5 Steps to Make This Happen
- Start with Pilots: Create trial zones where a percentage of education funding becomes portable, with robust evaluation built in
- Build the Infrastructure: Develop platforms that help families navigate options and track progress across different learning experiences
- Invest in Quality Providers: Fund the development of diverse, high-quality learning opportunities that can form part of the pick n mix
- Train Education Guides: Develop a new profession of experts who can help families build effective learning pathways
- Change the Metrics: Move beyond standardised testing to more meaningful measures of success that work across diverse learning models
The future of education isn't about better buffets with slightly improved options served up from a piss-poor Curriculum and Assessment Review, where the chefs are the same old same old. It's about smashing the buffet model entirely and embracing the glorious, personalised freedom of a la freakin' carte.
It's about trusting families to make choices. It's about creating a system where every pound spent on education genuinely serves the needs of individual learners. It's about breaking free from the constraints of tradition and building something that actually works.
The pick 'n' mix revolution is coming. The only question is whether we'll lead it or be dragged kicking and screaming into a future that arrives whether we're ready or not.
Let's choose to lead. Let's choose to build an education system that's as diverse, dynamic and personalised as the learners it serves. Let's make pick n mix education a reality.
Because our kids deserve better than another decade of the same bland buffet.