“Square pegs in round holes” - Why Sir Richard Branson is fighting for a shake up in the education system

If you are a parent with a child with additional needs, then there is no doubt that you are a warrior parent. Parents have to fight incredibly hard to get the help their child needs in many instances, and schools are often under resourced to meet the needs of those who require extra intervention. Warrior parents are heroes; and they understand first hand what it takes to be heard in our current education system.

This issue is so challenging for our young people, that 58% of children who require SEND support spend time out of school because they feel unable to cope. But the truth is, schools can’t really do much either, because it’s the system that is no longer fit for purpose. Our culture has changed so dramatically in the last 5 years with emerging (and life changing) technology, that “learning” in a fundamental sense, needs to catch up with the landscape within which our children learn.

Sir Richard Branson posted an amazing blog on how he believes the education system in the UK needs a shake up, and I wanted to share it with you all.

Below is an excerpt from article, you can read in full here:

Imagine what the world would look like if we all thought the same way… a world without creativity and innovation. A world without debates or breakthroughs. A world without new perspectives or collaborative ideas. Sounds dull to me!

Unfortunately, education systems around the world are designed for uniform minds - Made By Dyslexia’s ‘Square Pegs’ film illustrates this problem in a very magical way.

I am proudly a square peg, and my fellow dyslexics are square pegs too. But the education system is full of round holes. Square pegs don’t fit neatly in round holes, we’re not uniform, and we don’t fit snuggly into the education system. As a result, at school, we’re often told we’re failures.

But as we showed in our DyslexAI film with Made By Dyslexia last year, we have the kind of thinking that could change the world. We need dreamers, problem-solvers, and entrepreneurs to solve the big problems of our time – and schools should be the places that help pave the way for them.

We need to reimagine and reshape the way children are taught and set up for life to fit with what students need, and with what the world needs right now. At the moment, we’re spending years preparing kids for a world that no longer exists. Take AI as an example – most schools aren’t teaching it, but isn’t the goal of school to prepare you for what next? AI is fundamental to this.

School should be a place where children are given the opportunity to find out what they know themselves, instead of just being told what they should know. If this was the case for me and so many of the other dyslexics that I’ve spent time with, school would have been a much happier place for us. If I’d been asked to bring my curiosity to the classroom, I might have never wanted to leave! I was never short of ideas or questions; they just weren’t about anything that was on the blackboard in front of me. Instead, my mind was on the Vietnam war and creating new ideas to solve the problems I saw in the world around me.

Sir Richards words highlight why the 360 degree service we provide at Learning DNA is so important within the current education system. We understand that everyone thinks differently, and through our service we are able to make sure your children have the right tools to unlock their full potential.

If you feel your child requires additional support in learning, you can book a FREE 15-minute consultation with us to chat further about your concerns.