adults. The children children learn from each other.

Speaker 3: 16:16

And thirdly, the environment. We learn differently in different environments, and if I were a principal of school, I would focus very heavily on which environment my children learn in. So I mentioned a minute ago as an example that in today's careers education lesson we're dealing with the topic of the flight industry, the aviation industry. I should go to the airport to teach that lesson, shouldn't I really, rather than sit in the classroom, ideally. So why don't we try? And if we can't do it for real all the time, are there alternatives that we can seek online so that at least we are virtually closely connected to the topic that we're trying to learn. So then there are three teachers essentially. Now, given that the environment we're in is the classroom, today, we need to make sure that the classroom is a conducive environment for learning, so I'd like to see lots of appropriate displays and books and all sorts of resources available for the children to use First and foremost.

Speaker 3: 17:14

Secondly, teachers who work together produce better outcomes. It's a fact of life, isn't it? I would say, in most professions, if you get brilliant in a room, it produces greater brilliant, and of course, the same applies to children Watching groups of children, larger groups of children, work together. We seem to be born as human beings with an enormous degree of empathy, and then schools, at times, I think, try to teach the empathy out of kids instead of utilizing it.

Speaker 3: 17:43

Children as teachers and children as better learners. Because they collaborate is brilliant. It comes naturally. The bigger the group within reason. The bigger the group, the more opportunity there is to productively and constructively collaborate and cooperate. The smaller the group, because what do we do when we get small groups in schools? We've labeled the children and the smaller groups become boxes. They're good at something, they're not so good at something, it's this and that ABC, we call them all sorts of things, and actually I think we need to bring the youngsters together so that they can learn from each other, instruct their learning from what they've been taught and work across with those teachers. I would not like my children to have been in classes of seven. It's not the school I would have sent my children to.

Speaker 1: 18:31

A lot of parents seem to value class sizes. It is an advertising point for schools out here. Small class sizes, more attention, et cetera, et cetera. But what you said made so much sense. There are three teachers there's the environment, the teachers themselves, and they're the other students where they learn from each other. I absolutely think that is spot on. You said something that was pivotal, though. You talked about the role of quality teachers. You said that was the deciding factor. How do we identify these quality teachers? Elaborate for me, Not only how do we identify them, but how do we develop them.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Well, it's a very interesting point. It's a global issue. I wanted to mention a number of points there, really, I think. So what is? We should chop around a little bit.

Speaker 3: 19:27

There are different societies on our planet and in those different societies, schooling and education and those who are professionally engaged with it are treated and viewed differently. So if you go to some of the Scandinavian countries Finland is hailed as such. The area in Regimilia and Northern Italy it would be another. You have highly qualified people who become teachers. They are well remunerated and their working conditions are positive. They are highly respected by society.

Speaker 3: 20:02

Incidentally, those things you can't do them overnight. This is a cultural thing. They also continually invest in the development of teachers, like happens in other walks of life. If you do that over a period of time, with governmental support, with support from industry, it's a collaborative exercise. If you do that over a period of time, then after a generation you may well be part of a society that functions like that.

Speaker 3: 20:31

If you think that what we've got wrong for the last 100 years we can fix in two or the lifetime of a parliament, and you are sadly mistaken. This will take time. We actually want to come to the point where people want to become teachers. It's a highly valued profession and I do some work with the university here in the United Kingdom and I was very privileged to give a keynote address to 200 PGCE students, people who it was on their very first day that they entered their course to become a teacher. So I went to see them all and I congratulated them and basically said this is amazing that you want to do this. And my job, I suppose, was to fire them up for their second day. And one of them asked me a question at the end and said so you firmly believe that the teaching profession should be the equivalent in standing to that of doctors and lawyers? And my answer was no, I think the teaching profession should stand higher than them, because without the teaching profession there wouldn't be any doctors or lawyers. And for some reason and this is much to do with society over a period of time, but it is also much to do with parents and parental attitudes these people are experts. They're experts in what they do. They're not all equally, 100 percent. You don't get that anywhere.

Speaker 3: 21:50

Our job is, as governments and as societies, to enable the teachers to become better and, quite frankly, also to identify those who are not quite as good and help to develop them further and identify those who are not good and remove them. But the issue of the development is continuous. It is ongoing. Our children and the world around our children are changing so fast. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 3: 22:16

Our teachers need to be not just keeping up with this, they need to be ahead of that game. So five days per week my view one of those days for a teacher should be study, research and planning. So teachers should work a four day week and have 20 percent of their time to prepare not to mark, but purely to prepare to be at the top of their game. We need to look at other industries and what we do with the people who are at the top of their game. I tell you what we don't do. We don't get them to work 60, 70 hours per week and mark at weekends and then worry about the inspectors coming in on a Monday and all that kind of stuff. So we need to enable our teachers to become brilliant as well and to remain brilliant.

