Children are our future, yet they have historically been excluded from many of the decisions that affect their daily lives. This, combined with the exponential growth in technology, has resulted in education systems that aren’t tailored to their needs. Tricia Jenkins of the SIS Catalyst project tells us about their work to find, apply and refine ways of involving children in the decisions that will affect their future
Putting children at the centre of education The children of today are growing up in a world that is fundamentally different from that in which their parents and grandparents spent their formative years, with technological development and global connectivity expanding the scope of human possibilities. A university education is increasingly important in these terms, bringing many benefits to both the student and the wider community, yet access to Higher Education remains far from evenly distributed across society; this is an issue which lies at the core of the SIS Catalyst research project. “SIS Catalyst is a mobilising mutual learning action plan. We focus on children, as they’re the one group that is not included in the development of policy and practice. It’s the one group that is most affected by them as well – our children are our future,” stresses Tricia Jenkins, the project’s coordinator. One of the key questions the project is addressing is that of how children will be involved in the development of education systems. “We work with what we call ‘children’s university-type’ activities, which are a big movement across Europe and beyond,” explains Jenkins. “We particularly focus
50
on what we called locally-defined minorities. In other words, which group of young people are under-represented in higher education within that particular locality?”
their childhood gave them,” she outlines. The project tackles these kinds of social inclusion issues by focusing on the young people who are least likely to go to university; Jenkins believes that their
SIS Catalyst is a mobilising mutual learning action plan. Children are the one group that is not included in the development of policy and practice. It’s the one group that is most affected by them as well – our children are our future University access The main factors which tend to make a difference in determining university access are where a young person lives, the income of their family, their gender, and their ethnicity. To illustrate the latter point, there are around 12 million Roma people living across Europe, yet their progression to university is amongst the lowest of any community, while Jenkins says there are also other factors to consider. “If a child in the UK spends time in care, their likelihood of going to university is about 6% in England and 2% in Scotland. That’s nothing to do with their ethnicity, it’s to do with the educational disadvantage that
views should be taken into account in the development of education systems. “We have been exploring the concept of different stakeholders working together, including children, to explore the key issues around education. We’ve got various focus points for the issues – the role of key players, the role of students, the role of young people. We’ve been looking at two planks of that – one is the delivery side, and the other is the policy-changing, the strategic side,” she explains. The project brings together a variety of organisations, including civil society bodies and universities from over 30 countries across the globe, to look at how
EU Research