Jazz it up

Fabulous way for the Blackburn and Darwen Education Improvement Partnership (EIP) to kick off tonight - I did a keynote input but then we had a really engaging debate and questions about the nature of 21st century learning, all preceded by some really good food (curry, pappadums! yum) and a host of children of all secondary ages making up an exceptional schools' Big Band. They were really together, so i asked how come? They'd been away touring in Paris in the last year and "that helped" as one of them said, smiling...

With every region and nation embracing some form of "new" learning, the thing that separates them is ambition. The old world of incrementalism is dead or dying (and about time too) so the question is only "how good might our children be?". Up here tonight, there is no shortage of ambition about that future.