Speaker 3: 23:00

And that's going to cost money, because one of the big mistakes that the Western world is making certainly the UK and certainly England is making that it is aspiring as a country to have the highest educational standards and the best teachers, and it wants to pay for that. So Scandinavian style education and schooling, and it wants to pay for that with American levels of taxation. No calculator can make that work. So if we value, as a society and as a country, the education and schooling of our children, then we need to pay for what we value, not as a one-off, but continually.

Speaker 3: 23:37

And I would say, if the government in this country were to turn around tomorrow and say we need to put five pence per pound income tax in order to get all of this right our pay I think many people would pay, yeah, and so I think we need to really, as a society, also push for this, but we need to also, as parents, work with teachers so that this and sometimes against school. So the schools that say we've got small class sizes, somebody needs to turn around and go. So what? My school has got big class sizes, but I've got one adult for every seven children I win. Stop the kinolegy. As part of the PR as well, we need to have a proper grown-up discussion about where these things should be going, and schools cannot have that discussion on their own and parents cannot write off their responsibility because they pay the schools to educate their children. This is a collective exercise.

Speaker 1: 24:34

I like it. Let's stick on that topic of parents, because parents are what drive especially. I mean, we're in the Middle East, my kids go to private school, majority of the expatriate community, their children go to private school. And given parental concerns about class sizes, because it definitely is something people talk about, I was talking to Georgia Tully on Dubai I the other day about class sizes and about what's going on there and I was saying bigger does not necessarily mean bad. So we were together on that, gary, even though you were all the way in the UK. But given parents are the ones who are pushing class sizes and they're kind of trying to renegade from their responsibilities a little bit as parents, how can schools better communicate the benefits of larger class sizes and the multifaceted approach to a quality education to parents?

Speaker 3: 25:31

Communicate is an interesting word, isn't it? And I think I see it globally the communication between parents and schools. Communication is now defined as a message from one to the other. So perhaps we should change the word communicate with the word dialogue. So how many schools have actually had? Let's organize it. Okay.

Speaker 3: 25:51

I'm proposing it now. I'll fly out to the Middle East, we'll bring another couple of people and we'll have a road trip and we'll go to schools and we'll invite parents to come along and we'll thrash it out. Yeah, there are some. Be everybody behaves themselves, nobody's disrespectful. And actually what we'll do is we'll put a picture of a child on a big screen and say, today, we're here to make that work at its best. Okay, so what are we going to suggest? And then the parents will have their say in the teachers and the non teaching staff and all sorts of other people.

Speaker 3: 26:21

Let's do it. Shall we do it? Because I think it would be an accident, because I think, if you are, we just need to be braver in our decision making. Collective decision making for the greater good, the greater good being the child. Collective decision making is lively. Let's make it lively then. Let's just have, rather than there's a group over there and all they do is sit on a fence and moan the parents, right, there's a group over there the schools that say just leave us to it, we're the experts. And there's a group of little people in the middle all kind of being torn a little bit right. So it would be easy, let's go and so right. So that's the next thing we're doing, lisa. We're setting something up and we're getting going right.

Speaker 1: 26:59

Yeah, we need to. Yeah, Because they do sell it though, geron. And what happens is parents get really offended when the class size increases, because the communication is that one way the school says we will provide your child with smaller class sizes, but they never talk about the quality of a holistic approach to education.

Speaker 3: 27:24

We need to change the narrative and, incidentally, I think you know schools say these things that I don't want. Schools are not the bad guys in this either. There are reasons for that too, and sometimes there may be economic reasons as opposed to educational reasons. So maybe when we do the roadshow, the other people we need in the room are the school owners, because everybody needs to be there really. And we need the young people there, by the way, because we can't just talk about them without them being in the room. So no, I'm with you on this.

Speaker 3: 27:55

So it's a difficult thing, but we're not, we're not going to solve the issue by just staying in our own boxes and kind of shouting at each other a bit and passing on messages. We're going to need to be quite grown up about this, and I certainly know enough people in the Middle East in the senior kind of educational positions, be it that at KHDA or wherever else, who I think would take part in such a debate. But we need to change the narrative. We need to change the narrative from the numbers game to the quality game, from the mass game to the individual, and I think we sometimes we over complicate things. We need to keep things simple, because actually when you unpack it like that, it's not. It doesn't sound very hard at all, but when we are starting to serve our own self-interest as opposed to serving the greater good to the child, then we get into trouble.

Speaker 1: 28:46

So if we go back to your magical number of one, to 12,.

Speaker 3: 28:52

I know they're coming for you, they're coming for you, I'm telling you.

Speaker 1: 28:57

They'll be very welcome, they're coming for you, mate, but when? If we go for that, just hypothetically right, it therefore means that every class of 24 or above yeah, so over 24 should have a third adult. Yes, what does this then mean in the atmosphere we're now in, where there's such a shortage of quality teachers, where will they come from, these adults?

