What is Ed?

20/3/12

Guest speaker - Jane Davidson used to be Minister for Education, currently involved with Trinity College.

To begin, Jane briefly discussed the history of education in the government and then told us about why she, along side other people, wrote 'The Learning Country' in 2001. This document was produced as a strategy that would run over 10 years in order to be fully developed and sustainable. Jane explained how it had been very successful but this didn't mean that they haven't made changes and amendments to it now, to enable it to continue to work effectively, although 90% of it is still to be seen underpinning education today. She said its main focus was on helping learners to be prepared for the next stages in education and to help them realise what they wanted to do with life.

She also explained to us how people saw education differently to what they did now, especially in the 1990's. She said it was viewed as being too structured back then and that parents that their children were being taught to pass tests, not to be educated and to be prepared for later life.

I really enjoyed this lecture, especially because a lot of it was from her previous employment as the Minister of Education, so what she was saying was the real deal haha!