Innovations Counsellors for teachers and parents

It seems there is a need for Innovations Counsellors in UK schools whose role would be to help teachers and parents in schools to develop, obtain funding, implement and evaluate their own projects for improving local education - a logical counterpart to the Institute's Social Invention Workshops in schools, where pupils do just this.

Valerie Yule worked as an honorary Innovations Counsellor with the Australian Schools Commission Innovations Programme, 1974 to 1978 (when she left for Scotland). Among the projects she helped get going were:

- School gardens run by teachers and children in disadvantaged areas with no gardens.
- A children's farm in an inner suburb (Collingwood) to delight and teach children, which still continues, against all the odds.
- Book-making facilities for children to turn their own writing into books for libraries and classrooms, including making local histories from interviews.
- Classes of older children 'hearing' the reading of younger children and reading to them.
- Children sharing responsibility for the maintenance of their schools as 'young housekeepers', with specific privileges.
- Secondary school pupils sharing in creche care of small children.
- 'Engineering experience' in primary schools, on the lines of the German 'fischertechnik' approach to training practical problem-solving and mechanical reasoning in young children.

'The emphasis in these projects was that the ideas must come from the people who would be carrying them out'

'The emphasis in these projects was that the ideas must come from the people who would be carrying them out. I was the facilitator.'

Valerie Yule, 57 Waimarie Drive, Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia 3149 (tel 807 4315).

You can rate how well you like this idea. Click 0-10 below and press the Submit button.
Bad Idea <- 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -> Great Idea
As of 05/28/96, 6 people have rated this page with the overall rating (0-100%) of: 68%

Previous / Next / Table of Contents