Speaker 3: 29:29

One. We're back to this thing about respect and remuneration, etc. Right, so that on one side there needs to be an intensive program. There have been examples in the past some very successful, some less so whereby you speed up the recruitment of teachers. So if you sat down with an X number of youngsters and you painted a picture that was really quite brilliant in professional terms and in lifestyle terms, you would soon grow those numbers.

Speaker 3: 29:58

None of those solutions are instant, because the problems weren't created instantly either. This is part of a process. But we can set ourselves reasonable targets and if we work with government and those in charge who are prepared to put their money where their mouth is and are prepared to recognize that we're going to get some of this wrong, because everybody's human and that the end game is a longer term thing, then we will get there. If you begin to paint the picture of come and teach come and teach with us you're going to get one day per week whereby you have your own quality time to make the other four days absolutely amazing. If you work for us for a number of years, we will arrange professional sabbaticals so that you can go to other countries and witness and learn how the profession lives there so you can come back and make us richer and better. If those are the kind of cultural things that we develop, of course it will work. Just not quite tomorrow, right? Give us a couple of days or years.

Speaker 1: 30:54

Give us a couple of years, it's going to be such a cultural shift.

Speaker 3: 30:56

I mean, we host conferences and seminars and it's so hard to even get the teachers out, and I think there's something else right, and I want to bring this up right Because there is the issue of private ownership of schools and, in the end of the day, the companies that own the schools, they are for-profit organizations. So we need to, every time, as a parent, if I could give you one bit of advice as a parent, if you're listening into this, every time you don't like something or you disagree with something as part of a debate, as part of a dialogue, not as part of messaging ask the question whether the decision that is being made is an economic decision or an educational decision. And actually, what we will find is that in a number of cases globally, what is being dressed up as an educational decision by governments is more often than not an economic decision. And when I hear the words economies of scale used in connection with children, I get nervous Me too. So ask the question is this decision economic or is this decision an educational decision?

Speaker 3: 32:04

I was once asked on a forum by the then Secretary of State for Education here in the UK what I saw the optimum school size was, and my answer was my optimum school size is the school where every member of staff knows the name of every child. That's my optimum school size. The economists were falling off their chairs at the back of the room, right? But you're asking me an educational question, I'll give you an educational answer. And, incidentally, in that school I would have classes of 30, right? Fine, I would be perfectly happy with it.

Speaker 3: 32:34

As long as you had the number of adults you have to have. The educational agenda needs to be at the forefront and ultimately, what will happen in terms of the ownership of school, the private ownership of schools and that for-profit agenda over time? What will happen is that the best schools educationally will become the most profitable schools financially. And I don't mean by grades, I mean there are different measures. I want my children to be happy at school. I want them to be educated as well as school. I want them to be global citizens, I want them to be kind, respectful people. When schools begin to do that bit, then the best schools will be the most profitable. It'll take time, but we'll get there?

Speaker 1: 33:18

Yeah, we will. And I think a lot of parents are looking at that now. They're thinking what do I really want? Do I want a factory? Do I want to send my child to a factory where they'll be manufactured for grades, or do I want to send my child to a school where they'll come out as a whole human, happy, healthy and thriving human being?

Speaker 3: 33:43

And will our children be the leaders that undo the mess that we have made of the world? We need approximately 20 million greater Thunbergs in some shape or form. People, not numbers.

Speaker 1: 33:55

True, I can't have you on the podcast without taking time to pontificate and really kind of look ahead. Hybrid schooling where do you see that in the mix.

Speaker 3: 34:09

It's part and parcel of, you know, the issue about the environment. Environment is just our teacher. It's part and parcel of that. And hybrid, incidentally, is an interesting thing.

Speaker 3: 34:18

I'm talking to a number of people now in a kind of advisory role about what I call in my head, hybrid 2.0. So, at the moment, hybrid is either or isn't it. It's a bit like a car, isn't it? I've got a car and I'm switching to electric and then I'm switching back to petrol, but at no point does it use both at the same time. So hybrid schooling is the same, isn't it? I'm either online or I'm in it. I want to be both at the same time.

Speaker 3: 34:42

So I'm working with some people and developing. Whether it'll be an app or whatever, I don't know yet, but it is something about. Let's just imagine that we get youngsters and the intelligence, the artificial intelligence behind it all detects that this young woman called Lisa, who's doing her GCSEs, is particularly interested in flowers and nature. There's a real aptitude for it, real interest. What the next bit of hybrid learning there needs to be is that Lisa keeps getting messages saying did you know that there is a Van Gogh exhibition on in Abu Dhabi and it features flowers, so that we create technology that becomes the driver of diverse learning, that, in my book, will become hybrid 2.0, whereby, rather than having it as a resource, either, or it becomes a catalyst for more.

