(0:56 people's noises)
(check who) 1.17 We've got one hour and a quarter.
(confused voices then 1:31) How do we know when these things are going to be turned on?
(confused voices, then1:58) What? OK? Right.
(Chairperson 2:03) Ladies and Genltemen, can I ask everyone
to take their seats, please?
We're about to begin, so if you're visiting the bar,
can you charge your glasses and return to your seats, and then we'll begin.
We've got an hour and a quarter for this debate.
OK, can I -- Welcome everybody to the Online Educa OEB debate.
I'm not sure what number this is in the series of debates that we've had,
I think it may be getting up to our 10th.
What I can tell you is that in the time that we've been having these debates
and that I've been chairing them, my eyesight has now gone so bad
that I can't possibly read any notes that I have without using glasses, so
I think we must be on at least our 10th.
What I can also tell you is that Online Educa itself, OEB,
this year is celebrating its 21st anniversary.
So I think that perhaps deserves a round of applause.
So happy birthday to Online Educa -- (Applause) -- this fantastic conference.
And 21 years ago was a very difficult -- very different world indeed,
when one thinks about the scale and scope of change that there --
that has taken place in the last 21 years.
One statistic I was reading recently was that in the UK, in 1994, 21 years ago,
there were only 67 mobile phones per 1000 people.
But only ten years later, in 2004,
there were more mobiles in the UK than people.
And that pattern of spread of mobile communications alone
has spread across the world and in Africa, for instance,
those of you who have been to Elearning Africa will have learned about
the spread of mobile communications across the African continent.
So in terms of the scale of technological change,
and the spread of that change across the world,
the change in that short period of time, in these past 21 years alone,
has been enormous, and we heard about
the scale of it in the opening plenary session this morning.
We live in a world that is globalized, interconnected, hyperlinked
and that scale of change we're experiencing, have experienced
in the last 21 years, is going to gather pace and continue.
And all that is going to create a huge challenge for education and training,
which is going to be at the heart
of dealing with both the positive and negative aspects of that change.
And that's why the motion that we're dealing with today, in this debate,
is so important, and why the whole subject of giving young people the skills
that they need to cope with the challenges of this new world
that we all are going to -- that we are creating, is so important.
We've got four speakers, four panel speakers
to open the debate this evening
and I'm going to ask each of them to speak for 10 minutes,
and then I'm going to --
-- two of them will speak for the motion, obviously,and two against --
then I will throw open the debate to all of you,
but if you want to intervene whilst they are speaking, because
we're having a parliamentary-style debate,
then you can try to intervene on them
and if they want to take your intervention,
then they can do so, but it will be entirely up to you.
And if they don't, then you can draw whatever conclusions you want from that.
But I want to ensure that we keep the flow going,
so I'm not going to let you bully them but I'm going to allow you,
if you want to make a particular point,
or if you want to make a short intervention, to do so.
Then after they've spoken, we'll throw open the debate to the floor
and you can make your contribution,
but do please realize that time is of the essence,
so please try to keep it short and to the point, succinct.
This is the kind of debate equivalent of texting.
So, no long rambling contributions, because I will cut you off
if you try to do that.
So, very short contributions, please.
And then I'll ask each of our -- I'll ask one speaker from each side
to sum up, and then we will take a vote, and we'll do that by a show of hands.
And I've also made it clear to all the speakers that they may
say things that they don't necessarily want to be held to in the future,
so I hope that you will understand that.
But this is an opportunity for us to explore some of the issues,
but don't take it all too seriously,
and don't come and accuse people of saying things that you would --
that they might not necessarily always want to be held to.
With that in mind, I'm going to ask our first speaker, who is Jo Swinson.
Jo Swinson, who is the former Minister for business, innovation and skills
in the UK's coalition government of 2010 to 2015,
to speak first for the motion.
And Jo, since leaving Parliament, has begun a new career
and is involved in an award within a data intelligence company
called Clear Returns
and she is an expert on the challenges and opportunities of the digital age.
So, over to you, Jo.
(Jo Swinson) Thank you very much indeed, Harold.
And I'm absolutely delighted to be here in Berlin at OEB.
A bit of a first, actually, the first technology-related conference
that I've been to where there is a queue in the ladies' loos!
I have to say I was particularly pleased by that, not only as a feminist,
but also as a Brit who appreciates the art of queuing.
So it was good on two fronts.
So, this house believes that 21st century skills aren't being taught,
and they should be, is the motion that I want to convince you
to support this evening.
