Learning Was My Happy Place. School Was Not

Education is very personal to me. I love learning. I always have. But I didn't love school.

I am dyslexic and learnt to read much later than the other children in my class. I struggled with spelling and, at the school I attended, I was repeatedly hit when I got it wrong. I remember the feeling of being somehow less capable than everyone else. Looking back, I wasn't unable to learn. I simply needed more time and a different way of being taught.

It took me years to understand that struggling at school and struggling to learn are not the same thing.

Learning, in fact, has always been one of my happiest places. I love discovering something new, following an idea, reading, making, researching and understanding how things work. I just didn't always learn in the way that school expected me to.

Becoming a parent made me think about education differently again.

With both of my children, I have tried to recognise the learner in front of me rather than the learner they are expected to be. They are very different people, with different strengths, interests and ways of understanding the world. What works beautifully for one child might be completely wrong for another.

And yet so much of our education system still relies on children moving through the same material, at roughly the same age, and ultimately proving what they know in very particular ways.

I've seen how difficult that can be when a child has a real love and understanding of a subject but struggles to demonstrate it under exam conditions. Exams measure something, of course, but they cannot possibly measure everything a young person knows, understands or might one day contribute.

This isn't about saying that one kind of education is right and another is wrong. Some children flourish at school. Some need a different environment. Others might simply need more time, more movement, a different explanation or the freedom to become completely absorbed in something that interests them.

What I wish I had understood as a child is that there are many ways to be a learner.

A child might think with their hands. They might need to draw something before they understand it. They might learn through stories, numbers, movement, conversation, repetition, experimentation or making. They might race ahead in one area and need much longer in another.

None of us develops in a perfectly straight line.

Perhaps our job isn't always to ask, How do we get this child to fit?

Perhaps sometimes we need to ask, What does the child in front of us need in order to learn?

As another school year begins, that is what I find myself thinking about.

New classrooms, new teachers, new pencils and new routines all have their place. But perhaps preparing our children for the year ahead can also mean reminding them that the way they learn is part of who they are.

To stay curious. To ask questions. To make things. To read. To draw. To experiment. To get things wrong and try again.

School is one part of an education.

Learning is much bigger.