Speaker 1: 35:32

Yeah, I like the idea of merging the two, so you are not just online or offline, but you're harmoniously going in between both worlds.

Speaker 3: 35:44

And it's what the young people are already doing. We need to watch the behavior of our children. So my 18-year-old daughter doing her A-levels this year she'll be open in her room. There's a laptop, there is an iPod no, not iPad, ipad, sorry, I'm showing my age here there is a phone and there is her desk and herself. So she's there, but she's talking to her mates at the same time. So they're doing it together, right, and sometimes their teacher might join in.

Speaker 3: 36:10

So if our youngsters are working like that already, if their learning has already kind of manifested itself in that way, why are we not responding to that? Just like I believe, incidentally and I've suggested this on a number of occasions that my daughter should be paid by her school to teach younger children, because my daughter's much better at tick-tocking and Instagramming than their teachers will ever be. Their teachers will be much better at content and safety than my daughter is. But if we want the best, then we must not ignore the skills that our young people already have. So this needs to be up for grants. We need to be much more open-minded. At the moment, we're all in boxes and we need to just unbox ourselves.

Speaker 1: 36:50

Wow, this is why I ask these questions, because I get such rich insight. All right, last question, gair when is it all going? Ai, the whole shebang, where is it going? Where do you think it's all going?

Speaker 3: 37:01

Well, one I think we need to welcome AI. There's all these do more, I mean, one of the things. What is that saying that? I'll come up with it. I'll find it in a minute. There's something about people finding. Don't go to negative people, that's it. Don't listen to negative people because they will find a problem for every solution, all right. So I think we just need to steer away from that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 37:24

I'm really optimistic about it. I think AI, the whole technology thing, can present our young people and our teachers with all and wonder, with better knowledge, with greater insights, with better opportunities to personalize. If equity is the first thing, we think about, equity across the piece, equity in terms of ability, in terms of socioeconomic context. There were schools in the United Kingdom seventh richest economy in the world during COVID where 35% of children did not have internet access at home. So there is also the danger that technology will highlight even more and widen the gap between have and have, not equals, can and cannot. I'm acutely optimistic, but in the end, you see AI and calculators and there's a fountain pen. This, at one point, was technology from the feather to this Amazing. All right, but only if we equip the people and respect the people who are involved in the education of our children, as they should be. If we do not invest in all sorts of ways emotionally as well as financially, of course in the teaching professions, the discussion about technology is pointless because it will never quite work as well as it should. So stop worrying about the technology bit, right, worry about your teachers, look after them, make them better, help them, make themselves better, and then the technology will be incredible.

Speaker 3: 38:47

I want to end on a story. I was speaking at a conference fairly recently, and I was talking to people about AI, and there's a lot of people are kind of worried about the AI bit, aren't they? And, oh my God, there's all sorts of bad people. Yeah, there will be, and we'll deal with it. Right, we'll have some AI police or whatever it'll be, and it'll get dealt with.

Speaker 3: 39:03

The question for me was, though and I said to people, I'm talking to an organization about this so I want to invite 11 people for coffee in my favorite cafe, and there's two things that those 11 people have in common One is they're all dead, and two is I like and respect them all, and I think that they will get on together. So my people are Johann Kreuz, the very famous Dutch footballer and manager, the guru of leadership in sport, albert Einstein, rosa Parks, mother Teresa, christa Wolff, the East German author, Umberto Eco, anne Frank, and so I go. Yeah, my love AI and my favorite cafe is the Cafe Florian in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, and AI can produce that image. Ai can produce an image where I sit with my 11 guests in the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Ai can also start to suggest what the discussion might be like, because it can research each of those people and eventually AI will be able to voice some of those as a history lesson.

Speaker 3: 40:03

Okay, that's what AI can offer us. Who wouldn't want to go to school? Never mind the class size, I just want to be there. Right, that's it.

Speaker 1: 40:12

Brilliant. That is brilliant, gary. It's been fabulous, thank you.

Speaker 3: 40:18

Thank you for having me and I'll see you on the road, jim, for sure.

Speaker 1: 40:21

No, listen, if that can be arranged and we can have that rumble, adult rumble no foolishness, really thrust some of these things out. I'm up for it 100%.

Speaker 3: 40:33

I'm serious and I think I think your organization is an ideal neutral organization to be the catalyst. Yeah, totally see, and I know there are enough people within those school groups, like Gems and others. I know Cherborn in Qatar, those people, they'll be up for that.

Speaker 1: 40:51

Yeah, and you think we should do it. And you think we should do it. It needs to be done because there's a lot of misinformation and misgivings around that. Yeah, thank you for being on the podcast again. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 41:02

I keep having me. Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmiddleeastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.