We absolutely need to be equipping our young people,
and indeed, people at every stage of their lives,
with the skills that they need for the 21st century.
And our education systems, and our wider society,
have an important role to play in this.
But I will put it to you, this evening, that when it comes to technical skills,
when it comes to social skills, and vitally,
when it comes to capacity to embrace change,
we are not yet rising to that challenge sufficiently.
There are very specific skills, there are gaps in science and technology
that are not being properly filled. 9:32
These shortages are causing significant problems
for businesses, for employers.
Half of engineering companies say that they have delayed taking forward
new products or services, because they have vacancies
that are so hard to fill, because the skills are not there to recruit.
Digital start-ups are often in real need of software developers
that they cannot find sufficiently.
And companies of all sizes, grappling with cybersecurity challenges
struggle to have the skills that they need to take on those important issues.
As Harold mentioned, I'm now a director of a company called Clear Returns.
It's been going for about three years, based in Glasgow, and uses data analytics
to help retailers understand the problems they have with product returns
and therefore successfully cutting the costs for retailers,
and resulting in better customer satisfaction.
But in our technology team of 17 people, there are 12 different nationalities
and not one of those people went through the school education system in the UK,
because the skills are not taught up to scratch.
Now, there have been some improvements and as to 2014,
computer science has been introduced into the curriculum in the UK,
but that is not the end of the matter,
because 11% of computer science graduates are unemployed.
In fact, that's one of the highest unemployment rates
for any subject discipline,
at a time when we have a huge shortage of these very skills.
Something is going very wrong when that is the case.
And this is not just about teaching people to code.
Fashionable ....... (check) undoubtedly is at the moment (check)
and it is necessary that we do have people who can code.
But it's not some kind of silver bullet on its own.
Actually, it's the building blocks that we need to be putting in place,
the things that lie before you get to the point of coding,
the logic, the basic maths, enhancing those skills,
so that people can put those building blocks together
and create an argument or a train of thought or a mathematical proof,
or indeed, a piece of code that will instruct a machine to do something.
Yet our maths skills are also going backwards.
A King's College, London, study found that compared to the 1970's
young people today are significantly less well equipped in the field of mathematics.
And it's also worth pointing out that we are missing out,
when it comes to teaching these skills on almost half of the population.
Only one in five A-level physics students is a girl.
When it comes to computer science, that figure drops to 1 in 10.
Now, it's wonderful to be at a technology conference
where there is a queue in the ladies' loos,
but even at this conference, if you have a look at the speakers' brochure,
only 8 of the 35 main speakers are women, so where are the women?
We are missing out on that important talent
who will not then get in the fields that we need for the 21st century
to enable all of our economies to flourish.
We're also not doing well enough at the social skills
which have always been imported -- important,
and I would argue, are even more so in the context of the 21st century.
Employers have long complained that they get coming into the work place
are not yet ready for work.
I have to say there is that thing I've observed,
when new graduates starting out in the work place
seem to be allergic to using the telephone
for the purpose it was originally designed for.
I've lost count of the number of times when, speaking to a member of staff
about the particular project that they are trying to make happen,
and it seems so stuck, and I say:
"What happened when you asked that person about it?"
"Oh, I sent them an email and they didn't get back to me."
You know, for all the wonders that technology can undoubtedly do
in helping us in our working life, when you want to get people to do something,
an email is very easy to ignore, and it is much harder to just put to one side
a face-to-face person or contact, or on the telephone.
And relationships are absolutely critical to 21st century work places and skills:
getting things done, collaborating in teams, motivating others.
Yet when we assess children and young people in the education system,
it is genuinely done on a pure individual basis,
not looking at how they are actually operating within a drip setting (check).
And when it comes to skills in terms of relationships,
something like personal, social and health education, which I would argue,
is absolutely essential to help young people learn to navigate relationships,
and important issues like consent when it comes to sex,
it's not even compulsory in the UK curriculum.
In a world where ultimation is increasing,
where jobs that we've already seen through the Industrial Revolution,
that manual jobs have been replaced by machines,
that with the next stage of technological advancement, many, many more,
in things like accountancy and professional services,
are also going to be replaced by algorithms,
the human social relationship skills are going to be in even more demand
and therefore deserve much more attention.
And my final point is that we have not done enough to prepare people
for the world of change.
A little while ago, I spoke at a School Award ceremony to 12-year olds
And I was to explain to them how the world had changed
since I was there age.
