- A Digital Learner ID would contain all educational
information, enabling a personalised education for every child
- It would lay the infrastructure necessary for Britain to
maximise the coming AI revolution in education, delivering better
experiences and more personalisation as well as improved
assessment and performance
- With accurate real-time data drawn from the Digital Learner
ID, it will be possible to intervene earlier in underperforming
schools.
Giving all students a Digital Learner ID is the key to unlocking
transformative education reform, according to the Institute for Global Change
(TBI).
The proposal is one of five practical measures included in a new
report published today - ‘The Future of Learning:
Delivering Tech-Enabled Quality Education for
Britain’ by Alexander Iosad, James Scales and
Kirsty Innes. The report says that schools currently offer an
industrial-scale “one-size-fits-all” approach. By giving every
student a Digital Learner ID, which contains all their
educational information, people can be taught differently, with
the opportunity to embrace innovative new tools and materials and
use AI and data to revolutionise the experience of both students
and teachers.
Alexander Iosad, TBI Education Policy Lead said:
“Students are learning as if they’re still living in the
20th Century.
“This is particularly true when it comes to the way we evaluate
school performance. Not only do Ofsted’s high-stakes inspections
put pressure on schools but they are too broad brush and quickly
out of date. Even “good” or “outstanding” judgements can mask
specific gaps in performance and the average time between
inspections is three years. This means some schools have gone
more than a decade without re-inspection.
“By giving every student a Digital Learner ID, we can use
real-time data to create a personalised education for every
child. We can also intervene earlier and be more targeted with
interventions in underperforming schools. It would allow robust
recommendations on improvements to be made and progress to be
monitored using accurate, benchmarked data. Leaders and
regulators could have a shared understanding of how a school is
performing compared to similar settings, jointly decide on
specific steps for improvement and schools could be transparently
assessed on their implementation.
“Embracing technology will enable us to teach differently,
embrace innovative tools and materials and use AI and data to
revolutionise the experience of both students and teachers.”
The Digital Learner ID would contain all educational information,
including formal test results, attendance, week-by-week
assessments, marked homework, records of non-academic achievement
and more.
This will also enable a positive overhaul of Ofsted’s defunct
approach to inspections and accountability. Ofsted must be
radically reformed and upgraded, with a much wider set of
analyses and thorough investigation of performance, using the new
data available. It is time to move on from the current approach:
one trick lightning visits and ‘outstanding’, ‘good’ and ‘needs
improvement’ grading. Ofsted needs to become an Office for
Accountability, Improvement and Development in Education, with
standards woven throughout.
Using real-time data provided by the Digital Learner ID will
allow a much deeper analysis and more thorough investigation of a
school’s performance, based on a complete picture that develops
over time instead of relying on snapshot inspections and
broad-brush judgements.
Interventions enabled by the Digital Learner ID would include
inviting other leaders who had successfully tackled similar
challenges in similar circumstances to co-design plans for
improvement, replicating the impact of shared data use and
peer-to-peer support that led to the success of New Labour’s
London Challenge programme.
Under TBI’s proposals the government would continue to publish
the attainment data used by newspapers and private companies to
produce league tables. However, the rich data produced by the
introduction of a Digital Learning ID will be better, more
granular and more timely with a personalised interface for
accessing and querying it. It will also be easier to access and
understand for anyone looking to compare the merits of different
schools or nurseries.
To manage the secure storage and appropriate use of the
information, TBI proposes the creation of a new designated data
body, independent from the Department for Education to avoid
political interference.
Under the TBI proposals schools in England would have the freedom
and funding to provide services to other schools anywhere in the
country. This would include hybrid lessons in subjects where they
have expertise. Parents would also be able to use private
providers who may have developed new ways of learning.
Finally, teachers’ administrative load would be reduced through
joint lesson-planning and automated marking, freeing them up to
provide individual feedback to pupils and work through problem
areas in small groups.