And one of the examples I used was the process of taking a photograph.
And I described how, when I was 12, you would have a thing called a camera
that was all that it did, it was just for taking photographs,
you would have to get a piece of film, physically,
to load it into the camera machine, you'd had to do that pretty carefully,
because you didn't want to expose the film and it was quite a fiddly process.
You wouldn't know whether the photos you were taking were any good.
You would have to take at least 24, or sometimes 36,
depending on which particular piece of film you put into your camera,
before you would then take it along to a pharmacist's or a chemist's shop,
pay some money and then go and do something else for a few days,
at which point you could come back
and be presented with your little envelope of photographs,
and see if any of them had turned out OK.
And I was counting on these 12-year olds looked at me
like I might well be lying to them: this is how it worked,
because of course these days, you know, within a matter of seconds,
you can take dozens of selfies in your phone,
apply however many Instagram filters you like,
and share it with the entire world, just without leaving the school.
The pace of change is accelerating hugely.
Here in 2015, for us to consider what even are 21st century skills,
is like going back to 1915 and trying to imagine the space race, nuclear power,
the internet, or the kind of social change going from a situation
where women didn't even have the vote,
to electing a woman as Prime Minister in the UK,
or the change with gay rights,
or the ending of racial segregation in the United States.
We can't even conceive of all that the 21st century is going to bring.
And so, more than anything, with this huge pace of increasing knowledge,
more than anything, what we need to do is equip people
to cope with and thrive on change and uncertainty.
Instead, we have bunches of kids being processed through the education system
that doesn't look that different to several decades ago.
So we really do have a problem here, in terms of the skills
that we are teaching and more importantly, not teaching well enough.
Whether it's technical skills, whether it's those social skills
or whether it's the vitally important ability to be resilient,
to recover from change and setbacks,
and to apply yourself in a new way to a new set of challenges and horizons.
These are the things we must be focusing on,
and we aren't yet rising to that challenge.
I support the motion. 18:06
(Applause)
(Moderator) OK, thank you very much for that, Jo.
Our next speaker, who is going to speak against the motion, is Allan Päll,
who is the Secretary General of the European Youth Forum,
which is the representative body for youth organisations in Europe
and he is an advocate for youth's rights.
He lead student unions in Estonia and at the European level, and has advocated
for students' voices to be included in educational policy. Allan:
(Allan Päll) All right, thank you very much, chair.
I would like to very much support many of the claims made by our opposition.
However, when it comes to the question and when it comes to this specific motion,
this house does not believe that 21st century skills aren't being taught,
because, well, let me put it very bluntly and very simply:
the whole notion of what are 21st century skills is often just a bunch of nonsense,
if I would sum it up very briefly.
But let me go into it a bit more.
There are many definitions of what these skills could be
and I fully agree that they do include everything mentioned by the opposition.
However, there are many other ways of looking at it.
So if we are to say whether these are being taught or not,
even if we have a problem of the very definition of what these skills are,
how can we say that they are not being taught so determinedly?
Some of the elements that can be mentioned as 21st century skills
are simple things, as critical thinking, problem-solving, reasoning, analysis,
research skills, creativity, curiosity, perseverance, self-direction
oral and written communication, leadership,
information and communication technology, social justice, literacy,
civic, ethical behavior, global awareness: the list goes on and on and on.
So, indeed, many of those things, perhaps, are not being taught enough,
or specifically enough, in our educational systems.
But that doesn't mean that this is not happening.
Let me ask you one simple question:
If you believe that we don't acquire many of these skills
in our educational environment, be it in a formal setting
or a socializing moment in your school or at university,
would we actually witness the pace of change in society that we are seeing.
Almost all of us have gone through the educational system.
So, we must get a lot of those skills also through that.
I do agree, though, that there is something to be said about
the question of how specific are we when we look at those skills.
Because that is true that most curricula --
education is very much compartmentalized into very specific subject areas
and we're seeing an increasing trend of those subject areas becoming
more and more specific.
And thus indeed, there is perhaps not enough emphasis on looking at,
or thinking really about are we acquiring all those sets of skills
that are important for our socialization, etc., our technical skills as well,
as mentioned by the opposition.
One of the things that I would like to highlight is that
the schools and universities, and vocational education and training
is not only about the formal learning outcomes
that we are beginning to measure more and more.
It is also about the social environment at that very school or university
that determines a lot of what education gives us. 22:18